Legba

In Voodoo, Legba is one of many intermediary gods through whom followers can communicate with God. He is a trickster god who is at once lame and intensely active and mobile. In Praisesong for a Widow, Lebert Joseph seems to embody this god. Although at the beginning of Avey’s encounter with him he walks with a cain, he later dances the juba and proves quite mobile. As a kind of “trickster,” he seems to be at once man and woman, old and young, black and white. As an intermediary, he becomes a kind of initiator for Avey into her true culture.

Leslie Bowen