How 'voodoo' became a metaphor for evil
2,465'Voodoo' has come to represent something evil when it appears in popular culture. 'Black magic', witchcraft – it's always portrayed as something to be feared. But in reality, Vodou, as it's correctly written, is an official religion practised by millions of people. Why has it been vilified for so long? Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back over the history of Haitan Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo, which is a separate belief system altogether, and its portrayal to find an answer
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Further reading:
Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjfnr
Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory
https://www.dukeupress.edu/desire-and-disaster-in-new-orleans
Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present
https://www.amazon.com/Horror-Noire-Blacks-American-Present/dp/0415880203
Why Can’t Black Witches Get Some Respect in Popular Culture?
https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/black-witches-why-cant-they-get-respect-in-pop-culture.html
The Appropriation of Magic: How White People Demonised Voodoo
https://brizomagazine.com/2020/06/15/the-appropriation-of-magic-how-white-people-demonised-voodoo/
200 Years of Forgetting: Hushing up the Haitian Revolution
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40027220?seq=1
The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-haiti-reader
Yorùbá Influences on Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034365
From 'Voodooism' to 'Vodou': Changing a US Library of Congress Subject Heading
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41949200
Perceptions of New Orleans Voodoo: Sin, Fraud, Entertainment, and Religion
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2002.6.1.86