Alourdes, known as Mama Lola, is a veritable survival artist. She is gifted in the art of cultural bricolage, that is, in making use of whatever cultural elements serve to support her and her family, regardless of whether they are Haitian or "American" or come from any of the other peoples and cultures she routinely encounters in New York City. Her current religious commitments include Haitian Vodou and Puerto Rican Santeria, as well as Vatican II Catholicism as interpreted by first-generation Irish immigrant priests. Alourdes's people-sense functions, with remarkably few translation problems, across multiple cultural divides. Her sensitivity and her skill at working with people are, at minimum, transnational talents. They have had to be because Lola, the Vodou Priestess, lives in the midst of religious and cultural pluralism. This is apparent in both her healing work and her day-to-day life. A life as culturally dynamic, flexible, and responsive to change as Alourdes's evades neat ethnographic description. This has made me especially aware of the role my choices have played in shaping her overall story.