Reviewed by Tara Betts

The intersections of women’s lives have been a staple of women’s prose as long as women have been writing. In Ana-Maurine Lara’s debut novel Erzulie’s Skirt, Lara brings us to the dirt roads and sugar cane of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, as well as the historical roots of an African village.

Micaela is told by her mother Marie and a babalawo to guard her brother Fernandito, a prized child. The situation eventually leads to Marie ousting Micaela from their home. On her own after she is abandoned by her husband Jeremie, Miriam begins working as a housekeeper until she meets Micaela, a familiar face even though Miriam never met her before. Their childhoods unfold before they meet, then it is Micaela who inspires and motivates Miriam to seek out a better life.

Lara’s narrative about practicing the ancient African practice of ancestor worship through the orishas precedes this convergence of the two women that eventually continues throughout the rest of their lives. Although Miriam had a mother who rebuked the religion for staunch Christianity, there is clearly reverence for the various manifestations of the religion in Lara’s reference notes, a brief glossary of the Spanish, Yoruba and Creole/Kreyol terms that permeate the characters’ language, and a map of Haiti and the Dominican Republic with an arrow that points to Puerto Rico. It’s as if Lara is plotting the whereabouts of her characters, but also offering deliberate directions for the reader who needs to know that this location and this faith is central to both the characters’ identities and relationships. This also furthers a plot that flashes back to an African village that Micaela inhabits in her dreams with her friend Ifé, until it is invaded. Lara weaves the novel through this distant past that parallels the present of both Miriam and Micaela.

This struggle, faced by both women who find long-lasting committed love together, is braided into a notion of history that is outright denied in a religious framework that is still largely removed from the African American-Christian perspective. Although some people have argued that there was no homosexuality in Africa, Lara’s book clearly offers a story that shows how it could have happened. Aside from its refutation of such a homophobic notion, Lara is doing what black writers have been doing for some time. She is offering a place to include an under-recognized and often obscured perspective.

Although there are works like Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day that touch upon ancestor worship and voodoo, there are still not nearly as many novels that avoid veering into becoming an anthropological study on African religions. Unfortunately, the same can be said about books like Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography. There are not many of them, but Lara is effective at blending the identity politics and the literary traditions that illuminate the existence of such intersections in literature and the conflicts that are sometimes within communities of color.

Although the resolution to the flashbacks to the unidentified African village seems unclear, the connection of Miriam and Micaela to their past is clear. In the process, the two women find love, a sense of family, and a connection with faith. The dialogue feels realistic, but it is in the memories and thoughts where the characters reflect on their pasts, their hopes, and the details of the world that attempts to suffocate them. Lara is adept at showing, without being preachy, the repressive expectations that are thrust upon daughters, domestics, mothers, single women, and women who love whomever they choose. Lara’s novel renders a tale that places past lives and present ones in her two main characters’ lives with ease and care. No matter how women hurt each other or prop each other up against the world, there are undeniable bonds, bloodlines that bind us to the matrilineal line and sisterhood.