The extraordinary life of Marilène Phipps began in Haiti-the magical island of African Vodou gods who followed their devotees on the slave ships, and the world's first black republic-the singular cultural context and exotic milieu of the Caribbean, where hell and paradise can transfix us daily. In this powerful memoir, we enter the lives of a family who are both descendants of European aristocrats and African slaves. We meet Phipps's godfather, the rebel leader Guslé Villedrouin, and we relive her experiences with Vodou priests and spirits, a cold-eyed pope, a charismatic Muslim astrologer, Catholic monks and exorcists, American Mormon bishops, scholars and missionaries. Through it all, we are stirred by the antithetical feel of entitlement and destitution, barbarism and lyricism, infinity and insanity. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti brings a collapse to Phipps's world, but is also the start for her to find modern answers to the ancient questions, "Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?"

Unseen Worlds: Adventures at the Crossroads of Vodou Spirits and Latter-day Saints

Biographies & Memoirs

Phipps, Marilène

Community & Culture

Wisdom Editions Gold

The extraordinary life of Marilène Phipps began in Haiti—the magical island of African Vodou gods who followed their devotees on the slave ships, and the world’s first black republic—the singular cultural context and exotic milieu of the Caribbean, where hell and paradise can transfix us daily. In this powerful memoir, we enter the lives of a family who are both descendants of European aristocrats and African slaves. We meet Phipps’s godfather, the rebel leader Guslé Villedrouin, and we relive her experiences with Vodou priests and spirits, a cold-eyed pope, a charismatic Muslim astrologer, Catholic monks and exorcists, American Mormon bishops, scholars and missionaries. Through it all, we are stirred by the antithetical feel of entitlement and destitution, barbarism and lyricism, infinity and insanity. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti brings a collapse to Phipps’s world, but is also the start for her to find modern answers to the ancient questions, “Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?”

Unseen Worlds: Adventures at the Crossroads of Vodou Spirits and Latter-Day Saints

Calumet Editions

House of Fossils

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Following her amazing memoir" Unseen Worlds," Marilene Phipps offers us "House of Fossils," a poetic, genre-busting fictional memoir with the same high emotionality and vivid characterization that makes all her work so riveting. Io, is a form of the author's second soul, seeks beauty and timelessness in gestures, manner and thought, but finds herself caught in a world where human beings are held hostage to their racial origins, skin color, culture, and other people's reactions to these. She is an immigrant who aims to belong and develop an identity, freed from the kind of fossilization imposed on one's psyche by ancestry, family expectations and cultural norms. Her story weaves Haiti-its social idiosyncrasies built around color and class, its singular religious imagination combining Christianity and Vodou, its irruptive political history-with other areas of the US and of the world. The relevance of this book is clear in an America increasingly experiencing a multicultural evolution.

Genre Fiction

Unseen Worlds

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Books by Phipps, Marilène