Marie Thérèse Alourdes Macena Champagne Lovinski (1933–2020),[1][2] also known by the name Mama Lola, was a Haitian-born manbo (priestess) in the African diasporic religion of Haitian Vodou. She had lived in the United States since 1963.[3]
Born in Port-au-Prince, Mama Lola descended from multiple generations of manbos and oungans (Haitian Vodou priests).[4] She took up the duties of a manbo herself when she was in her early thirties after she had moved to the United States. She was a highly regarded healer, ritualizer, and spiritual guide in a close-knit community of Haitian immigrants in New York City and their networks along the eastern seaboard and abroad by the time she met anthropologist and religious studies scholar Karen McCarthy Brown in 1978.[5][6] The best-known collaboration between Mama Lola and Brown over the course of their more than thirty-year friendship and research relationship is Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, a 1991 book about Mama Lola's religious practices and the Haitian and U.S. cultural context of her life.[7]
Mama Lola emerged as a more public figure as she continued working with her close friend and collaborator Brown in subsequent academic projects and publications and the arts and culture sectors. Importantly, she deepened and expanded her own networks in Caribbean New York and Eastern Canada, the Haitian diaspora, Afro-diasporic religious and cultural centers throughout the United States, and among people unfamiliar with Vodou yet drawn to her as her extended spiritual family grew and she gained greater visibility.