Alourdes Macena Champagne Lovinski, known as 'Mama Lola,' is a Haitian mambo (Vodou priestess) and healer who is the central figure of Karen McCarthy Brown's landmark ethnography Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn.
Brown first met her in Brooklyn in 1978 and documented her role as priestess, mother, and migrant who built a ritual world joining Haiti to New York. Her life story, moving from rural northwest Haiti through Port-au-Prince and into Brooklyn's Haitian immigrant community, links family history to wider patterns of Haitian social change and diaspora Vodou practice.
In the ScholarshipHow historians have read this figure.
How historians and scholars have interpreted this figure across different analytical traditions.
Karen McCarthy BrownMama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn1991