Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse

"They say that the white man is coming to rule Haiti again. The black man is so cruel to his own, let the white man come!"

 Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse is an interesting anthropological and religious study of Jamaican and Haitian cultures. Traveling in Jamaica and Haiti during the 1930s, Hurston's personal account reads like a travelogue and fascinating portrait of peasant cultures, religious traditions, and political conditions. Interesting sidenote, Alan Lomax was in Haiti making field recordings of Haitian music and actually recorded Zora Neale Hurston singing folk songs. Anywho, most of the book is centered on her descriptions of life, politics and religion in Haiti rather than Jamaica. Her time in Jamaica, however, does provide insight on race relations (black and mulatto divide in Jamaica exists just like in Haiti), belief in duppies in Jamaican culture, and traditions of Maroons in Accompong, including a dangerous hunt of a giant boar and the feasting that ensued. She also describes with numerous examples the color barrier between blacks and mulattoes in Jamaica, who form an elite separate from the black population because of access to knowledge, white contacts, and political power. Jamaica, like Haiti and other Caribbean islands, has a long history of political rule by mulattoes who usually carry on anti-black prejudice and rarely intermarry  with lower-class blacks. 

One of the great surprises one encounters reading the book is Hurston's ambivalence on the recently terminated American occupation of Haiti. As an African-American woman associated with the Harlem Renaissance one would expect her, like the NAACP and other black organizations, to unequivocally opposed to US imperialism in Haiti. A close reading of Hurston's text and her analysis of Haitian politics, however, reveals the deep political and economic troubles caused in Haiti by black and mulatto elites that created the conditions where American invasion was seen as preferable to the status quo. As Hurston traces the problems of Haiti back to the colonial period and the century and a half of misrule by black and mulatto elites, one must agree that a fundamental problem of Haitian politics is the use of lies and deception to justify the current status of Haiti. While talking to a Haitian intellectual, one sees it as he lies about Haitian history and overlooks Haiti's enormous structural problems that facilitated the American occupation. To this particular Haitian, lying about the actual events and problems of Haiti becomes truth as he lies to himself and to Zora Neale Hurston. 

Besides her ambivalence on the American occupation, Hurston's account focuses on Voodoo, its rituals, and the overwhelming majority of Haitians who practice the faith. Indeed, even light-skinned elites sometimes practice Voodoo, despite publicly distancing themselves from the "superstitions" of the blacks. Hurston's account of Voodoo actually accepts some of the 'supernatural' or unbelievable things associated with Voodoo, such as zombies. She even took a picture of a Zombie while in Haiti, a woman whose eyes appear dead. Thus, Hurston is not as skeptical of Voodoo and its power, so she succeeds in providing a relatively unbiased account of Voodoo rituals, beliefs, and practices. While discussing the practice of bokors who do specialize in turning victims into zombies with a Haitian doctor, they both concur that its probably caused by some drug crafted by African ancestors. Indeed, these secrets in composing drugs, remedies, and other poisons is part of secret societies, which are not 'real' Voodoo but a small sector of the Haitian populace who practice evil rites to turn their victims into human slaves (zombies), poison them, or even practice cannibalism. Hurston also describes the process of invoking the loas, the dances and music associated with calling the loas, and the 'mounting,' or act of possession by a loa. In addition, Hurston shares short descriptions of the most popular loas of the Petro and Rada rites of Vodou, the former belong to the Kongo tradition (central Africa) and the latter coming from Dahomey (West Africa). 

Overall, Hurston's Tell My Horse is a satisfactory account of Voodoo in Haiti. She dispels racist myths of Haitian voodoo as evil superstition, describing the real practices, origins, and theology of it. For Hurston, it is no better nor worse than any other religion. Her description of some of the flaws of Haiti and Jamaica regarding race and gender are also pertinent for understanding current social conditions of both islands and the Caribbean as a region. She does witness some amazing feats while in Jamaica or Haiti, or hears multiple accounts testifying to their validity, so it's hard to not believe that zombies, possession by loas, and the Ba Mouin rite are not 'real.' This text, loved and praised by Ishmael Reed, does live up to the hype as an important look on Vodou and African-derived religious systems, and highlights the already international black consciousness present in African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. Her experiences with Vodou/Voodoo testify to that fact, and illustrate the importance of Voodoo as a syncretistic way of life with potential healing through medicine and rituals.