This chapter delves into the history of women in Haiti and the Caribbean through the African religious legends of the Vodoun goddess and spirit, Erzulie, describing their importance to Haitian culture and identity. The goddess takes many forms and meanings depending on which historical perspective she is representing, whether it be through the colonial lens, the catholic lens, the patriarchal lens or the feminist lens. It highlights the subversion of Western dualisms, gender distinction and colour division in these legends.

In Haiti, History, and the Gods, Joan Dayan charts the cultural imagination of Haiti not only by reconstructing the island's history but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored. She investigates the confrontational space in which Haiti is created and recreated in fiction and fact, text and ritual, discourse and practice. Dayan's ambitious project is a research tour de force that gives human dimensions to this eighteenth-century French colony and provides a template for understanding the Haiti of today.