The Face of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti

Record summary

Leslie G. Desmangles’s study examines Haitian Vodou in relation to Roman Catholicism, including spirits and ritual categories associated with death, cemeteries and the mediation of thresholds. Gede figures and Baron Samedi are useful comparative leads because they complicate any simple division between the living world and the realm of the dead: they can be comic, erotic, protective or disruptive. The book documents religious interpretation rather than proving supernatural travel. Terminology, regional variation and the author’s analytical framework should be checked against Haitian practitioners and later scholarship.