The Queens Give Heat: Haitian Women's Spiritual Play?Labor in Rara

Every year in Haiti and its diaspora, the Lenten Vodou festivals of Rara occur through Easter Sunday. In this article, I argue that religious performances, such as Rara, are critical sites Black women's social economic empowerment. particular, women performers or queens use to empower themselves. Based on long-term ethnographic research Haiti, attend way transform play expression into labor what call spiritual play-labor. This concept builds works Robin D.G. Kelley's (1997) Oneka LaBennett's (2011) which they ways youth turn cultural labor. Spiritual play-labor an analytic explore Haitian performances Rara's carnivalesque is compensated. The queen's reframing their performance relies upon understanding chalè heat beauty bodily work central. Situating myself within field feminist anthropology, my role a ethnographer advocating with reframe