In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Research in African Literatures 34.2 (2003) 206-208



[Access article in PDF]
The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, ed. Edwidge Danticat New York: Soho, 2001. 239 pp. ISBN 1-569-47218-1.

In her touching opening to The Butterfly's Way, Edwidge Danticat laments that she must open up an assembly of writings by writers of Haitian descent—the first of its kind—with a tribute to the slain journalist Jean-Léopold Dominique. Yet, given Haiti's violent history and the perseverance of its people, it only seems fitting that the slaughter of a man whose writing and broadcasting career gave hope to a people should be followed by more uplifting material.

Succeeding the ode to Dominique is a thoughtful poem, Marc Christophe's "Present, Past, Future," a beautiful piece that cares to conjugate the historical dynamics of his country. One such dynamic is a practice that postrevolutionary Haiti inherited from colonial France, that of rich families taking in child slaves, or restavec; this is discussed by someone who experienced it first-hand, Jean-Robert Cadet. The former child slave recalls nightmarish episodes, in which, after the death of his mother, his French father hands him over to his cruel mistress, Florence. The years that Cadet spent with her eventually dagger his soul with much emotional trauma and psychological damage, paralyzing his psyche with such force that as an adult he would wet his bed and suffer panic attacks.

Just as stimulating is Babette Wainwright's "Do Something for Your Soul, Go to Haiti." It bears streaks of Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, as Wainwright muses over imperialism and greed under the cloak of Christendom and charity in the similar voice of passive contempt. But one wonders whether Okonkwo's eyes ever endured the staunch hypocrisy that Wainwright saw firsthand during the philanthropic trip to assist missionaries that she recounts. In one passage, Wainwright exasperatingly writes:

I saw and heard discontented people who watched as the priest obtained a TV antenna, solar and wind generator, a garage, and a bamboo fence to keep them out of the mission house, while their children remained malnourished and thirsty in mud huts. Weren't the people of Jeanette the reason so much money was donated to this project? Weren't their pathetic photographs used to touch the donors' hearts and pockets?

She adeptly answers her own question and concludes with "Now it is clear to me what the promotional bulletin meant when it said: 'Do something for your soul, go to Haiti.'"

Nikol Payen's "Something in the Water" is equally thought-provoking. With much clarity, she gives an account of her stint as an interpreter for the Department of Justice during the days that followed the 1991 coup d'état. The only thing more stark and brutal than the honesty of her prose is the treatment of the detainees in the Guantanamo Camp American base where she is a translator. [End Page 206]

It cannot be said that the collection is merely musings on oppression and events chained to a turbulent history. At least not in the eyes of Joanne Hyppolite, who intelligently recalls her assimilation into American culture, after arriving in Boston from Haiti when she was a mere toddler. Her contribution, "Dyaspora," addresses her alienation, the predicament always faced by those who carry about a double identity: that of being excluded by both cultures for not being "enough" of one to be considered authentic to it.

Anthony Calypso faced a similar situation. He singles out his participation in the Million Man March as affirming not only his individuality as a black man but as a black American of Caribbean descent. For US-born Sandy Alexandre, whose forced exile to Haiti by her parents for delinquency, these matters are reversed. Other searches for a sense of self are more complicated. Hélène Laforest, whose white skin meant a life of privilege in Haiti, is forced to go on an abrupt exile after her father is arrested...

pdf

Share