Vodou en Vogue

“This innovative book centers on fashion and dress among female Vodou practitioners, focusing on fashion’s significance within religious ritual, material aesthetics, and embodiment by spirits. . . . Highly recommended.”—CHOICE

“An engaging analysis of the role of adornment in collective practices of practitioners . . . by a scholar who spent more than a decade observing and participating in Vodou ceremonies.”—Reading Religion

“[Nwokocha’s] ethnographic framework and methodology help to paint a vivacious portrait of fashion as revealed through the lived experiences and ritual performances of the social actors in Manbo Maude’s Vodou communities.”—Sociology of Religion

“Nwokocha offers a sensorially rich and analytically evocative study that examines the aesthetic, spiritual, and social dimensions of Haitian Vodou. . . . Written with visual and relational clarity, the book engages readers attuned to the textures and atmospheres of ritual life.”—Religious Studies Review

“Vodou en Vogue is a compelling, ethnographically grounded foray into the sartorial world of Haitian Vodou.”—Journal of Religion

“Nwokocha’s superb work offers a much-needed corrective to previous scholarship that presents Vodou as a religion defined by poverty and precarity. Her skillful observations and thoughtful descriptions of the thoughts, desires, and delights of deities and devotees reveal the rich thought-world of Vodou as it is practiced today.” —Dianne M. Stewart, Emory University

“This exciting and important book breaks new conceptual ground by linking one’s manner of dress and bodily adornment to the formation of religious belief and community. Nwokocha’s idea of 'spiritual vogue' centers on Vodou and other African-derived spiritual systems, but the implications of her work extend broadly into fields such as Africana studies, religious studies, gender and sexuality studies, and fashion studies.”—Judith Casselberry, Bowdoin College

“Eziaku Nwokocha reveals worlds where the complexities and sophistication of Vodou are awash in sartorial splendor, and where the cosmic is but one dream away. In language of inspiring clarity, she shows readers how threads of belief, fashion, movement, and more are woven together in the practice of Vodou today.Simply put, a great book.”—Houngan asogwe/Professor Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, author of Haiti: The Breached Citadel