Mojo workin' : the old African American Hoodoo system / Katrina Hazzard-Donald.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hazzard-Donald, Katrina, 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hoodoo (Cult).

Vodou--United States.

Vodou.

African American magic.

Medicine, Magic, mystic, and spagiric--United States.

Medicine, Magic, mystic, and spagiric.

African Americans--Religion.

African Americans.

African Americans--Folklore.

United States.

Physical Description:

x, 234 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana, IL : University of Illinois Press, [2013]

Summary:

Katrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as Hoodoo. Working against conventional scholarship, Hazzard-Donald argues that Hoodoo emerged first in three distinct regions she calls "regional Hoodoo clusters" and that after the turn of the nineteenth century, Hoodoo took on a national rather than regional profile. The spread came about through the mechanism of the "African Religion Complex," eight distinct cultural characteristics familiar to all the African ethnic groups in the United States.

The first interdisciplinary examination to incorporate a full glossary of Hoodoo culture, Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System lays out the movement of Hoodoo against a series of watershed changes in the American cultural landscape. Throughout, Hazzard-Donald distinguishes between "Old tradition Black Belt Hoodoo" and commercially marketed forms that have been controlled, modified, and often fabricated by outsiders; this study focuses on the hidden system operating almost exclusively among African Americans in the Black spiritual underground. Book jacket.

Contents:

Prescript

Traditional religion in West Africa and in the new world: a thematic overview

Disruptive intersection: slavery and the African background in the making of Hoodoo

The search for High John the Conquer

Crisis at the crossroads: sustaining and transforming Hoodoo's old black tradition from Emancipation to World War II

The demise of Dr. Buzzard: black belt Hoodoo between the two World Wars

Healin' da sick, raisin' da daid: Hoodoo as health care, root doctors, midwives, treaters

Black belt Hoodoo in the post-World War II cultural environment

Postscript.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [211]-225) and index.

ISBN:

9780252037290

0252037294

9780252078767

0252078764

9780252094460

0252094468

OCLC:

788272374