Diane Marie Brown is the author of Black Candle Women, the story an alarmingly enchanting family of four generations of Black women living under one roof. The drama comes though with the family curse—any person they fall in love with dies—that stems back to a voodoo sorceress in 1950s New Orleans.
Told from four perspectives, Black Candle Women is a richly imagined tale about redemption and changing one’s destiny and a deeply moving portrait of the unbreakable yet complex bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters.
What inspired you to write this book?
Both of my parents are from Louisiana, so I would spend my summers there. Every year we traveled by Amtrak and I get to spend time there with my relatives. I stopped going after my uncle passed away, but always felt a strong connection to the place and just wanted to have a story that had some element of New Orleans. But I also thought it would be fun to have some history as far as voodoo and hoodoo. A lot of people are familiar with Marie Laveau, who’s a famous voodoo sorceress and known in New Orleans, so I wanted to think about what would happen with her relatives if they were still alive today, and they had some of her abilities and skills. I created a different woman who is similar so that women in this family are connected to a different voodoo sorceress and then the story just kind of unfolded from there.
Why did you want to highlight women?
I love Black women, we are very special. We’re fierce, but there’s a lot put on us. We’re always asked to be strong and serious and dedicated to a mission. But there are a lot of frailties in our lives and a lot of things that are shared from generation to generation. I wanted to highlight those things and the relationships between mother and daughter. I’m the mother of four girls and had a strong, tight relationship with my mom before she passed away. In a sense, I also wanted to pay honor to the relationship that I had with my mom and what I have with my daughters as well.
Why was important for you to talk about sorceresses?
Voodoo is the spiritual side, and it’s similar to how Catholic saints intercede on your behalf for specific reasons. There are voodoo saints, and that is who Black and Brown people who were in the region from Haiti, Africa, and South America spoke to and went to for their specific needs. Then there’s hoodoo, which is what people think about when they hear voodoo, but those are the tricks, potions, and tinctures that try to help with some of life’s problems. Oftentimes, this gets a negative connotation, but at the heart of it, it’s trying to help people solve their problems.
