Davis, Wade — The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) Source Information

Davis, Wade — The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) Source Information Author: Wade Davis Full Title: The Serpent and the Rainbow Original Publication: 1985 hardcover; 1986 paperback Type: Secondary Source — ethnobotany, popular science, travel narrative, and zombi debate Location in Vault: research/secondary-sources/ Extracted Text: davis serpent rainbow.txt Status Text extracted: Yes — davis serpent rainbow.txt Review pass: Completed (2026-03-28) — Davis zombi/secret-society pass focused on pharmacology claims, social punishment, Bizango, and the export of Haitian zombi discourse Chapter notes: davis serpent rainbow ch notes Graph review in this pass: Created bizango, tetrodotoxin, zora neale hurston, and clairvius narcisse; rebuilt zombi; strengthened moc sources, moc society culture, and moc people Overview The Serpent and the Rainbow is one of the most culturally influential books in the vault's twentieth-century Haiti cluster because it helped fix the Haitian zombi in Anglophone popular imagination while also trying, unevenly, to rescue the figure from simple horror-movie caricature. Davis frames zombification as both a pharmacological problem and a social process rooted in Haitian rural belief, punishment, and secret-society authority. For the vault, the book is most useful when read critically and in layers.