Mention Haiti, and images of poor and battered refugees risking their lives attempting to reach America, or a barren Caribbean island prone to military coups and hideous zombies, come to mind. But when anthropologist-choreographer Katherine Dunham first traveled to Haiti in 1936 to study the country's dance traditions, she fell in love with the people and their culture. Island Possessed, originally published in 1969, captures Dunham's experiences of the island's intricate voodoo religious dances and customs; the friction between the black peasants and the mulatto elites; and the brutal dictatorships that have plagued the nation. Of her three-day initiation into the voodoo religion as a "bride" to the Haitian serpent god Damballah, she writes, "My feeling was closer to belonging to something all-encompassing than I have ever known since." Called by the Haitian people "Mama Katherine," Dunham has contributed a humane and comprehensive overview of the world's first black republic. --Eugene Holley Jr.
