February 23, 2010
Soulouquerie and "Haiti's Bad Press" (1)
With the publishing of "The Serpent and the Rainbow" in 1985 (2), Wade Davis soared onto best-seller lists in Amrica and around the world, gaining fame and recognition as the entrepreneurial Harvard anthropologist who journeyed into the heart of Voodoo-land (Haiti) and returned home with what can be called the Holy Grail of Haitian witchcraft, namely, the highly-kept secret recipe for bringing a seemingly dead person back to life, creating what is generally known as a zombie. Since then, Davis has remained in the public eye as the preeminent authority on the Haitian zombie. But, despite all the accolades generated by that publication, more than anything else, Davis's investigation should be remembered as an unfortunate contribution to Haiti's bad press. more...