Sea Secret Rising: The Lwa Lasirenn in Haitian Vodou

Abstract

Lasirenn's popularity may stem from her role as mythic siren who entices us into deep examination of ourselves and guides us in waterways, in a journey into the unknown.1 Water is usually considered shifty and could stand as an archetype for fluidity. This essay analyzes popular narratives about the Haitian Vodou lwa Lasirenn, her complex attributes, her sacred rituals, her signs, and her veve. These representations are fluid enough and interpretations sufficiently varied to offer a glimpse of how Lasirenn guides us into examination of selves. This fluidity is also emblematic of the ease with which one can apply her lessons of survival, introspection, and self-acceptance into various realms of existence, allowing devotees to reconcile Patterson's natal alienation through the lived Creolite of Bernabe, Confiant and Chamoiseau.2 The lwa Lasirenn is the Haitian version of Afro-diasporic water spirits drawing on the mythology of the mermaid from European and African societies in the long tradition of Marni Wata, with its earlier representations originating actually from India. In Marni Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa audits Diasporas, Henry John Drewal refers to African water deities collectively as Marni Wata.3 The abundance of water deities speaks to the viability of African diasporas as sources of cultural production.4 Characteristics of African water deities have adapted to suit the changing social and historical circumstances of the devotees. Lasirenn is one of many African water deities whose attributes hybridized to suit new contexts in the Americas.5 As referents for fluidity, Marni Wata and Lasirenn help us explore various possibilities of identities within ourselves. Different interpretations of the water deities in respective contexts are revealed when studying, for example, sexuality. Marni Wata's incorporation of masculine and feminine attributes in her many incarnations heightens her appeal to those with marginalized sexualities. African water spirits demonstrate a way to perform both masculinity and femininity. For example, the Yoruba trickster Eshu/Elegba exhibits dual components of gender when a woman wields a phallus while dancing as a male deity.6 Similarly, Olokun, goddess of the sea in Yoruba changes gender when the deity reaches Benin.7 Randy P Conner describes Olokun as not only androgynous, but also a hybrid human-fish.8 Across the Atlantic, Lasirenn is known as distinctly female from the waist up while below the waist, her sex is only intimated in the color and sparkle of her tail. Complicating traditional gender connotations, at a recent exhibit on Marni Wata at the UCLA Fowler Museum, contemporary artist Nancy Josephson sets a male mannequin as the basis for her mermaid sculpture in homage to Lasirenn.9 Hybridity is also reflected in the artist Roudy Azor's flag, LaSireneMarassas Trois, featuring a three-headed water spirit. Azor points out that their skin color doesn't matter, what matters is that they are all African. That is identity. That is core.10 With respect to identity negotiation, Azor's representation of Lasirenn incorporates a daunting African ethos that helps us explore various possibilities within our selves. Lasirenn's personification of hybridism, in her half-human, half-fish figure, then, is significant for black women-loving-women where conflict arises between ideals of being black and being gay. Azor's three-headed portrayal communicates visually the triple-consciousness of black womenloving-women. In other words, Azor's rendition of Lasirenn serves black women-loving-women's self-understanding as gay, black, and female. Triple-consciousness is managed with guidance from this Afro-diasporic water spirit. Black women-loving-women, in particular, are subject to external demands to integrate pieces of identity into a single self. The flowing quality of water spirits correlates to the fluidity of identities for black women-loving-women. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.