Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat 9780367263744, 9780429293023

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Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat

Providing an intellectual interpretation to the work of Edwidge Danticat, this new edited collection provides a pedagogical approach to teach and interpret her body of work in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat starts out by exploring diasporic categories and postcolonial themes such as gender constructs, cultural nationalism, cultural and communal identity, and moves to investigate Danticat’s human rights activism, the immigrant experience, the relationship between the particular and the universal, and the violence of hegemony and imperialism in relationship with society, family, and community. The editors of the collection have carefully compiled works that show how Danticat’s writings may help in building more compassionate and relational human communities that are grounded on the imperative of human dignity, respect, inclusion, and peace. Celucien L. Joseph is an Associate Professor of English at Indian River State College Suchismita Banerjee is an English Professor at Indian River State College Marvin E. Hobson is an Associate Professor of English at Indian River State College Danny M. Hoey Jr. is an Associate Professor of English at Indian River State College

Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature

27 Theorizing Ethnicity and Nationality in the Chick Lit Genre Edited by Erin Hurt 28 Extreme States The Evolution of American Transgressive Fiction 1960–2000 Coco D’Hont 29 Transmodern Perspectives on Contemporary Literatures in English Edited by Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen and José María Yebra-Pertusa 30 Origin and Ellipsis in the Writing of Hilary Mantel An Elliptical Dialogue with the Thinking of Jacques Derrida Eileen Pollard 31 Haruki Murakami Storytelling and Productive Distance Chikako Nihei 32 David Foster Wallace and the Body Peter Sloane 33 Urban Captivity Narratives Women’s Writing After 9/11 Heather Hillsburg 34 The Humanist (Re)Turn Reclaiming the Self in Literature Michael Bryson 35 Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat Edited by Celucien L. Joseph, Suchismita Banerjee, Marvin E. Hobson, and Danny M. Hoey Jr. For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat

Edited by Celucien L. Joseph, Suchismita Banerjee, Marvin E. Hobson, and Danny M. Hoey Jr.

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Celucien L. Joseph, Suchismita Banerjee, Marvin E. Hobson, and Danny M. Hoey Jr. to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-26374-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29302-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To our beloved students at Indian River State College: You are our inspiration!

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Edwidge Danticat in a Global Classroom and Transnational Context: Rethinking Pedagogy, Transcultural Community, and Engaged Learning

xi xiii

1

C E L U C I E N L . J O S E P H , S U C H I S M I TA B A N E RJ E E , M A RV I N E .   H O B S O N , A N D DA N N Y M . H O E Y J R .

PART I

Critical Literary, Historical Narrative, and Transformative Pedagogy

11

1 From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj in The Dew Breaker

13

J O N AT H A N G L OV E R

2 “We are the Haitian Think Tank”: Cultivating Perspectives in Haitian Youth: Using Danticat’s Krik? Krak!

30

W I D E L I N E S E R A P H I N , C H A R L E N E D E S I R , A N D PA M E L A D. H A L L

3 Teaching Genre as Method in The Dew Breaker

56

N AT H A N A . J U N G

4 StoryCorps: Incorporating Local Oral History Collections in the Classroom K E N D R A AU B E R RY A N D A N G I E N E E LY- S A R D O N

72

viii Contents PART II

Gender Alliance, Pedagogy, and Engaged Learning

91

5 (Re) Writing the Black Female Body or Cleansing Her Soul: Narratives of Generational Traumas and Healing in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory

93

TA M M I E J E N K I N S

6 Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak! Recovering History through the Silent Canvas

106

LISA MU IR

PART III

The Global Classroom, Transnational Community, and Cross-Cultural Communication

125

7 Out of the Classroom and Into the Community

127

D E B O R A H VA N D U I N E N A N D RO B K E N AG Y

8 Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones: Experiences from a Class in Ghana

139

M O U S S A T R AO R E

9 Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! Through Global Learning Classrooms

167

A N I TA B A K S H A N D S C H U Y L E R E S P R I T

10 A Comprehensive Resource Guide to Reading and Teaching Brother, I’m Dying: Background, History, and Context: Part A

180

CELUCI EN L . JOSEPH

11 A Comprehensive Resource Guide to Reading and Teaching Brother, I’m Dying: Criticisms, Thematic Analysis, & An Eight-Week Teaching Model: Part B CELUCI EN L . JOSEPH

217

Contents  ix PART IV

Citizen-Artist and Teaching as Activism

263

12 Edwidge Danticat’s “Citizen-Artist Curriculum with Columbia College Freshmen”

265

S TA N W E S T

13 The Exigency of the Floating Homeland and Engaging Postnationalisms in the Classroom: Approaches to Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work

280

MAIA L. BUTLER

14 Creating Cultural Sensitivity in the Writing Classroom with Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously

307

C A M I L A A LVA R E Z

15 When the Periphery Comes to the Center: From Writing Across the Curriculum to Public Sphere Pedagogy

327

M A RV I N E . H O B S O N

List of Contributors Index

353 359

Illustrations

Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Haitian Exodus and the Duvalier Regime François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) Group Writing about “Night Women” Common Words that Describe Sex Workers

44 45 48 50

Tables 7.1 Brother I’m Dying Curricular Connections 129 7.2 Brother I’m Dying Resources 131 10.1 The Bilingual Aspect of BID 211 10.2 The Bilingual Aspect of BID 212 10.3 The Bilingual Aspect of BID 213 10.4 Academic Disciplines/Majors 214 10.5 Non-Chronological Events According to BID 215 11.1 The Chronological Order of the Events in BID 219

Acknowledgements

The idea for our edited book, Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat, germinated in 2016 when IRSC’s library won the National Endowment of Arts (NEA) Big Read grant. The NEA Big Read selected Danticat’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying as the college-wide text. The memoir chronicled several events in Danticat’s life: life in Haiti, her separation from her parents, the struggle of her parents in the United States, her growing up with her uncle and aunt in Haiti, the genesis of her writing abilities, her reunion with her family in the States and life afterwards, and finally, the death of her beloved uncle in a detention center in Miami. The memoir has a unique quality of being particular and universal at the same time. Her story speaks to people in all walks of life who can identify with her experience. Faculty members of our college used her memoir in their classes to find themes related to different disciplines. The library, in collaboration with the Institute for Academic Excellence, facilitated several sessions where faculty organized symposiums and talks related to pedagogies of teaching Danticat’s memoir. Our goal was to introduce the text to all students across campus and disciplines. Our efforts reached fruition when Edwidge Danticat visited our campus. She interacted with faculty and administrators to talk about her book and connect it to the larger immigration debate that was ignited by the upcoming general election. She talked about her activism, her continuous involvement with Haitian socio-political issues, her journalistic work particularly her interactions with the staffs of the Miami Detention Centers to gather information on her uncle’s death, and her subversive role as an artist and a spokesperson of the diasporic Haitian community. The strength of her personality and the powerful impact of her creative-activist work inspired us to work on this critical edition of scholarship that is first of its kind. We are hopeful that this book will inspire not only faculty members to come up with innovative pedagogies to teach Danticat but also students to respond and connect to transcultural human conditions with empathy and love. We sincerely thank our fellow colleagues, particularly the librarians, for their critical input and creative ideas that sparked off this project. We are indebted to our contributors for sharing their scholarship and being

xiv Acknowledgements a part of this important work. Also, we take a moment to appreciate our wonderful students who inspire us to do our work every day. It is their story, their struggle, and their incredible life experience that has shaped our own pedagogies and teaching strategies. As faculties of IRSC that is located in the Treasure Coast area of Florida, we could not be more privileged to be able to interact with the large Haitian population in our community to whom we owe our sincere gratitude. We have worked with utmost sincerity and honesty to do justice to this book, and our efforts will be rewarded if students and faculty find this edited volume useful in their classrooms. Finally, we are grateful to our spouses, partners, and children for their patience, understanding, and cooperation to allow us to begin and finish this important project. This book is also dedicated to you. You are our inspiration and number one fans!

Introduction Edwidge Danticat in a Global Classroom and Transnational Context: Rethinking Pedagogy, Transcultural Community, and Engaged Learning Celucien L. Joseph, Suchismita Banerjee, Marvin E. Hobson, and Danny M. Hoey Jr. Edwidge Danticat is a prominent and award-winning Haitian American novelist and short story writer, and Human rights activist. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969 and immigrated to the United States at the age of twelve to join her biological parents in New York. She is a prolific writer and has authored many important works—both fi ­ ction and non-fiction—such as Krik? Krak! (1995), Breath, Eyes, ­Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), After the Dance: A Walk Through ­C arnival in Jacmel (2002), The Dew Breaker (2004), Claire of the Sea Light (2013), Brother, I’m Dying (2007), Create Dangerously: The ­Immigrant Artist at Work (2010), Untwine: A Novel (2015), The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story (2017), and Everything Inside: S­ tories (2018). Edwidge has also edited many short stories and anthologies including The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures. She also served as the lead editor of the Haiti Noir anthology series, published by Akashic Books. Edwidge Danticat has won many prestigious literary awards such as the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pen/Faukner Award, and was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” ­Fellowship in 2009. She has published in The New Work Yorker, The New York Times, and other literary venues. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat seeks to provide a pedagogical approach to teach and interpret Edwidge Danticat’s collection of works—both fiction and non-fiction—for undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It also provides an intellectual interpretation of her body of work. The project has a twofold objective. First, it will explore diasporic categories and postcolonial themes such as gender constructs, cultural nationalism, cultural and communal identity, problems

2  Celucien L. Joseph et al. of location and (dis) location, religious otherness, and the interplay between history and memory. Second, the book will investigate Danticat’s human rights activism, the immigrant experience, the relationship ­between the particular and the universal, and the violence of hegemony and imperialism in relationship with society, family, and community. We envision this book to be interdisciplinary and used in undergraduate and graduate courses. This special volume on Danticat evaluates the meaning of her body work in the areas of pedagogy, teaching, and cross-cultural communication in the context of our 21st-century culture. Danticat’s work has forced us to go beyond our comfort zone and to think more critically and responsibility about the intricate connections between the particular and universal, the peripheral and the center. Her work also urges us to consider the living conditions and experiences of those living in the margins of society and whose histories and stories have been excluded from the meganarratives of global history. Danticat’s writings may help us in building more compassionate and relational human communities that are grounded on the imperative of human dignity, respect, inclusion, and peace. Consequently, this volume’s fourfold contribution is as follows: (1) to explore the intersections of critical literary, historical narrative, and transformative pedagogy, (2) to investigate the complex dynamics ­between pedagogy, mentoring, and learning in Danticat’s writings, (3) to study the implications of teaching as resistance and writing as transnational solidarity, and (4) finally, to examine the interplays and benefits of the global classroom, transnational community, and cross-cultural communication. The division of the book includes the following: Part I: Critical Literary, Historical Narrative, and Transformative Pedagogy; Part II: Gender Alliance, Pedagogy, and Engaged Learning; Part III: The Global Classroom, Transnational Community, and Cross-Cultural Communication; and Part IV: Citizen-Artist and Teaching as Activism. Finally, Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat is a collection of fifteen original and critical essays which are written from a cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective—from the pen of fourteen writers and professors representing different races, ­ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, and different geographical locations such as the ­ igeria. United States of America, Haiti, Latin America, India, and N The underlying goal of these promising essays is to foster a “pedagogical ­consciousness” by considering the significance and relevance of ­Danticat’s writings and ideas. This collection is also an attempt to fill the intellectual gaps in pedagogy and composition—as there is no existing work in the Anglophone world on the pedagogical approach to the writings of Danticat. Finally, the book will underscore the importance and implications of Danticat in contemporary conversations on composition, pedagogy, interdisciplinary/across the curriculum dialogue,

Introduction  3 culture, immigration, ethnicity, race, gender, and the value of cultivating empathy and hospitality. This seminal text is intended to be the most comprehensive guide to teaching and reading the writings of Edwidge Danticat.

An Overview of the Book The first section of the book aims to provide a critical commentary on the intersections of Haiti’s political history, pedagogy, and critical ­theory. Jonathan Glover’s article, “From Duvalierism to Dechoukal in The Dew Breaker: The Frame of Evil” focuses on the connections between imperialism and political dictatorship and how those hegemonic forces shape civic life that is struggling to find meaning in a constant volatile world. Danticat’s empathy for tonton macoutes is not a romanticized gesture to humanize evil, but as a reminder to understand human actions as responses to exterior forces yoked forcibly into their consciousness. Glover’s literary analysis situated within a broad historical framework help the framing of the third chapter where Nathan A. Yung expands the notion of genre when analyzing The Dew Breaker. Reading the work as a “short story cycle”—an interesting hybrid between a novel and a short story, Yung forces us to think critically of Danticat as a transnational artist whose experimentations with genre-conventions become part of her creative politics. The second chapter explores the pedagogic applications of Danticat’s collection of short stories in Krik? Krak! for first-­generation, middle-school, Haitian youths who participate in a bilingual program in a school in South Florida through the Haitian Empowerment Literary Project (HELP). The authors deconstruct the standardized definition of literacy as a simple decoding of language in favor of a more holistic and epistemological approach where literacy becomes a self-actualization process for immigrant children as they try to navigate through dual cultures and languages. The last chapter of this section ­focuses on Indian River State College’s StoryCorp project where ­Danticat’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying serves as a scaffolding tool to understand the power of local oral histories. The second part titled “Gender Alliance, Pedagogy, and Engagement Learning” brings together articles that engage with representations of female solidarity amidst political hostility. Chapter 5 explores the semiautobiographical elements in Breath, Eyes, Memory to universalize Black womenhood and sexuality. The author outlines the generational habit of violating female bodies to police sexualities as dictated by the patriarchal Haitian community. Chapter 6 focuses on using silence and ritualistic gestures as modes of female survival during the 1937 massacre of Haitians by the Dominican forces. Through the study of Krik? Krak’s collection of short stories, Lisa Muir is able to draw out the generational female mentorship that becomes a connecting thread in all the stories of the collection.

4  Celucien L. Joseph et al. The third part of this book entitled “The Global Classroom, Transnational Community, and Cross-cultural communication” brings together classroom pedagogy within global contexts. In Chapter 7, Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy read Dandicat’s memoir Brother, I’m Dying with students in three different courses: first year expository writing, upper level creative non-fiction, and writing pedagogy for future teachers. Students were encouraged to meet in public spaces and meet diverse group of population to have a firsthand information on the struggles of immigrant communities in Holland, Michigan complexities of the immigration process, and the complicated history of diplomatic relationship between Haiti and the United States. Moussa Traore’s article talks about teaching Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones in Ghana where students read the texts in relation to their socio-historic contexts and relevance in today’s conflict-ridden society. Using Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and bell hook’s ideas in Teaching to Transgress, Traore designed a class where students are able to draw parallel between literature and reality as they understand it. Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit’s article exposits teaching Danticat through online discussion between students in the United States and the Caribbean that took part in the pilot program organized by LaGuardia community college based on the initiative called Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), developed at the State University of New York (SUNY). The chapter rounds off this section by solidifying the need for cross cultural interaction among students of literature to build global collaboration and solidarity. The two chapters by Celucien Joseph p ­ rovide a comprehensive guide and resource to readers and instructors to interpret Danticat’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying. This chapter provides various teaching methods and reading strategies for students and instructors, as well as an eight-week plan on how to teach the Memoir in American classrooms. ­ ctivism.” The next section is called “Citizen-Artist and Teaching As A It interprets Danticat as the artist and Danticat as the activist by ­connecting her works with issues impacting local and global spaces. Stan West’s chapter highlights the importance of experiential learning for freshmen students. The students of Columbia College read The Dew Breaker, ­explored different themes mentioned in the text, and used the text as a lens to understand the complex diasporic experiences of the Haitian community in the Chicago area. Maia Butler’s students read Danticat’s memoir, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work as a “postnational” text, a concept Danticat teases out in the form of “floating homelands” in relation to the evergrowing diasporic population of Haiti. Camila Alvarez uses the same memoir to teach the power of writing to her first-year composition students. She uses the feminist pedagogies of care and ethnography to create multidisciplinary assignments for her class where students produce self-reflexive work based

Introduction  5 on their life experience and through their engagement with the ­various themes in the memoir. Marvin E.  Hobson utilizes the pedagogies of Writing Across Curriculum and Public Sphere Pedagogy to introduce Brother, I’m Dying to his ENC 1102 students as an entry point to link literature with other meta majors and the Haitian immigrant community in the Treasure Coast area.

The Haitian Diasporic Context of Danticat’s Work One of the significant aspects in almost all of Danticat’s work is the reality of the immigrant experience and the diasporic life, which ­characterizes the relationships and interplays of those who have left their native land to migrate and immigrate to the United States, the host land. As a person born in Haiti and immigrated to New York at the age of twelve, Danticat’s life somewhat symbolizes the immigrant experience in the United States. Nonetheless, the historical trajectories that inform Danticat’s literary corpus, both fiction and non-fiction, is the Haitian experience in Haiti and correspondingly the Haitian diasporic life in the United States. The following paragraph will provide a general overview of the Haitian experience in the United States. It discusses the coming and reception of Haitians in America and reflects on the integration and assimilation of Haitian Americans in the American society. Finally, considerable attention will be given to the various ways Haitian Americans have influenced the American life and created what we might term the “Haitian Way of Life” in America.

Haitian Americans The name Haitian Americans refers to an immigrant, diasporic, and ­ethnic group composed of individuals who have immigrated from the country of Haiti to the United States of America, and whose c­ hildren were born on the American soil. Like African Americans, Haitian ­A mericans are a people of African ancestry and cultural heritage. ­Enslaved Africans who were brought by Europeans slave traders in the Americas founded the land of Saint-Domingue-Haiti in 1804. ­A fter a thirteen-year of strenuous wars—commonly known as the “Haitian Revolution” ­(1791–1804)—against three major Western-European powers: Spain, Britain, and France—Haiti became the first postcolonial black-ruled state and second independent country succeeding the United States in the Western world. Precisely, the phrase Haitian ­A mericans denotes individuals who have acquired U.S. citizenship either by way of naturalization or natural birth. Arguably, the history of the ­Haitian immigration or diaspora in the United States should be studied and understood from different angles—social, economic, and political factors—which had shaped the Haitian experience and forced many

6  Celucien L. Joseph et al. native-born Haitians to escape oppression and poverty in hope to find a better life in the receiving country. The reality of the diasporic experience had played a major role as Haitians had to learn to forge a new transnational ethnic identity and culture, and new cross-cultural relationships and alliances in the land of resettlement. Haitians also had to adopt and regroup themselves ­relatively in large Haitian American ethnic communities across the states in search for survival, hope, opportunity, and political peace, as well as in the pursuit of the American dream. Because of the important place of revolutionary Haiti in world history and its historic contributions to slave abolition, human rights, and freedom, Haitian immigrants came to the United States with a sense of dignity and racial pride of their heritage and history. Chiefly, there are three peak periods of Haitian immigration to the United States. The earliest presence and settlement of Haitian immigrants in various U.S. cities—such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, ­Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, and New Orleans—occurred during the turbulent era of the Haitian Revolution (1791–1803) (Laguerre 1998, 2–3). The brutal period of the American occupation of Haiti (­1915–1934) also drove many Haitians away from their ­native land to establish a diasporic enclave in Harlem, New York City, ­Boston, and to join ­family members in other Northern and Northeastern ­cities in the Union. Nonetheless, the mass exodus of Haitian immigrants to ­A merica occurred during the ruthless and oppressive years of the ­Duvalier ­regimes: François Duvalier (a.k.a. “Papa Doc”) and ­Jean-Claude ­Duvalier (“Baby Doc”), respectively, in 1960–1971 and 1972–1986. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States received a substantial number of professional and highly skilled Haitians who either had been forced into exile or left the country voluntarily because of the Duvalier totalitarianism. Likewise, in the 1970s and 1980s, South Florida had received a significant group from the middle- and lower-middle-class Haitian society. They settled in ­various communities in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, and West Palm Beach. Today, the Haitian ethnic communities constitute a dynamic and visible presence in four major U.S. cities: New York, ­M iami, Boston, and Chicago, contributing to the America ­cultural mosaic. The plight of Haitian immigrants is widely known in the United States. It is estimated that “between 30,000 and 60,000 people were killed by state terrorism” during Papa Doc’s fourteen-year reign (Zephir 2004, 68); similarly, political corruption, state violence, and extreme poverty both in urban Haiti and in the rural areas intensified under the Baby Doc despotic government or power. As a result, undocumented immigrants who became “The Haitian Boat People,” as they were called by the U.S. media, in America in the second half of the 20th century—especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s—left their homeland for socio-economic

Introduction  7 and political reasons. During the Carter and Reagan administrations, the Haitian boat people were considered “economic refugees” and therefore were placed in various U.S. detention camps or prisons in various states to experience hardships, discrimination, isolation, and ultimately deportation. By contrast, Cuban immigrants who left their country for similar reasons were treated differently as “political refugees.” The Immigration and Naturalization Service (now known as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS]) granted political asylum relatively to all of them; Cuban immigrants also received financial assistance from the State of Florida and were given free cultural coaching and educational training on how to adopt and assimilate in the host land. Grass-root movements, human rights and humanitarian groups, and socio-political activists—such as the Congregational Black Caucus, the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, the Executive Council of the The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO), and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs—had responded swiftly and criticized the U.S. mistreatment of and racism toward Haitians and the violation of their human rights. Haitian boat people were never granted refugees status by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). It is now known as “the ICE,” The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Dash 2001, 46). In addition, in March 1983, the Centers for Disease Con trol (CDC) accused Haitians along with homosexuals, intravenous drug abusers, and hemophiliacs as AIDS high-risk groups and for introducing and spreading the newly discovered disease of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; and Haitians were also labeled as disease-ridden Voodoo practitioners and illiterate immigrants (Laguerre 1998, 13–14). Haitian community leaders and activists in New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, and Washington and other communities in the American society (both Black and White) were outraged and urged the Federal Discrimination Agency to “fight AIDS, not nationality” (Zephir 2004, 81). Like any other ethnic groups, Haitians are determined to stay in the United States and will not return to their home country; the Haitian American diaspora believes in the American promise and ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all.

The Haitian Way of Life in America Haitian Americans are a resilient people and attest to their ability to survive into mainstream America; as one writer has put it, “they have the ability to live through the best of times and the worst of times” (Zephir 2004, 141). It is estimated that the population of the Haitian American diaspora is one million residents; it is commonly viewed as Haiti’s “tenth department,” as country itself is divided into nine governmental or organizational departments. Michel S. Laguerre (1998, 4) argues that the

8  Celucien L. Joseph et al. immigrant life of Haitian Americans is marked both by continuity rather than disruption, and rerootedness rather than uprootedness. Haitian American ethnic communities are “a heterogeneous group, reflecting the various strata of Haitian society” (Zephir 2004, 90). For example, poor Haitian Americans settle in areas of New York that are distinct from districts settled by the upper classes. Language is also important in establishing class distinction, color discrimination, and social segregation or alienation among Haitian American compatriots. Because of the social stigma attached to the Creole language, ­upper-class and light-skinned Haitian Americans insist on using the French language as a vehicle of achieving social mobility in the United States and isolate themselves from the predominantly lower-class Haitians (Dash 2001, 45). The Haitian American diaspora actively engages itself in transnational ethnic practices and border-crossing cultural performances. For example, Little Haiti in Miami, an extension of the homeland, “ ­ represents the rerootedness of a large spectrum of the population of Haiti and constitutes one visible point of insertion of the diaspora in American society”— where different forms and manifestations of transnational practices and cultural traditions are more noticeable (Laguerre 1998, 3–4). Religion and the Creole language are central to the Haitian A ­ merican ethnic identity and cultural practice in America. Haitian Creole serves distinctively as a cultural marker, as Haitian Americans are the largest Creole-spoken immigrant group. As it is customary in the homeland, Haitian ­A merican religious services in both Protestant and Catholic Churches are conducted almost exclusively in Creole and French. Haitian Vodou temples can be found in various diasporic locations in Miami, Boston, ­Louisiana, and New York. In her anthropological fieldwork, Haitian scholar Flore Zephir (2001, 100) observes that adherents to the Vodou faith attend services regularly; Vodou priests (ougans) and priestesses (mambos) conduct their routines privately in their homes, and they are known to the community where word of mouth (teledyol) is always a good source of information. Vodou ministers provide healing to the faithful, comfort them in time of distress, and serve as cultural and spiritual advisors to various Haitian American communities. Haitian Americans form a vibrant cultural symbol and have a dynamic presence in the American life. They intermingle with white Americans and other ethnic groups such as African Americans and other Caribbean immigrants. In highly concentrated Haitian populations such as New York, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, Haitian ­A mericans have established their own businesses, clubs, music shops, money transfer companies, restaurants, community and cultural centers, etc. They also created Haitian media outlets—Tele Kreyol, Tele Diaspora, Tele Energie, Obri Blag, Piman Bouk, Radio Lakay, Radyo Pa Nou, ­Radio l’Union, etc.—and political and human rights organizations such as the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, the Haitian-­A mericans United, Inc. (HAU), the Haitian American Community Association of

Introduction  9 Dade (HACAD), the Haitian American Foundation, Inc. (HAFI), and Haitian Women of Miami (FANM). They have their own multilingual ­newspapers—the Haitian Times, the Boston Haitian Reporter, Creole Connection, Haiti Observateur, Haiti en Marche, and Haiti Progres— and scholarly journals and organizations—the Journal of Haitian Studies, Kongrè Santa Barbara DEKLARASYÒN (KOSANBA), Haitian Studies Association, Le Club Haitien de St. Louis, the Association for Haitian American D ­ evelopment (AHAD), and Haitian-American Professionals and Entrepreneurs (SHAPE)—which publish in Creole, French, and English.

Integration and Assimilation, and Impact on American Life The ethos of the Haitian American life is full of complexity and ­paradoxes. Zephir (2001, 130) has grouped second-generation ­Haitian Americans in three broad categories: (1) “those who display a strong form of ­Haitianess; (2) those who display a weaker form of ­­­Haitianess; and (3) those who have absolutely nothing to do with Haiti, the ­­undercovers.” While the first Haitian immigrants—those who had immigrated to the states in their adolescence—to some degrees have managed to isolate themselves from the greater American society, s­ econd-generation ­Haitian Americans—those who were born in the United States and had come here at an early age, before adolescence—are fully integrated and assimilated in the American culture. Second-generation Haitian ­A mericans are more heterogeneous in their thinking, cultural practices, and lifestyle than the first generation; while they possess a native ­command of the ­English language and American culture, they are not fluent in Creole and wellversed in the cultural traditions of their parents’ homeland. They are more comfortable in the American culture than in the t­ raditional Haitian way of life. Those who have called themselves “African Americans” and not Haitian Americans do not exhibit a thick form of Haitianness and do not champion their heritage or history as their parents do. One can find a large segment of the second-generation ­Haitian ­A merican population who has committed itself to the Haitian ­community and ­cultural heritage as well as to the American cultural value-system and life, respectively. Haitian Americans had helped made this c­ ountry a better place for all people. The Haitian American ­impact on the ­A merican society is substantial, and Haitians Americans have ­become “a significant component of the fabric of contemporary A ­ merican ­society” (Zephir 2001, 141). As any other ethnic groups in America, Haitian Americans have also achieved the American Dream. Among the well-known Haitian Americans are the Hip-hop artist and song composer Wyclef Jean, professional tennis player Victoria Duval, former center of the Utah Jazz Olden Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks center Samuel Dalembert, offensive tackle for the New York Jets Vladimir Ducasse, running back for the New Orleans

10  Celucien L. Joseph et al. Saints Pierre Thomas, soccer player for Sunderland Jozy Altidore, novelist Edwidge Danticat, artist and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, actress and model Garcelle Bauvais, politician and the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, Ludmya Bourdeau Love, former journalist and 1991 Miss America Marjorie Judith, the CEO to the label G-Unit Philly and rapper Marvin Bernard (a.k.a. “Tony Yayo”), former Massachusetts State House Representative Marie St. Fleur, municipal court judge in East Orange, New Jersey Sybil Elias, the well-known leading specialist in women’s cancer Rodrigue Mortel, the chairman and chief executive officer of Siméus Foods International, Inc. (SFI) Dumarsais Siméus, etc. Furthermore, many Haitian Americans are currently serving in the American political life including Massachusetts State Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, Florida House of Representative Ronald Brise, New York City councilman Mathieu Eugene, Kwame Raoul, Illinois State Senator Kwame Raoul, etc. In various degrees and different ways, the Haitian American diaspora has made recognizable contributions in the American society. Haitian Americans continue to contribute to the advancement of the American civilization and American democratic experiment—from Haitians fighting for American freedom in the American War of Independence in Savannah, Georgia, former Haitian slaves inspiring the American Civil War against slavery, to Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the “Founder of Chicago.” On the other hand, the Haitian population in America continues to experience on-going challenges in the 21st-century America. Haitian Americans in Miami, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia struggle to find employment, secure suitable housing, and support their children through school. The poverty line in the Haitian community especially in South Florida and New York surpasses any other ethnic group in the United States. The population does not have adequate educational preparation and training to meet the high demands of today’s technological age nor does it have the financial resources to afford adequate medical services and competent mental health that are culturally and linguistically sensitive. In addition, the American anti-immigrant political climate affects Haitian refugees and their families more than any other ethnic group in South Florida; subsequently, Haitian refugees continue to be subject to an indefinite detention policy. These areas are real challenges as we take into account in providing human services to and fulfilling the unmet needs of the Haitian American population in the 21st century.

Bibliography Dash, J. Michael. Culture and Customs of Haiti. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001. Flore, Zephir. The New Americans: The Haitian Americans. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. Laguerre, Michel S. Diasporic Citizenship: Haitian Americans in Transnational America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Part I

Critical Literary, Historical Narrative, and Transformative Pedagogy

1 From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj in The Dew Breaker Jonathan Glover

This chapter examines Haitian American novelist Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker (2005), a text that confronts neo/colonial narratives of Haiti by elucidating the geopolitical inequities that foment Haitian political strife, primarily through Danticat’s depiction of the tonton macoute not as a demonic embodiment but as a human figure corrupted by harrowing social conditions. Nine short-stories comprise The Dew Breaker, each story interweaving with the others to create a novel from originally autonomous, alinear fragments. The characters of each story, from the diasporic characters living in Brooklyn to those living in r­ ural Haiti, are connected to one another through Mr. Bienaime, the dew breaker of the book’s title. The consequences of the dew breaker’s actions reverberate throughout the United States and Haiti and span the administrations of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier (1957–1986) as well as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, their democratically elected successor (1991, 1994–1996, 2001–2004), and the first administration of René Préval (1996–2001), revealing the transnational and cyclical dynamics that perpetuate Haitian political violence. This transnational and broadly periodized narrative thereby resists the commemorative process of fixating on a particular ­moment of crisis or a particular political figurehead, often for partisan, ­politically instrumentalist ends. Through these narrative strategies The Dew Breaker rehumanizes the Tonton Macoute and demonstrates that Haiti is neither isolated from Western hemispheric politics nor anterior to North American modernity.

The Frame of Evil In 1957, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a doctor and anthropologist from the Haitian countryside, ascended to power through a rigged ­presidential election. Running on a platform of noiriste, a négritude-­ influenced counter-ideology to mulatto elitism, Papa Doc held significant sway with the rural black peasantry, the urban black middle class, and the largely black Haitian military. Despite this widespread popularity, however, Papa Doc saw fit to ensure his election through intimidation

14  Jonathan Glover and electoral manipulation (Lundahl 266), strongman tactics that foreshadowed the coming totalitarianism of his self-decreed presidency for life. A key feature of Duvalier’s reign was his creation in 1962 of a ­personal secret police force, the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale, commonly known as the tonton macoutes, “a 10,000 man terror corps that was used to intimidate real or imagined adversaries  .  .  .” (257). Across Europe and North America, British author Graham Greene popularized the image of the tonton macoutes, with their denim uniforms and ever-present dark sunglasses, in his novel and subsequent Hollywood screenplay The Comedians (1966/1967). In the dedication note to the novel, Greene asserts the unmitigated realism of his work, describing Duvalier and the tonton macoutes through the symbolics of darkness and evil: “Poor Haiti itself and the character of Doctor Duvalier’s rule are not invented, the latter not even blackened for dramatic effect. Impossible to deepen that night. The Tontons ­Macoute are full of men more evil than Concasseur,” Greene’s fictionalized macoute captain (2). The Comedians depicts Haiti’s descent from an impoverished but relatively stable tourist destination to a totalitarian state through the eyes of Mr. Brown, a British expatriate who owns and operates a hotel in Port-au-Prince. Based largely but by no means completely on Greene’s two visits to Haiti—once before Papa Doc’s election, once after—The Comedians illustrates an oppressive and brutal period of Haitian history requiring, as Greene argues, no sensationalism—­“Impossible to deepen that night.” In J. Michael Dash’s estimation, however, The Comedians renders Haitian politics a spectacle of “black lunacy” by favoring “betrayal, injustice and human failure” over ­“nobility and goodness” (Haiti 111, 106). While much of the violence and oppression depicted in The Comedians was a common feature of the Duvalierist state; what is at stake in such a depiction of Haitian politics, a depiction that emphasizes darkness and attributes the brutality of Duvalier’s tonton macoutes to the transcendental signifier of evil, a concept associated with an intrinsic spiritual essence, the soul? This question lies at the center of my reading of Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, a novel that also depicts the violence and depravity of Duvalierism but in a markedly different way—through a humanizing rather than a demonizing portrayal of a tonton macoute. The Dew Breaker dramatizes the social and political links that connect Haiti and the United States through the relation of numerous Haitian and Haitian American characters to the central figure of The Dew Breaker, a Tonton Macoute who once tortured political prisoners for Papa Doc but now, thirty-seven years later, tries to live a peaceful and anonymous life of exile in Brooklyn, New York. Through the force of allusion, Danticat makes the connection between The Dew Breaker and The Comedians all the stronger. In her concluding ­chapter, “The Dew Breaker: Circa 1967,” Danticat imagines “Human Rights

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  15 people . . . gathered in hotel bars at the end of long days of secretly counting corpses and typing single-spaced reports . . .” These human rights workers quote from the dedication note to The Comedians as they write, illustrating the discursive power of Greene’s novel: “‘Impossible to deepen that night.’ These people don’t have far to go to find their devils. Their devils aren’t imagined; they’re real” (186). This allusion demonstrates Danticat’s desire to confront the frame of evil that serves as an explanatory device for Haitian political violence in a wide array of media, including novels and films like The Comedians and even humanitarian reporting. Invoking Greene, these human rights workers depict men like The Dew Breaker as devils, intrinsically evil beings who, in accordance with their essential malevolence, inevitably perpetrate evil deeds. This Manichean moral schema (good versus evil) evacuates structural concerns from consideration of Haitian politics and dehumanizes the victims and victimizers enmeshed in such systemic political violence. Departing from the explicatory frame of evil, the multi-voiced and chronologically fragmented narrative of The Dew Breaker elucidates the geopolitical inequities that foment Haitian political strife and depicts the tonton macoute not as a demonic embodiment but as a human figure corrupted by harrowing social conditions. Nine short stories comprise The Dew Breaker, each story interweaving with the others to create a novel from originally autonomous parts.1 The characters of each story, from the diasporic characters living in Brooklyn to those living in rural Haiti, are connected to one another through Mr. Bienaime, The Dew Breaker of the book’s title. The consequences of The Dew Breaker’s ­actions reverberate throughout the United States and Haiti and span the administrations of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier (1957–1986) as well as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, their democratically elected successor (1991, 1994–1996, 2001–2004), and the first administration of René Préval (1996–2001), revealing the transnational and cyclical ­dynamics that perpetuate Haitian political violence. This transnational and broadly periodized narrative thereby resists the commemorative process of fixating on a particular moment of crisis or a particular political ­figurehead, often for partisan, politically instrumentalist ends. Through these narrative strategies The Dew Breaker rehumanizes the tonton macoute and demonstrates that Haiti is neither isolated from Western hemispheric politics nor anterior to North American modernity.

“What did they do to you?”: The Making/ Unmaking of a Macoute The establishing story of The Dew Breaker, The Book of the Dead, presents Bienaime thirty-seven years removed from his life as a macoute, a temporal and spatial distancing from the scene of his crimes that fosters empathy for the now elderly family man and Brooklyn barber

16  Jonathan Glover whose name itself—Bienaime means “well loved”—calls attention to his ­progression. Narrated by Ka, Bienaime’s daughter and an aspiring ­sculptor, “The Book of the Dead” begins in a Lakeland, Florida h ­ otel office, where Ka has gone to report her father missing from their hotel room. As Ka explains to the hotel manager and a police officer, she and her father have been travelling from Brooklyn to deliver one of Ka’s sculptures to a buyer in Tampa. The sculpture, a wood-carving of ­Bienaime depicted as a prisoner in a Haitian jail, has also gone missing from the hotel. As the hotelier and police officer question Ka about her father, she leads them to believe that she was born in Haiti, despite being an American citizen by birth. In a retrospective narration, Ka explains why she has lied about her birthplace: “I was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and have never been to my parents’ birthplace. Still, I answer ‘Haiti’ because it is one more thing I’ve always longed to have in common with my parents” (3–4). A first-generation Haitian American, Ka registers a feeling of ­dislocation, of severed origins. She wishes to have Haiti in common with her parents, but her birth and upbringing in America make Haiti a lost, irretrievable homeland. This generational gap between ­Haitian-born ­parents and their U.S.-born daughter also manifests in Ka’s greater ­facility with English, leading to conversations where Bienaime chooses to speak certain phrases in Creole while Ka answers “defiantly in ­English” (17). This feeling of dislocation leads Ka to create a mythic mental image of her parents’ Haitian past from the stories she has heard of their lives: this idealized family history grants Ka access to the national-cultural origins from which she feels estranged. Ka creates a concrete embodiment of this idealized past in the form of her wood-carved sculpture of her father. Throughout Ka’s life, Bienaime had explained the “ropelike scar that runs from . . . [his] right cheek down to the corner of his mouth,” as a wound inflicted upon him by a Haitian prison guard during his year of incarceration (5). In accordance with these stories, Bienaime’s revised past, Ka’s sculpture depicts her father as a beaten yet still noble and pensive prisoner: my first completed sculpture of him was the reason for our trip: a three-foot mahogany figure of my father, naked, kneeling on a halffoot-square base, his back arched like the curve of a crescent moon, his downcast eyes fixed on his very long fingers and the large palms of his hands. . . . It was the way I had imagined him in prison. (6) The sculpture connects Ka to an imagined family past, one based on idealization of her father’s victimization (via state-sanctioned torture) and survival (in diasporic exile). But, as will be revealed to her when Bienaime returns to the hotel, this family narrative is an inversion of her father’s actual relationship with the Duvalierist torture state.

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  17 Bienaime has thrown the sculpture away in shame because it embodies the fallacy of his revised life story—Bienaime was not the victim but the victimizer, a state-appointed torturer, during his time in the Haitian prison. As he explains to his bewildered daughter, One day for the hunter, one day for the prey. Ka, your father was the hunter, he was not the prey. . . . Ka, I was never in prison. . . . I was working in the prison. . . . It was one of the prisoners inside the prison who cut my face in this way. . . . This man who cut my face . . . I shot and killed him, like I killed many people. (21–22) Ka experiences Bienaime’s confession as “a monologue” told “in one breath” and wishes she “too had had some rehearsal time, a chance to have learned what to say in response” (22). The rehearsed character of Bienaime’s confession, like his recurrent nightmares (23), demonstrates the gravity of his crimes, their manifestation as a burdensome family secret he has long wished to share with his daughter. Recalling her ­Egyptophile father’s performance of “The Negative Confession” from The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Ka realizes that Bienaime had, in fact, been giving a circumscribed confession to her for many years, if only she had “removed the negatives”: “‘I am not a violent man’ he had read. ‘I have made no one weep. I have never been angry without cause. I have never uttered any lies. I have never slain any men or women. I have done no evil’” (23). Ka, however, is wary of her father’s wish for understanding: “It was my first inkling that maybe my father was wrong in his own representation of his former life, that maybe his past offered more choices than being either hunter or prey” (24). Susana Vega González reads Ka’s statement as an invocation of the vodou principle of Marasa, represented by the twins of the lwa family: “Once she knows the true situation of her father in the Haitian prison, Ka, the daughter, opts for a dialectic position, as if ­applying the Marasa principle of doubleness from voudou lore, seeing her father as both victim and victimizer” (González 185). While a provocative reading, I suggest that Ka actually critiques ­Bienaime’s bifurcation of the world into hunters and their prey as a f­ allacy, a r­ eiteration of a kill or be killed binary. Bienaime, in other words, speaks as though his conscription into the macoutes negated the fate of certain death—he was a ­ rovides a perspective of man with no choice but to become a killer. Ka p shock and abhorrence but one that is not devoid of sympathy, as she tries to reconcile the father she had idealized as a virtuous victim with the father who has just been revealed to her as a brutal torturer. Rather than dialectically synthesizing father-as-victim with f­ ather-as-victimizer, however, Ka sees her father’s retreat to the narrative of “being either hunter or prey” as an inauthentic reduction of the other paths he could have chosen.

18  Jonathan Glover Ka’s image of her father is hence shattered, as exemplified by her exchanges with Gabrielle Fonteneau, the Haitian American actress who purchased Ka’s sculpture, and her mother Anne. After explaining to Fonteneau that Bienaime has thrown the sculpture away, Ka considers making the actress a new sculpture but admits to herself, “I don’t know that I will be able to work on anything for some time. I have lost my subject, the prisoner father I loved as well as pitied” (31). This loss of her subject signifies a loss of her imagined link to Haiti as a place of origin. For González, in keeping with the Marasa principle, Ka sees her father as a victim of the Duvalierist state as well as a victimizer: Far from justifying her father’s violent actions, Ka sees him as one more victim of a dictatorship which engendered violence, persecution and oppression but also a great deal of fear on the part of those who had to follow orders to kill and torture. There is no justification, the daughter knows, but maybe there is a door open to redemption. (185) The Dew Breaker does indeed demonstrate the systemic brutality that creates a tonton macoute and asks us to ponder the possibility of ­redemption, but it does not do so through the character of Ka but rather through Anne, Bienaime’s wife. When Ka confronts her mother about Bienaime’s confession, asking, “Manman, how do you love him?” Anne replies, “You and me, we save him. When I meet him, it made him stop hurt the people. This is how I see it. He a seed thrown in rock. You, me, we make him take root” (25). However, Ka remains resistant to Anne’s explanation and her redemptive proverb about seed thrown in rock. Instead, she reimagines the sculpture of Bienaime as “a praying mantis, crouching motionless, seeming to pray, while actually waiting to strike” (26). This image of the mantis feigning prayer while preparing to strike at its prey conveys Ka’s new conception of her father as a deceptive predator. She no longer sees her father as a noble victim but as a duplicitous victimizer who hides his predatory intentions behind a mask of kindness. Contrasting Ka’s hesitance to forgive Bienaime, Anne’s proverb ­emphasizes redemption and atonement, and while this may initially seem merely the sentiment of a wife standing by her husband, we learn in the final chapter that Anne is equally haunted by a tortured past, as her own brother-in-law was murdered by Bienaime. A Bel-Air priest preaching Liberation Theology-influenced sermons at his church and on his radio show, Anne’s brother-in-law becomes one of Duvalier’s targets because he “was not sticking to the ‘The more you suffer on earth, the more glorious your heavenly reward’ script” (184–185). This concluding story depicts the events leading up to the murder of the priest but also follows Bienaime’s memory as he flashes back to the childhood events that led him to join the tonton macoutes. While

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  19 waiting outside the preacher’s church, The Dew Breaker sends a young boy to buy him ­cigarettes. ­Noticing a tattered textbook in the boy’s arm, Bienaime remembers his own impoverished past and gives the boy “three gourdes of his change in honor of a past he couldn’t deny” (191). This exchange leads Bienaime to think back on the first factor that contributed to his descent into macoutism, tellingly, the theft of his parents’ land by some of his ­f uture Duvalierist peers: “His family had lost all their land soon after the ­S overeign One had come to power in 1957, when a few ­local army officials decided they wanted to build summer homes there. ­Consequently, his father had gone mad and his mother had simply disappeared” (191). Effectively orphaned, disenfranchised, impoverished, and hopeless, the young Bienaime becomes a perfect candidate for Volunteers recruitment. At age nineteen, he “joined the Miliciens, the Volunteers for National Security . . . when the Volunteers came to his town bussing people to a presidential rally in the capital. They needed bodies to listen to one of the president’s Flag Day speeches” (191). Duvalier’s staging of public support at his Flag Day speech impacted Bienaime with a sense of grandeur, filling him with awe for the President’s show of extravagance. Along with this awe-inspiring display of political power, poverty-­ induced starvation also influences Bienaime, making him a promising candidate for conscription into the tonton macoutes. Bienaime recalls the hunger he felt on the day of his recruitment after noticing that the boy he gave three gourdes has used the money to buy goat meat, plantains, and a few loose cigarettes. Watching from his car as the boy shares his food with a group of friends, Bienaime is once again transported back to the scene of that fateful Flag Day: And so he watched the boys suck the marrow out of the fried goat bones until the bones squeaked like whistles and clarinets and he thought of how hungry he’d been after the president’s speech, when the crowd was left to find its own way home and when one of the many men in denim who were circling the palace that day had approached him and asked him whether he wanted to join the Miliciens, the Volunteers, what later would be called the macoutes. (195) Joining the macoutes assuages Bienaime’s hunger and also gives him a myriad of privileges. With his Volunteers identification card, he gets free clothes from “the rich merchants’ shops” and “enormous amounts of food” from local restaurants. He takes full advantage of these privileges, especially the free meals “because he enjoyed watching his body grow wider and meatier just as his sense of power did.” His Volunteers status also earns him free boarding and enough status to indulge in many sexual partners of all classes (196). Enjoying unfettered access to sex, fancy clothes, and extravagant meals, The Dew Breaker gorges and satiates his

20  Jonathan Glover many appetites, the internal weight of his many lusts physically mirrored by his corpulence. With the present frame of the narrative moving forward toward The Dew Breaker’s assault of the preacher, these interspersed flashbacks to Bienaime’s childhood serve not to exonerate him but to elucidate his humanity by exposing the systemic exploitation that led him to this moment, the scene of his final crime. Rather than one of Graham Greene’s “expressionless . . . golliwogs” in The Comedians (132), Bienaime is depicted as both a subject constrained by structures of social and political power as well as an agent who still makes decisions within those constraints. For instance, the precariousness of The Dew Breaker’s position within the very system that created him is illustrated by Bienaime’s need to flee into exile after murdering the preacher. After failing to follow orders twice (first by arresting rather than assassinating the preacher, then by maiming and killing rather than torturing and releasing him), Bienaime rightly fears for his life because he has breached the constraints of his position with the Duvalierist state: “When he looked down at the preacher’s corpse, his arms and legs spread out, a puddle of blood growing around his torso, the fat man wanted to vomit. Since he’d disobeyed the palace’s orders twice now, it was possible that he would be arrested, even executed” (229). As Bienaime runs from the Casernes prison, vomiting fits overtake him, suggesting not only fear of retribution but also a moral purgation of past sins. Bienaime expresses the desire to purge himself of his prior life when he meets Anne, who had been running toward the prison just as Bienaime had been running away from it. Fearing the worst for her brother after hearing of his arrest, Anne, dressed only in “a white satin nightgown . . . entirely soaked with sweat that glued it to her bony body,” races through the night and collides with Bienaime. The two collide and fall to the ground, The Dew Breaker’s face covered in blood from the fresh wound inflicted upon him by the preacher. Anne’s sweaty and bedraggled appearance testifies to the depth of her concern for her brother, and her white satin nightgown demonstrates the spontaneity of her reaction to the news of her brother’s arrest. Her sweat-soaked white nightgown, a sort of wedding dress born of despair, also imbues Anne’s collision with Bienaime with the connotations of a marriage ceremony—a marriage predicated on the imperative of survival and founded on the basis of a consensual lie. Their collision marks the genesis of Bienaime’s new life and its foundation in a revised narrative of his past. The inversion of fact that informs Ka’s statue of Bienaime as a victim rather than a victimizer originates in Anne’s initial mistaking of Bienaime as a prisoner escaping from Casernes. After escorting him back her house, Anne nurses his wound.

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  21 As The Dew Breaker convalesces, Anne asks him a powerful question, unaware of what The Dew Breaker’s answer really means: “What did they do to you?” she asked. This was the most forgiving question he’d ever been asked. It ­suddenly opened a door, produced a small path, which he could follow. “I’m free,” he said. “I finally escaped.” . . . One day he would try to make her understand why he’d put it like that. In many ways it was true. He had escaped from his life. He could no longer return to it, no longer wanted to. (237) While Anne believes she is asking the tortured what his brutalizers have done to him, she is actually asking the torturer about his brutalizers. The Dew Breaker takes this, “the most forgiving question he’d ever been asked,” as an opportunity to escape from the structural violence that preyed on his childhood disenfranchisement and lured him with every vice imaginable to a life of killing. He can now rewrite his life in exile, and as Anne and Bienaime help each other build new lives in a foreign land, they develop an unusual bond based on a revised past: He endorsed the public story, the one that the preacher had killed himself. And she accepted that he had only arrested him and turned him over to someone else. Neither believing the other nor t­ hemselves. But never delving too far back in time, beyond the night they met. (241) Anne and Bienaime both consent to centering their wedded life around a lie, ultimately an act of survival based on a shared attempt to transcend the past and begin anew. Through Anne, The Dew Breaker attempts to grapple with Bienaime’s actions and consider the implications of allowing him to start life over, anonymously atoning for his sins in exile. Over time, as Anne’s awareness of Bienaime’s true past as well as her love for him grow, her attitude of forgiveness and sympathy persists even with complete knowledge of his life as a dew breaker. Haunted by nightmares and prone to ritualistically perform the Negative Confession, transcending the past is easier said than done for Bienaime, just as it is for his victims. Even for Anne, the character most willing to grant Bienaime the possibility of atonement, there is no complete settling into the founding lie of their family, creating an internal dissonance she experiences as a “pendulum between regret and forgiveness” (252). ­ resent If “The Book of the Dead” and “The Dew Breaker: Circa 1967” p Anne’s capacity for forgiveness as a potential model for moving forward ­ iracles,” and healing old wounds, another chapter, “The Book of M challenges Anne’s stance by forcing her to confront the possibility of

22  Jonathan Glover encountering another man guilty of politically motivated acts of violence against the Haitian people—Emmanuel “Toto” C ­ onstant. Constant, as co-founder and leader of the anti-Aristide death squad FRAPH (Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti), ­oversaw the rape, torture, and massacre of nearly 5,000 Aristide supporters during the military junta of 1991–1994 (Horvitz and Catherwood 194). Taking place years before “The Book of the Dead,” Constant appears in “The Book of M ­ iracles” as a spectral symbol of injustice, an absence perceived as ­present, when a much younger Ka mistakes an anonymous parishioner for him at a Christmas Eve Mass. The man resembles the wanted flyers that Ka has seen posted around the neighborhood. Below the flyer’s heading, “WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE HAITIAN PEOPLE,” are a picture of Constant and “a shorthand list of the crimes of which he had been accused” (78). Alerted by Ka of Constant’s possible presence, Anne recalls the print, television, and radio news reports through which she had learned of FRAPH’s campaign of terror during Aristide’s first exile: Constant’s thousands of disciples had sought to silence the ­president’s followers by circling entire neighborhoods with gasoline, setting houses on fire, and shooting fleeing residents. Anne had read about their campaigns of facial scalping, where skin was removed from dead victims’ faces to render them unidentifiable. After the president returned from exile, Constant fled to New York on Christmas Eve. He was tried in absentia in a Haitian court and sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he would probably never serve. (79) By situating this false sighting of Constant at a Christmas Eve Mass, Danticat calls attention to the date of Constant’s flight into exile in the United States. Christmas Eve, a day reserved for family celebration and religious observance, and a Catholic church, a location associated with worship and sanctuary, are haunted by Constant and the international breech in justice that his exile in the United States represents. 2 Ka’s false sighting of Constant, a Haitian war criminal whose role as a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) informant shields him from sentencing in Haiti, elucidates the transnational U.S.-Haiti scope of Haitian political violence and forces Anne to compare Constant’s crimes with those of her husband: How different are these two men? If Bienaime deserves forgiveness, does Constant as well? Or is the breech of justice embodied by Constant also embodied by Bienaime? When Anne recalls seeing Constant’s wanted posters around town, she is clearly distressed by the implications that this campaign for justice bring to bear on her secret life of exile with Bienaime, including the risk that “even though her husband’s prison ‘work’ and Constant’s offenses were separated by ­thirty-plus years, she might arrive at her store one morning to find her husband’s likeness on the lamppost rather than Constant’s . . .” (80). While the wanted poster

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  23 provokes in Anne a protective impulse toward her husband, Constant’s prospective presence at Christmas Eve Mass leads Anne to a broader questioning of her life with Bienaime: “What if it were Constant? What would she do? Would she spit in his face or embrace him, acknowledging a kinship of shame and guilt that she’d inherited by marrying her husband?” (81). Here, Anne wonders if it is even possible to extend her model of forgiveness beyond her own husband, demonstrating that what may constitute redemption for one party may constitute a failure of justice for another. If Constant deserves Anne’s spit/spite while Bienaime deserves her forgiveness, where does the ­difference between the militia leader and The Dew Breaker lie, in Anne’s detachment from one and intimacy with the other or in the severity of their crimes? Conversely, if Constant deserves Anne’s compassion, do the differences in Constant’s and Bienaime’s crimes as well as the differences in how each man accepts accountability for those crimes lose all meaning? In this regard, the spectral presence of Emmanuel “Toto” Constant illuminates the limits inherent in Anne’s model of forgiveness. From the outset, Anne’s ability to offer Bienaime redemption seems contingent on Bienaime’s anonymity in Brooklyn, as knowledge of his whereabouts would expand the interest of justice beyond Anne to The Dew Breaker’s many victims. While Anne can offer forgiveness as the sole witness to Bienaime’s penance and unmaking as a macoute, public knowledge of his life in Brooklyn would open Anne’s deliberation up to contestation. ­Beyond the issue of anonymity versus public visibility, however, the cases of Bienaime and Constant diverge in two important ways: first, unlike Bienaime, Constant held a state- and CIA-sponsored leadership position from which he oversaw the mutilation, rape, and murder of ­exponentially more ­victims than Bienaime; second, and perhaps more importantly, Constant has never demonstrated the desire to repent and begin life anew, a ­desire that defines Bienaime’s evolution in The Dew Breaker.3 If, as Greene ­suggests of Haiti, “[o]nly the nightmares are real in this place” (172), there truly would be no room for justice, forgiveness, or ­redemption, only vengeance, inhumanity, and the answering of evil with more evil. The Dew Breaker, however, by rehumanizing the tonton macoute, forces us to consider difficult questions concerning the nature of justice, vengeance, forgiveness, and redemption. It is precisely these questions that offer a means for deferring judgment and suspending retribution, and it is precisely these questions that the frame of evil disallows.

“It was the dread of being wrong, of harming the wrong man”: Justice, Retribution, or Revenge? The remainder of this chapter will focus on how The Dew Breaker demonstrates the importance of such deferred judgment through its d ­ epictions of reprisal killings and the devolution of justice into cyclical violence. In

24  Jonathan Glover “Night Talkers,” for instance, Danticat exposes the fine line that exists between retributive justice and mere vengeance. Dany, the protagonist of “Night Talkers,” is a Haitian émigré who lives in Brooklyn but has returned to the rural Haitian village of Beau Jour to visit his elderly Aunt Estina. Orphaned at the age of six by The Dew Breaker, Dany has since been consumed by the desire for retribution. He has returned to Beau Jour to tell Aunt Estina that he has found his parents’ killer, a barber from whom he rents a basement room in Brooklyn (97). Dany decides to rent the room after realizing that the owner is his ­parents’ killer and begins to fantasize about murdering Bienaime, who had shot his parents and blinded Aunt Estina by setting fire to their house in Port-au-Prince (104–105). Interrupted during the day by visiting neighbors, Dany only manages to convey his message to Aunt Estina through his dreams, as both aunt and nephew are palannits or night talkers, those who speak their “dreams aloud with words” (98). As Dany explains to his “dream aunt,” he had come close to exacting his revenge two nights before his trip to Beau Jour, sneaking into ­Bienaime’s bedroom while Anne was out of town at a church event. As he looks down on the sleeping Bienaime, Dany imagines choking or smothering him, but an unexpected realization stays his hand: Looking down at the barber’s face, which had shrunk so much over the years, he lost the desire to kill. It wasn’t that he was afraid, for he was momentarily feeling bold, fearless. It wasn’t pity either. He was too angry to feel pity. It was something else, something less measurable. It was the dread of being wrong, of harming the wrong man, of making the wrong woman a widow and the wrong child an orphan. It was the realization that he would never know why—why one single person had been given the power to destroy his entire life. (107) Bienaime’s change in appearance registers his humanity (the effects of time, travel, and circumstance on his body) and this change dissipates Dany’s thirst for revenge by visually implying that this barber may not be the same man he was four decades ago—if he even is the right person and not another one of the novel’s recurring instances of mistaken identity. Whether or not Bienaime is the actual killer Dany has been searching for all these years, the fear of killing the wrong man grows to overshadow his quest for revenge. Dany comes to realize that even if he could find assurance that Bienaime is, in fact, The Dew Breaker, murdering him will never assuage his sorrow or provide an explanation for “why one single person had been given the power to destroy his ­entire life.” By seeking retribution, Dany only risks bringing more harm and sorrow into the world, afflicting not only his primary target but the family members with which his target is inextricably linked. He will never know why The Dew Breaker had been able to destroy his life and

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  25 killing him will not change that. Dany thereby realizes that vengeance is not justice and that if he were to kill Bienaime, rather than lessening his own sorrow, he would pass it on to others. It is this realization that stays Dany’s hand, leading him to defer judgment and suspend, indefinitely, his pursuit of retribution. Dany only experiences this provisional form of closure by returning to Beau Jour, a necessary journey indicative of the transitory and transnational causes and effects of Haitian political violence. Due to the diasporic fragmentation that has sent Dany to the United States, reconnecting with Aunt Estina—who offers Dany a connection to his deceased parents—can only be accomplished by travelling back to Haiti, the site of his family origins as well as the violence that destroyed his family and forced him into exile. Speaking to Aunt Estina through his dreams allows Dany to share his internalized anger, fear, and sorrow, and through this process Dany’s emotional wounds are, at least partially, healed. After this ameliorative exchange, for instance, Dany wakes to find Aunt Estina dead (110), and while her passing brings great sorrow, it also brings a modicum of peace for Dany: “Perhaps she [Aunt Estina] had summoned him here so he could at last witness a peaceful death and see how it was meant to be mourned. Perhaps the barber was not his parents’ murderer after all, but just a phantom who’d shown up to escort him back here” (116). In this regard, “Night Talkers” depicts rural Haiti as transitory and transnational through the migratory exile and return of Dany and the many others who return willingly or through deportation to Beau Jour (96). Setting “Night Talkers” in Beau Jour also demonstrates how the systemic violence of Duvalierism links country and city as well as ­postcolony and metropole. For J. Michael Dash, this visit to Beau Jour undercuts the idealized rural space that the Haitian émigré hopes to find: “The village to which Dany returns is called Beau Jour, suggesting the romanticized space of home that the migrant cherishes. However, it is the space of the brutal murder of Dany’s parents. . . .” (“Fictions” 41). While I am apt to agree that “Night Talkers” disrupts a romanticizing of ­ arents rural Haitian space, it cannot be due to the murdering of Dany’s p in Beau Jour, since their assassination actually takes place in Port-­auPrince. As Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw notes, Danticat often draws such a distinction between the city as a site of strife and the country as a site of peace: “[i]n Danticat’s works . . . there is often a clear distinction between a return to the capital and to the countryside. The capital, Portau-Prince, is the site of violence where nightmares are created, whereas the Haitian countryside is edenic . . .” (80). While Beau Jour does figure as a site of healing and Port-au-Prince as a site of trauma, the dichotomy between idyllic, rural space and ­violent, urban space is ultimately blurred, as the violence perpetrated by ­Bienaime follows Dany intra- and internationally. Rather than a rural

26  Jonathan Glover Haiti cut off from the modern world, “Night Talkers” presents Beau Jour as a migratory hub linked to Haiti’s urban centers as well as North America. The type of retributive violence Dany forgoes is most directly ­addressed in the chapter “Monkey Tails.” Extending these issues of j­udgment and retribution to a macro-political scale, “Monkey Tails” depicts the waves of reprisal killings that accompanied the end of the Duvalier dynasty. Subtitled “February 7, 1986/February 7, 2004,” the story is b ­ ookended by the fall of one dictatorship and the impending emergence of ­another. On February 7, 1986, Baby Doc, under the ­pressure of a popular ­uprising, renounced his power and went into exile. On February 5, 2004, the Cannibal Army, an anti-Aristide militia comprised of former soldiers and FRAPH members who had participated in the 1991 coup, captured the city of Gonaives. Within three weeks, the Cannibal Army, along with reinforcements from exiled military cadres invading from the ­Dominican Republic, had successfully executed a second coup against Aristide. A multinational, 45,000-strong occupying force led by the United States quickly filled the governance vacuum created by Aristide’s ouster, ­foregoing the Haitian constitution and creating a m ­ ultiparty ­“Council of the Wise” that would name retired technocrat Gerard Latorture ­Haiti’s interim Prime Minister (Schuller 192). “Monkey Tails” elucidates the cyclical nature of these historical moments through the narration of ­Michel, a soon-to-be father whose father was killed for political reasons. Speaking into a cassette tape recorder, Michel recalls the events of February 1986 for his unborn son, whose due date in February 2004 is fast approaching. Michel’s subjectivity as a fatherless male who is now an expectant father imbues the cyclicality of modern Haitian political strife, from Baby Doc’s exile in 1986 to Aristide’s exile in 1991 and again in 2004, with the symbolics of patriarchal crisis: three months before my birth I had lost my father to something my mother would only vaguely describe as “political,” making me part of a generation of mostly fatherless boys, though some of our fathers were still living, even if somewhere else—in the provinces, in another country, or across the alley not acknowledging us. A great many of our fathers had also died in the dictatorship’s prisons, and others had abandoned us altogether to serve the regime. (141) The political violence Michel describes shatters families, making orphans and sending fathers into exile. This description characterizes such ­political strife as deriving from a kind of patriarchal dysfunction, a ­dysfunction Michel strives to overcome by communing with his son in utero. It should be noted that this emphasis on father-son ­relationships does not reveal a phallocentric tendency in The Dew Breaker. When considered in tandem with the rather affirmative and gynocentric example

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  27 of Aunt Estina’s community leadership in “Night Talkers,” the patriarchal register of “Monkey Tails” serves as merely another means for symbolically articulating the personal impact of Haitian political crisis, particularly in its effect on young males. The patriarchal dysfunction depicted in “Monkey Tails” resonates not only as a symbol of insolvent and corrupt governance but also as an example of just how profoundly the political can affect the personal, with each recurrent regime, coup, and junta creating cyclical violence and scores of fatherless children. There is much more, therefore, to “the darkness and terror” that Greene’s protagonist Mr. Brown sees in “the Tontons Macoute in their dark glasses. . .” (304); there is a dramatic ­human cost, systemically perpetuated by an entrenched cycle of poverty, violence, and reprisal rather than a manifestation of metaphysical evil. As Michel’s remembrance of the chaos and confusion following Baby Doc’s departure demonstrates, even the tyrant-father Duvalier has children orphaned by his exile, and their orphaning rather than their reintegration into Haitian society has grave consequences. In Michel’s words, the departure of Baby Doc “orphaned a large number of loyal militiamen, who had guarded the couple’s command with all types of vicious acts. Now the population was going after those militiamen, those macoutes, with the determination of an army in the middle of its biggest battle to date” (140). This popular mobilization against the now “orphaned” macoutes can be seen as part of the complex Haitian political concept of dechoukaj, Creole for “uprooting.” Dechoukaj describes the process of renewal and regeneration that follows the demise of political tyranny, in this case Duvalierism, and can refer to attempts at reconciliation, public grieving, and political restructuring (Averill 161). The political will manifested in dechoukaj can and has also led to retributive torture and reprisal killings, exemplified most graphically by “necklacing,” the practice of burning a tire that has been placed around a person’s neck. Michel alludes to necklacing with olfactory imagery: “There was the stench of kerosene and burning tires wafting through the air. It was only a matter of time before the rubber smell would be replaced with that of flesh” (149). The insatiable brutality of macoutism and the attendant outrage it has created in the Haitian citizenry should not be trivialized through myopic readings of such retributive violence; just as the actions of The Dew Breaker are rendered systemic in the aforementioned stories, so too are these episodes of popular retribution in “Monkey Tails.” Systemic understanding, however, does not equal exoneration or ­justification, and Danticat critiques “necklacing” and other extreme manifestations of dechoukaj through the reactions of Dany and Michel, who abstain from taking vengeance against former tonton macoutes. In “Monkey Tails,” Romain, an older boyhood friend of Michel’s, ­provides a metaphor of self-vampirism for such retributive violence. When ­Romain remarks, “I tell you that in Europe they eat sugar with

28  Jonathan Glover our blood in it,” Michel replies, “It seems to me we consume a lot of sugar here too. Does that mean we’re drinking our own blood?” Romain responds as if this is a self-evident question: “Imbecile, you’re like that baby pig who deigns to ask its mother how come her nose is so big and ugly” (153). Necklacing and other forms of retributive violence can be seen as such an act of self-vampirism, as reprisals of torture and murder fuel a recurring cycle of violence within the Haitian body politic. The Dew Breaker’s rehumanization of a tonton macoute, as well as its many scenes of attempted forgiveness, deferred judgment, and suspended retribution, demonstrates an alternative, wherein the prospect of cyclical violence might be prevented or, at the very least, diminished.

Notes 1 As indicated on the book’s copyright page, all but two of the stories comprising The Dew Breaker—“The Bridal Seamstress” and “The Funeral Singer”—appeared in periodic publications as short stories, albeit not always in identical form. 2 Despite requests from the Haitian government for his extradition and his in absentia conviction for murder by a Haitian court, Constant remains in the United States to this day (Horvitz and Catherwood 194). To obstruct U.S. deportation efforts against him, Constant publicly described his role as a CIA informant on 60 Minutes in December 1995 and threatened to reveal more in a wrongful imprisonment law suit against Janet Reno and Warren Christopher (Davis 267–268), effectively blackmailing his way to impunity. Constant subsequently enjoyed a life of freedom among New York’s Haitian émigré population (many of whom were exiled as a result of Constant and FRAPH in the 1990s) until as recently as October 2008, when Constant was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison—not for his long record of human rights violations in Haiti but for his participation in a mortgage fraud scam in the United States (Friedrichs 208). 3 As Constant declared in 1997, “I am still the leader of FRAPH,” a remorselessly ambitious attitude also reflected in his presidential aspirations: “I’ve been prepared since young for a mission . . . I’m either going to be president of Haiti or I’m going to be killed” (qtd. in Horvitz and Catherwood 194).

Bibliography Averill, George. A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti. Chicago: UP of Chicago, 1997. Print. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Sources Criticism. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: Norton, 1988. 7–76. Print. Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print. Dash, J. Michael. “Fictions of Displacement: Locating Modern Haitian Narratives.” Small Axe 12.3 (2008): 32–41. Print. ———. Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and the Literary Imagination. 2nd ed. New York: Saint Martin’s, 1997. Print.

From Duvalierism to Dechoukaj  29 Davis, Jeffrey. Justice Across Borders: The Struggle for Human Rights in US Courts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print. Friedrichs, David O. Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2010. Print. González, Susana Vega. “Exiled Subjectivities: The Politics of Fragmentation in The Dew Breaker.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 54 (2007): ­181–193. Print. Greene, Graham. The Comedians. New York: Viking, 1966. Print. Horvitz, Leslie and Christopher Catherwood. Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Print. Lundahl, Mats. Peasants and Poverty: A Study of Haiti. 1979. New York: ­Routledge, 2015. Print. Schuller, Mark. “Haiti’s End of History Meets the Ends of Capitalism.” ­C apitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction. Ed. Nandini Gunewardena and Mark Schuller. Lanham, MD: Altamira, 2008. 191–214. Print. Walcott-Hackshaw, Elizabeth. “Home Is Where the Heart Is: Danticat’s ­Landscapes of Return.” Small Axe 12.3 (2008): 71–82. Print.

2 “We are the Haitian Think Tank” Cultivating Perspectives in Haitian Youth: Using Danticat’s Krik? Krak! Wideline Seraphin, Charlene Desir, and Pamela D. Hall Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways in which ­secondary literacy educators and researchers in a South Florida summer ­literacy program for local middle-school Haitian youth engaged the short ­stories, Children of the Sea and Night Women from Edwidge D ­ anticat’s sophomore publication, Krik? Krak!. The program, known as the ­Haitian ­Empowerment Literacy Project (HELP), was the centerpiece of a seven-year longitudinal project to fully understand and honor the cultural, social, and psychological multiplicities that shape Haitian youth literacies. As the central text for HELP summer institutes, Danticat’s Krik? Krak! was a vital literary tool to reinforce HELP’s core mission to center the rich tapestry of Haiti’s diasporic legacy and provide students with the necessary tools to be able to “read” the world from their social positionalities as Black immigrant youth. HELP’s pedagogical framework blended the conceptual frameworks of community psychology, the ­Haitian Lakou, and socioculturally embedded Black literacies. This ­pedagogical framework guided the literacy instructor’s approach to Krik? Krak! and made it possible to delve into purposeful discussions on Haitian migration narratives, racism/xenophobia, gender roles, and sexism, all of which are richly interwoven into Danticat’s storytelling. The core principles of HELP fundamentally rejected the ­classical ­universalist model of literacy in which “literacy” is defined as ­mastering decoding and encoding skills, “cracking the alphabetic code,” and ­acquiring proficiency in word formation, phonics, grammar, and ­comprehension. HELP’s rejection of the classical literacy model stemmed from the educational experiences of Haitian students, in which ­“successful” integration into American public school systems promoted processes of cultural neglect, marginalizing teaching practices, and inadequate or harmful school policies. Rather, the authors created a ­literacy project specifically for ­Haitian youth which tapped into the long history of African descended peoples

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  31 using literacy as an agentic tool for liberation and self-­determination. The emphasis on literacy in HELP was for students to have the ability to read and write as a sociocultural practice rooted in their cultural histories, and in the context of being Haitian in a 21st-­century American context. Thus, to truly empower young Haitian students through the lens of literacy, the founders and literacy educators of the program operated from a literacy framework in which multiple components of self, community, and culture shaped the conceptualization of literacies. In this chapter, we will first discuss the origins of HELP in the professional experiences of one of the authors of this paper, Charlene Desir, during her early days as an emerging Haitian researcher. Next, we describe how HELP incorporated the concepts of community psychology, the Haitian Lakou, and socioculturally embedded Black literacies, to build a learning community conducive to scholarship, meaning-making, and critical reflection. This is followed by specific examples of critical literacy pedagogies used to engage students in difficult topics, underlined in “Children of the Sea” and “Night Women.” Lastly, the chapter justifies the significance of entrenching Haitian and Haitian American youth in the works of Danticat. Our main assertion is that Danticat’s work provides crucial counter-narratives that culturally affirm and ­empower young Haitian students by providing literature that activates critical self-reflections and is grounded in the sociocultural realities of white supremacist patriarchy our students must eventually confront as Black immigrant youth in the United States.

The Seed and Roots of the HELP Program Joseph’s Thanksgiving Essay In 2000, as part of her dissertation study, Dr. Charlene Desir spent time observing a Haitian bilingual classroom where she also worked as the school psychologist. In one assignment, students were asked to produce a writing assignment on the topic of Thanksgiving, which they were to recite before the class the following day. Desir worked with Joseph, a 7th-grade student in his final year of the bilingual program, on the verge of being mainstreamed. Joseph wrote, In Haiti, the festival of Gede is like Thanksgiving in America, when it’s Thanksgiving in Haiti, people go to the cemetery to celebrate a man and a woman who are guardians of the dead. They call the man Baron and the woman Grand Brigit [Baron and Gran Brigit are the parents of Gede in the Vodou tradition]. In all the Thanksgivings that passed, I went only one time to the cemetery, that time I went with my stepbrother in Haiti. During Gede in Haiti, most of the people cook a food named chaka [a food that slaves ate made of corn

32  Wideline Seraphin et al. and beans, also eaten as a ritual for the dead, ancestors]. Every year they do the same thing. I only ate chaka one time; my mother never eat chaka. So when it’s Gede my mother cooks rice and beans and chicken but other people eat chaka. This is Thanksgiving. As Desir read Joseph’s essay, she smiled and explained to him that some people refer to Gede as a ceremony of the dead that honors ancestors. With a sense of disappointment, he told her “I did it wrong.” She tried to assure him that the essay was very good. However, the class teacher’s assistant, another Haitian immigrant, took issue with this view. The assistant approached the student afterwards and told him that the essay was actually not good, and that he, in fact, could not tell that story in his presentation. She seemed to assume that Desir would understand her reasoning. Although she did not challenge her at the time, out of respect, Desir did not understand. She knew Joseph was taking in everything that was happening. Before she could stop him, the child erased the essay and wrote the following: Thanksgiving is a time to say thank you for your life. I want to say thank you to my father for bringing me to the United States, I have the opportunity to go to school. In school, I learn English and I learn fractions better. For these reasons, I am thankful this Thanksgiving. Joseph grounded his essay in Haitian religious epistemology. Epistemology is how one understand the world around them and Haitian ­epistemology included historical, religious, and spiritual ways of knowing.1 For Joseph, his Haitian epistemology was grounded in his religious and spiritual belief system of Vodou. He had integrated a practice from his own cultural frame of reference, Haitian Vodou, into the ceremonial context of American Thanksgiving. His English writing was complex, layered, and told his story derived from his personal literary heritage. But Vodou appeared to be a taboo epistemological viewpoint in that classroom context; the offering was immediately rejected by an educational environment that did not value this type of literacy event, and Desir witnessed this student digress in his writing. Like many students who had flourished in bilingual classes, Joseph began to fail when transitioned in the traditional mainstream classroom. False Deficiencies This particular school was considered one of the best in the nation and received national recognitions and awards. Data from the study Desir was conducting at the time indicated that while literacy was a central tool of academic integration for bilingual students, the goals of literacy and language instruction for bilingual students sharply diverged from

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  33 goals set for students in the mainstream classroom. In this particular school district, an accelerated model of English language instruction prevailed, wherein considerations of students’ cultural identity—their own social identities and norms, psychological backgrounds, and ­culturally embedded knowledge—were neither recognized nor made part of literacy instruction. Evidently, these factors were not held to be significant for the successful development of literacies and to school integration. In short, American students gained mastery of English in a social ­context of achievement. Bilingual students, on the other hand, worked to master English through a process of immersion that granted them access to the American social context—its values, norms, and s­ ystems of ­meaning-making—at the cost of displacing and relinquishing their ­native l­anguage and culture. Before she began her doctoral studies, Desir was called in as part of her job as a school psychologist in this same district to test newly ­mainstreamed “failing” Haitian students like Joseph in the school where she worked and collected data for her dissertation. As she tested them, one after the other scored in the deficient range. However, as she spoke to them in English and in Creole, these students shared stories of their lives before migration. They spoke of the difficulty of being separated from home and from caretakers, shared memories of trauma (many had witnessed brutal political violence), and expressed dismay at having to adjust abruptly to the false reality which greeted them in the United States. Ironically, these children expressed feeling less connected in the United States, despite its relative safety, than they did in the instability of their home country. Desir found that the inadequacies of the school environment were leading educators to falsely attribute cognitive deficiencies to these c­ hildren when there was none. The children were not intellectually ­challenged; they had simply not been provided with either the necessary tools or environment in which to transition into life in a new country. School officials did not adequately take up Desir’s concerns. Toward the end of the research study, the Ron Unz’s initiative eliminated the bilingual education and instituted dual-immersion program—all students enrolled in schools with bilingual programs would learn English and the other language of instruction. The Haitian program was the only one that did not result in an immersion program because Haitian Creole was deemed not a world language, despite the program being the second largest in the school after Spanish. It became crucial to address the literacy needs of Haitian youth. As Desir began to untangle the complexities of this phenomenon, it became more and more apparent that these children were not failing but that they were in fact, being failed. The dominant instructional framework of assimilation was proving detrimental to the academic transition of these young people. Another approach was needed—one that emphasized

34  Wideline Seraphin et al. acculturation rather than assimilation. Acculturation is defined as the process of cultural learning and change that occurs when two ­different groups, usually a cultural majority and an immigrant group, are ­exposed to each other, thereby changing both groups. Research suggests that an integration acculturation style may benefit immigrants and reduce acculturative stress. Studies also linked greater acculturation into the U.S. society with poorer mental health. However, Sam & Berry (2010) believe that acculturation to the United States does not have to be accompanied by the loss of ethnic cultural identities and practices. 2 They state that individuals can adapt to both new cultural norms and behaviors while also maintaining some of their ethnic cultural norms, practices, and behaviors. Other researchers state that biculturalism best promotes sociocultural adaptation and health among Latinos. Program Description Two of the authors, Charlene Desir and Pamela D. Hall, founded the HELP to mentor Haitian youth along the path to college. The first ­cohort of the culturally based program began in the summer after the 2010 earthquake as the needs of Haitian American children and those migrating after the earthquake overwhelmed local schools. The HELP Summer Institute sought to provide through relevant cultural, academic, and social skill development, a more consistent and grounded support for Haitian youth.3 HELP was developed with careful consideration given to the unique needs of Haitian and Haitian American adolescents aged eleven to ­thirteen years (grades 6 to 8) residing in the Miami-Dade County area, predominately in North Miami, Little Haiti, North Miami Beach, and Miami Shores, where there is a large population of Haitians and ­Haitian Americans. The summer institute was a seven-week program rooted in spiritual principles that guided weekly literacy, social skills, and art activities. The HELP curriculum offered a holistic education to nurture ­Haitian youths’ intellectual, emotional, social, physical, creative, and spiritual growth and development. HELP promoted cultural awareness through diverse arts (e.g., poetry/spoken word, visual arts, photography, dance, drama, etc.). Students’ self-esteem and self-efficacy were developed through social skills training, public speaking a­ ctivities, and group problem-solving activities. The p ­ rogram aimed to instill good decision-making, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills in the students. More importantly, the focus on making students aware of their culture, past, present and future, was designed to create leaders who will be a positive influence in their school, home, and community.4

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  35 Since this program was for Haitian adolescents who were born in the United States or migrated from Haiti, the authors decided to use the work of Edwidge Danticat. Danticat’s writings focused on issues ­parallel to the lives of these youth and their families, such as women and their relationships, issues of power and prejudice, injustice, and poverty. We assigned Krik? Krak! to the combined class of 7th- and 8th-grade students, who were the oldest in our program. This class of twenty-two students had been in the program in previous summers and had already read Danticat’s (2002), Behind the Mountains. Later in the chapter, the authors will discuss the pedagogical decisions, teaching and learning of “Children of the Sea” and “Night Women” in the Krik? Krak! text utilized in this classroom.

The Branches and the Leaves of HELP Program (Review of Literature) Shaping and Defining HELP Pedagogy Drs. Charlene Desir and Pamela Hall founded HELP in response to the growing literacy needs of Haitian youth. The program was developed as a seven-week summer literacy program for Haitian middle school students in South Florida, utilizing principles centered on (1) community psychology, (2) the theoretical concept of the Haitian Lakou, and (3) ­socioculturally embedded Black literacies. Community psychology ­focuses on the relationship of the individual to communities and society. The Haitian Lakou concept supports the idea that there are different center-posts of knowledge and literacies that individuals work together to build, maintain, and sustain in the process of knowledge building for the individual, interpersonal, and communal good. Lastly, socioculturally embedded literacies are practices that are recognized and u ­ nderstood in the context of the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical experiences in which they are produced. Together, these three concepts merged to form HELP’s pedagogical framework as we developed curriculum and activities for the students. Community Psychology According to the field of community psychology, prevention and ­intervention programs should be created at the community level to p ­ romote mental health and well-being. It encompasses four ­fundamental ­principles: (a) Ecological Perspective on Behavior Patterns, (b) ­Belief in Diversity, (c) Influence of Context on Individual Action, and (d) E ­ mpowerment of I­ ndividuals.5 These principles seem ever more ­important in the ­ever-changing ethnic composition of today’s America. Educators, human service workers, and the society as a whole will need to embrace such principles to ensure that individuals become productive members of society.

36  Wideline Seraphin et al. The Haitian Empowerment and Literacy Project was heavily i­nformed by community psychology. Aspects of the HELP curriculum contained activities that allowed adolescents to understand and integrate the four fundamental principles of community psychology. The students d ­ eveloped an ecological perspective of their own behavior, ­examining both their internal and external surroundings and the connection ­between those surroundings and the larger social, cultural, and ­academic environment. Ecological Perspective The creators of HELP and the staff of the program developed activities the first two weeks that focused on self, the next two weeks to focus on their relationship with others, and the last three weeks to focus their relationship between themselves and their community. In essence, the youth were taught how to navigate the different relationships/systems, and how these relationships/systems were interrelated. This ecological perspective is consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory.6 The authors theorized that if the youth could see their place in each of these relationships/systems, they could develop the skills to effectively engage with others in the homes, in their communities, and in the world. This process began by the classroom agreements toward accepted behaviors and community building. In their classrooms, there was a sign on the bulletin board that ­explained ways to create love. The three ways to create love read as ­follows: (1) we focus our eyes and not our hands on each other, (2) giving means getting, and (3) each one teach one. There were three numbers that were left blank for the class to determine additional ways to create love. The bulletin board also had the American and Haitian flag, as well as the opening and closing ritual. This was a reminder of how the class was a community. These ­mantras could help create a positive sense of community and the mantras could be used as principles to live by. Additionally, students took part in ­therapeutic life skills groups focused on positive psychology. Using a positive psychology model of intervention, HELP provided the students with the skills to cope with the violence they encountered, improved their c­ ommunication skills with their parents, improved their interpersonal communication skills, and provided them with the skills to avoid substance use, delinquency, and problem behaviors. These skills would allow them to become better individuals, family members, and members of their larger communities. Respect for Diversity Community psychology proclaims that it is important to recognize and respect differences in people as well as their cultural and ancestral ­heritage.7 The facilitators created a context of diversity as a method of respecting cultural ancestry.8 For example, the morning meetings were particularly conducive to allowing students to understand diversity

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  37 through different approaches to prayer and spirituality. Each morning all hundred students came together with the HELP staff in an auditorium style classroom. They read prayers from Marianne Williamson’s book Illuminata: A Return to Prayer. They were also exposed to the eastern philosophical style of meditation, which was quite different from their traditional religious practice, and helped them embrace an understanding of spirituality. The meetings were also the time when they were exposed to different ways people worshiped through presentations from guest speakers in hopes that they could respect others’ ways of knowing. The guest speakers consisted of a chakra healer, a channeler, and an acupuncturist. Since this was a selective exclusive summer program for Haitian students grounded in Haitian epistemology implemented at a university and was grant funded, there were no public school guidelines to prohibit the creators of HELP from exposing the students to other ways of knowing. Further, consent from the parents was obtained to challenge and expand the adolescents’ knowledge of self and respect for others. Influence of Context on Individual Action Community psychology models the work of Kurt Lewin who formulated that behavior is a function of the interaction between person and environment [B = f(P × E)].9 This formulation argues that a person cannot be understood without understanding their personal traits and characteristics as well as the situation(s) in which the person finds his or herself. The program addressed the principle of Influence of Context on Individual Action by having students participate over the weeks in activities that examined self, interpersonal relations, and community relations. The stories in Krik? Krak! allowed these adolescents to understand how their historical context contributes to their present-day experiences. Krik? Krak! is a collection of nine short stories and an epilogue that addresses aspects from Haitian cultural realities such as migration, ­political unrest and school strikes. The stories are set in Port Au Prince or Villa Rose, Haiti and New York. All of the stories describe the a­ ttempts of Haitian to understand their complex familial relationships in their homeland and in the United States. Though the women of Krik? Krak! may have experienced trauma, marginalization, and oppression, they are also characterized as resilient. The short stories reinforce the significance of Haitians as descendants of the first free Black republic, who have a unique set of customs, values, and spiritual practices that call attention to Haiti’s sociopolitical significance to the African Diaspora overall. Empowerment of Individuals Community psychology’s fourth principle, Empowerment of Individuals, is in play when people recognize themselves as having intrinsic knowledge and making an intrinsic contribution to humanity, and can

38  Wideline Seraphin et al. recognize these gifts in others. Noted community psychologist Julian Rappaport states empowerment as a process, whereas it is the mechanism by which people, organizations gain mastery over their lives.10 At the start of the day, the HELP students recited the following affirmation, I invest in myself, because I invest in who I am, I invest in myself, because I must invest in my fellow man, I invest in myself because I am in intricate part of life. Without me, my dreams cannot take flight. Also, at the end of the day they recited another affirmation, I eat from the hands of the past, I eat from the lessons of the day with every day, my dreams can be brought to life and take flight. These daily affirmations were designed to show students they had the power to do and be whatever they desired and was developed by one of the teachers during the first summer of HELP. This power ultimately lies within them. Community psychology offers a foundational perspective for community-based literacies; these four principles parallel the Lakou framework.11 Symbolically, the Lakou is the trunk and each principle are the branches; the people sit around the trunk of the tree and together we bear fruit. In sum, this literacy program used a community psychology approach to empower youth by showing them how to take charge of their lives by examining and then changing their attitudes and behaviors. The authors knew that creating a context that was culturally relevant would contribute to this empowerment. The intent was for the youth to celebrate their diversity, not run from it. The principles of community psychology helped pave the way for integrating the epistemology known as Haitian Lakou, which was also imbedded in the HELP curriculum. The Haitian Lakou The Haitian Lakou is the ceremonial space in Vodou and also serves as a social milieu in modern Haiti, and there are relational spaces that ensure participation and ownership in all communal affairs. Daniels (2017) ­affirmed that Vodou epistemology can be transferred for a broader understanding of the Haitian experience in the United States.12 Further, Michel (1996) argued that Vodou’s presence is in everything and provides a lens for learning and concepts such as Lakou and the Lwas—which are Vodou divinities, should be used as educational teaching tools for Haitian children.13 HELP is the first documented program that overtly used Vodou epistemology as a central framing for a literacy program for Haitian youth. Dr. Charlene Desir researched the elements of Vodou for seven years and decided to ground the HELP program weekly themes

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  39 based on Haitian principles derived from Lwas. Nonetheless, throughout the summer program Haitian Catholic and Protestant ideas were also woven in morning prayers that reflected the various religious belief systems. We also had a speakers’ series that included Catholic, Protestant, and Vodou practitioners to speak with students regarding their spiritual epistemologies. Vodou was not used as a religious ideology nor was it taught. It provided a framing of the weekly themes encapsulated more than Vodou principles but ideas that were reflective in all faiths such as love, healing, regrowth, etc. This ideological decision by Dr. Desir came from ten years of study— which began with her as a school psychologist providing therapy to ­Haitian children and continued with her as a first-year doctoral student at Harvard University. During that time, she came across 500 books/ studies/research on Haitian culture that provided a foundational framing of Haitian culture grounded in Vodou as an ideology of collective belief system with nuanced differences of a unified black consciousness from various African origins before and during independence. As a result, the incorporation of Vodou provided a specifically Haitian spiritual lens for guiding weekly activities and readings. In this context, the term Vodou describes not a religion but an epistemological/­meaningmaking framework that is central to the identities of the origin of ­Haitian people on the island. It was made clear to students that Vodou, the religion, would not be a focus of the program but that, as a cultural construct it would provide the theoretical backing for understanding of Haitian literacies. The Vodou principles that were used as weekly themes to frame the selection of reading materials, lesson plans, activities, and speakers were (1) Gede—the concept of Life and Death as a process of daily rebirth of the self; (2) Marasa—respecting the complementary and conflicting Duality and multiplicity of the self; (3) Ezili—the process of igniting Love as a conscious deliberate act to begin interpersonal exchanges; (4) Simbi—identifying trauma and embracing Healing to break destructive cycles and to engage in reflective and critical interpersonal exchanges; (5) Legba—recognizing an opening for liberation at every crossroads while respectfully entering communal spaces; (6) Jeni—identifying and utilizing one’s innate knowledge to understand the surrounding world; and (7) Azaka—embracing growth, advancement, and personal contributions and legacy. Socioculturally Embedded Literacies Without sociocultural considerations, literacy becomes a fixed notion devoid of cultural context and framed within a Western construct. The classical model of literacy studies/instruction frames literate students as having the decoding building blocks for decoding texts and accessing

40  Wideline Seraphin et al. meanings, often in a vacuum that does not take into account sociopolitical influences that shaped the construction and the interpretation of a text. The ability to derive meaning comprehension is not just a matter of being able to read and write. It is also socioculturally determined, and that, therefore, the classical model framing of successful literacy was not the focus of HELP, who’s goals were to use the tool of literacy to liberate students from already-existing deficit models of schooling. The sociocultural perspective of literacy shifted the emphasis of l­iteracy studies from individualized cognitive processes to the analysis of D(d)iscourses. Gee (1989) theorized that “any socially useful definition of literacy must be couched in terms of the notion of Discourse,” thus literacy must be understood as a “mastery of or fluent control over a secondary Discourse.”14 Capital “D” Discourse refers to “ways of being in the world; they are forms of life that integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” Gee posits that Discourse and literacy are inextricably linked, and since there are many secondary Discourses literacy is always plural, “literacies”; people are fluent, as well as deficient, in many secondary Discourses. Black feminist literacy scholars have taken up the sociocultural ­perspective of literacy and literacy instruction to theorize and reshape the discussion of African descended people’s engagement with literacies as a fundamental exercise in liberation. Fisher argued, “early Black ­literacy practices were not solely carried out for the purpose of (academics’) ­leisure and enjoyment, but they were political acts.”15 The major principles in Fisher’s theory of Black literate lives are: (1) Black literacy is historically rooted in the freedom through literacy—learning to read and write were understood by the enslaved as gateways toward reclaiming their humanity, (2) Black literacy encompasses a wide range of textual forms so as to negate the historical tendency to exclude orality as a ­legitimate form of literacy, and (3) community and self-determination are consistent motifs in scholarship of Black readers, writers, and speakers. The authors believe that the theoretical underpinnings of community psychology, the Haitian Lakou, and the sociocultural lens to literacy led to the development of a culturally relevant literacy program for Haitian adolescents. Literacy was the heart of the program and all activities addressed academic literacy as well as self, interpersonal, and community literacy. Stories from Danticat’s Krik? Krak! served as a source material for the development of critical literacy pedagogies and teaching methods that supported the weekly themes. How the Tree Bore Fruit Each day of the seven-week program began with breakfast and a morning meeting that included prayer, meditation, and reflection. Each day, the students engaged in two hours of literacy-related activity using

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  41 ­ anticat texts. They also spent two hours a day engaged in art activities D facilitated by a local Haitian artist that highlighted the course’s themes. The students also had fitness and computer classes weekly, and twice a week they took part in therapeutic social skill-building group activities facilitated by interns studying clinical psychology. The program also ­included field trips, volunteer service activities, and Haitian guest lecturers. To highlight the specific literacy work, the following is the course instructor’s account of her experience developing pedagogical practices and learning for students on Danticat’s work. As Ms. Seraphin entered her third summer as the literacy instructor with the HELP 7th- and 8th-grade students, and her third year as a PhD candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, she challenged herself to think of ways to engage students with Krik? Krak! Ways that were meaningful, and did not rely on traditional approaches to literacy instruction: that is, read a few pages, then respond to comprehension questions. In what ways could the short stories in Krik? Krak!, though written twenty years ago, still be relevant to teenagers living in 21st-century Miami? In the weeks approaching the final summer of HELP, Seraphin had taken herself to task by reflecting on how much her literacy instruction had aligned with the core values and principles of the program. From her ­reflections, she determined that her instruction reverted to the same strategies that had been drilled into her as a reading and language arts teacher in the local school district. The strategies approached literary analysis with the cold precision of the classical model: read the comprehension questions first, underline the key words or important phrases, circle the headings, and so on and so forth. HELP was an opportunity to teach differently and embrace a l­iberatory conceptualization of literacy, rooted in sociocultural ­awareness and ­addressed the realities of the young people who were served by this ­program. For the third year, Seraphin wanted her classroom space to better reflect the goals of the program and provide a space in which ­students could speak freely and connect the stories of Krik? Krak! to their experiences. She also wanted students to have a sense of ownership of the classroom and a sense of responsibility for supporting each other. These objectives helped shape the notion of class functioning as a “think tank.” As Seraphin wrote out and brainstormed what the ­“Haitian Think Tank” would look like, she thought of three core principles that would guide their thinking and how she and the students would treat each other and reinforce HELPs message of empowerment. Those principles manifested as the three Cs: criticality, consciousness, and community. Criticality reflects ways to engage text: question everything: who’s in power in this instance? Who is being disadvantaged? and get to the “so what” of it all, meaning, why does knowing this matter? Why is this personally relevant? What are the concepts and constructs coming up that needed discussion? How could she/he go deeper?

42  Wideline Seraphin et al. Consciousness represented efforts as a class to deepen understanding of oppressive social structures of white supremacy patriarchy that shaped experiences as black immigrant people of Haitian heritage. What is ­racism? What is sexism? What is Xenophobia? Why do you have to know these concepts as young Black students in Miami? Seraphin wanted the class to make concerted efforts to elevate their understandings of the ways these oppressive structures manifested in Danticat’s stories and in their everyday experiences in Miami. Lastly, community addressed the idea that part of what they were learning in the class was how to support each other and work together in HELP. Knowing the importance of broad participation of students, the concept of community was an effort to combat the silence caused by the fear of being ridiculed or taunted for voicing an opinion, or saying the wrong thing. Every day during the first week of the program, the class would spend time at the beginning of literacy time discussing the expectations of participating in the “Haitian Think Tank” and the central concepts of criticality, consciousness, and community. In reviewing the concepts, Seraphin would also remind students of their roles as leaders in the ­program; as 7th and 8th graders, the younger students in HELP would look to them for cues on how to navigate the program. Laying out these expectations helped to set the expectation that the class would be putting in brainwork and that this would be their core classroom identity. For most of our students, Krik? Krak! serves as their first entry point into Haitian counter-narratives. This collection of short stories, particularly “Children of the Sea” and “Night Women” is disruptive because they force the reader to engage with Haitians outside the “boat people” narrative of an impoverished, infantile nation that is rife with p ­ olitical and moral corruption. The short stories of Krik? Krak! ask our students to contend with problematic gendered ideologies imposed on Black Haitian women and challenges their thinking by giving those women characters agency in subtle and overt choices they make throughout the stories. It was vital that the two short stories discussed here, disrupted students’ notions of what it meant to be a Haitian refugee as well as bring life to the epistemologically grounded concept of Haitian women as “poto mitan.” Thus, preparing students for Krik? Krak! meant informing them that the short stories dealt with difficult subjects that required students to be mature and thoughtful in how they discussed issues of violence, sexual assault, and genocide. “Children of the Sea” and “Night Women” called attention to the many layers of oppression faced by Haitians, particularly Haitian women. As a text for adolescent readers, diving into the violence/white supremacy/xenophobia unmasked by “Children of the Sea,” and the patriarchal/sexist ideologies embedded in “Night Women” required an explicit commitment from the instructor and students to identify these difficult concepts and to face the real-life implications they

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  43 continue to have in the lives of Haitians specifically and Black people of the African Diaspora globally. Therefore, reading Danticat entails dual efforts: centering the complex humanized experiences of Haitians, and second, an earnest commitment to grappling with the oppressive structures which shape and mold their lived experiences.

Embarking as the Haitian Think Tank “Children of the Sea” “Children of the Sea” is the opening short story of Krik? Krak! and a staple read for 7th- and 8th-grade HELP students. The short story chronicles the first-person accounts of unnamed male and female romantic partners. From their letters to each other, we learn that both the young male and female writers were activists against the oppressive Duvalier regime and each were dealing with the consequences of their involvement in the resistance. The young male writer must flee Haiti as a political refugee and embarks on a dangerous journey out to sea on an ill-equipped raft carrying thirty-six people. His perspective connects the reader to people who decides to flee and the hurdles present in their journey to freedom. The young female writer remains in Haiti and her account details the escalation of Duvalierism and Macoutism, as she witnesses the violence exacted against those who have dared to exercise their voice against the brutal regime. She also narrates the tensions present in her family as they try to escape the wrath of the Tonton Macoutes in her neighborhood. The dual perspectives of the female and male writers invite exploration the refugee experience as well as the human rights crisis under a long-reigning Haitian dictatorship. As their literacy instructor, Seraphin had memories from the early 1990s of the Haitian “boat people” and their depiction on Miami’s ­evening news cycle. Danticat’s short stories provided a medium in which to engage young generations of students with the hardships and the ­aspirations of Haitian migrants seeking refuge in the United States. The main objective was to nuance students’ knowledge of Haitian migration stories by connecting students to the challenging and often p ­ ainful ­migration stories some Haitian immigrants endured in their journey to the United States. Additionally, it was an opportunity to introduce ­students to the intersectional forms of marginalization, such as racism, xenophobia, and its impact on Haitian refugees. Before engaging the text, it was important for students to understand the historical context of Children of the Sea. As a class, students spent time learning about Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and his son, JeanClaude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and how their regime impacted the flow of Haitians from the island. In the first week of the program, students mapped the island of Haiti and diagrammed (depicted below) what

44  Wideline Seraphin et al. Seraphin called the Three Waves of Migration for people leaving Haiti, which evolved into an intersected discussion of race, class, and time, whereby we grappled with questions such as: when and why did people start leaving Haiti en masse? Who could afford to leave? What did the exodus of so many people mean for those left behind? (Figure 2.1). Seeing is believing; after spending an entire literacy block immersing themselves in Haiti’s disquieting history with the Duvaliers, Seraphin wanted to add another layer of consciousness in which students could see their faces, hear their voices, and wrestle with the visual representations of the two men whose control of Haiti impacted the lives of everyday people. After the introduction of Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the class watched a Channel 4 WTVJ Miami broadcast, “Haiti…Papa Doc and His People” from March 22, 1966. In the brief, three-minute exchange viewed, journalist Ralph Renick asks François Duvalier the following, To be very frank for a moment doctor, a household word in the United States today is the Tonton Macoutes. The mention of this term strikes a fearsome note. Just what is this group? It’s been ­alleged that these are hand-picked men fiercely loyal to you. And men who can be counted on to squelch any opposition which might arise here in Haiti against you or your regime.16 Duvalier smiled through his response and positioned the men in question as a voluntary paramilitary group, “what you call Tonton Macoute, we call that VSN.” He deflected Renick’s characterization and described the Macoutes as loyal, and mostly peasant men who were politically engaged in his election and were looking to support his administration. The clip itself was a fascinating exchange in which students were able

Figure 2.1  Haitian Exodus and the Duvalier Regime.

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  45 to see the political maneuvering and savviness of a charming old doctor accused of atrocities against his own people. Prior to the first week of the program, Seraphin was not sure if many of the students had ever heard of or knew anything more than cursory knowledge of Papa Doc or Baby Doc. This was an opportunity to put a face to the name, but importantly, get a snapshot of the human rights crisis playing out in the United States’ backyard, and the Discourses involved in minimizing its presence (Figure 2.2). Class dialogue then segued into an introduction to Baby Doc ­using Soledad O’Brien’s Al Jazeera America interview with Jean-Claude ­Duvalier on September 4, 2013.17 The interview detailed Duvalier’s return to Haiti after twenty-five years in exile, his corruption, human rights charges, and a Haitian appellate court reversal of a January 2012 ruling that Duvalier could not stand trial for crimes against humanity under international law because of an expired statute of limitations. The eight-minute interview opens up with a former prisoner of war, Robert “Boby” Duval, depicting the loss of life he witnessed while imprisoned at Fort Dimanche for eight months and transitions into a sit-down with Jean-Claude Duvalier himself. Again, the impetus for this viewing was creating connections between present-day students and the dominant actors in Haitian history that shaped the backdrop of Danticat’s “Children of the Sea.” After watching the O’Brien interview, the class debriefed, again, ­unpacking together, their understanding of the VSN (Volunteers of the National Security) grouped known as the Tonton Macoutes. They also grappled with the idea of what it meant for a Baby Doc to inherit the presidency at such a young age, what it might have felt like to live ­under both rulers and to witness Baby Doc’s return, and lastly what Baby Doc’s death without ever being formally charged with corruption and human rights violations meant for people of Haiti. Though Danticat’s short

Figure 2.2  François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”).

46  Wideline Seraphin et al. stories are fiction, what brought them to life for students was the fact that these stories were rooted in a historical context that many Haitians, including students’ parents and grandparents, lived through and experienced firsthand. It also sheds light on the problems many immigrants and refugees from other cultures may be experiencing in present time. The class spent one week reading Children of the Sea. In the reading of Children of the Sea, students paired themselves together and read five to ten pages together during the literacy block of the day. Instead of ­assigning students with comprehension questions to check for their understanding, the class interpreted the story students created using dialogic journals to guide their reading. Seraphin instructed students to create double-entry logs in their writing journals: one side would be self-selected excerpts from the short story, and the other side would be a series of emotive reactions, questions, comments, and thoughts that the text evoked within them. Students were encouraged to use ­symbols, ­social media colloquialisms, jargon/language (such as OMG (Oh My God), WTF (What the Fuck), etc.), and emoticons to document r­ esponses in their double entries. After reading and journaling, the class discussed moments in the stories students focused on and felt compelled to document in their journals. This synergy with the texts allowed the teacher to glean the ways in which students contended with the concepts of: (1) migration— why people leave their homeland and what happens to them when they do? and (2) intersectional marginalization of racism and xenophobia— what did Haitian refugees encounter on their journey? How much of the negative responses are rooted in racist xenophobia of the black foreigner as other? The students’ dialogic journal presented an array of responses to the tenderness and hardships narrated in the story. However, there were moments in the text in which students were attuned to and evoked distress or discomfort. One, in particular, was soldiers utilizing rape and incest as a violent tool of terror. A majority of students wrote about their disturbance with the following excerpt, they have this thing now that they do. if they come into a house and there is a son and a mother there, they hold a gun to their heads. they make the soon sleep with his mother. if it is a daughter and father, they do the same thing18 Students commented on this excerpt by often asking why, “why would they do that?”19 “why did the macoutes force families to sleep ­together?”20 “my reaction is that why the people [Macoutes] making them have sex with their kids.”21 A number of students also expressed plain disgust. “I am disgusted by this. ‘Why would they make family sleep with each other?’”22 “That’s disgusting and I think that’s sad that people enjoy watching stuff like that happen.”23

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  47 Their writing also revealed the ways in which they tried to rationalize the motivations behind this sort of terror. One 7th-grade girl speculates, “maybe the soldiers found it fascinating when they see other people in pain and hurt.”24, while another 8th-grade girl asked, “Isn’t there at least one soldier who doesn’t agree with this?”25 Two students wondered if these sorts of violations would lead victims to suicide. Lastly, one ­8th-grade girl aptly posed, “We also feel that the soldiers forced either out of pleasure or because they were forced by Duvalier. I think a lot of them are scared [for] their own lives. In fear, they do some unreasonable, unspeakable, fear-driven actions.” The student responses demonstrated that how Danticat’s writing captured them, and compelled them to ­address actions, which defy their notions of morality. Students reflected on the meaning behind the following Discourses by refugees while adrift at sea. Maybe we will go to Guinin, to live with the spirits, to be with e­ veryone who has come and died before us. They would probably turn us away from there too. Someone has transistor and sometimes we listen to radio from the Bahamas. They treat Haitians like dogs in the Bahamas, a woman says. To them, we are not human. 26 Students conveyed confusion at the idea of refugees being rejected. One 8th-grade girl notes, “Why does he feel that they would turn them away, if Africans are people like them also? Why do they treat them like dogs if they’re practically people of the same color and race?” One 7th grader notes, “I feel really mad because they were (sic) human too. [angry face emoji].” Other student responses were variations of asking why and ­anger at this treatment. The weekly theme during the time in which they read “Children of the Sea” was “Gede—Life and Death.” Consequently, as they were reading the story they were also engaging with writing activities where students reflected and grappled with the reciprocal relationship between life and death, particularly as students came to terms with the main character Madan Roger’s death and the moral obligations of the female narrator’s family as witnessing her death. The program’s morning meeting content was also complementary to these discussions, whereas students listened to morning lectures that posed several arguments such as you must die before you can live, dying emotionally and mentally before you can live physically/spiritually, being reborn, and rebirthed. To support these discussions which stemmed from the reading of the text, students also read poems in Haitian Creole and English from Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry. Poems—Refugee, by ­Patrick Sylvain, and They Say, by Suze Baron—were used to accompany the reading of “Children of the Sea,” and the weekly theme of life and death. As a class, we read the poems in English and in Haitian Creole,

48  Wideline Seraphin et al. and students were asked to annotate and make connections between the works of Sylvain, Baron, and Danticat. In small groups, students worked to deconstruct the poems by identifying poetic devices, as well as the ways in which Sylvain and Baron used poetry to story the experiences of Haitian refugees migrating to the United States. Students were also encouraged to link both poems to the interconnectivity of Life/Death and the roles this cycle plays out in their lives (Figure 2.3). At the end of the reading, students participated in a silent interactive “gallery walk (depicted above).” Three prompts were written around the classroom and students silently walked around the room writing their responses and responded to each other. The prompts were “The ­ending was…”; “How does “Children of the Sea” remind me of [other] ­poems, books, stories, I’ve read?,” “What I learned…”; “How is this story ­similar/different to the real life?”; “What does this remind me of in the real world?” The responses varied, but each student had the opportunity to read their peers take and contribute to the classroom discussion. “Night Women” “Night Women” was not included in the curriculum guide. In actuality, it was a story we intentionally jumped over because it centralizes the narrative of a sex worker. Seraphin read the story independently and reflected upon the challenge that the story posed. Were these students old enough to have a conversation about sex work? However, the larger more compelling question was what did we, as a class and a program, stand to lose in terms of criticality and consciousness if she continued to ignore a story detailing a black woman’s experience in this particularly

Figure 2.3  Group Writing about “Night Women.”

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  49 marginalized position of society? After much thought, Seraphin decided to include “Night Women” as a short story for the summer. “Night Women” is a six-page short story that walks the reader through an evening with a sex worker who labors in the small confines of her room—a room where her son also lays. Her narrative highlights the tensions she has as a mother who keeps herself and son alive by entertaining (married) men in her neighborhood and the stigmas attached to being a woman who engages in transactional sex—a tension verbalized in the dichotomy between respectable day women and licentious night women. The primary goals were to destabilize students’ preconceived notions of women who engaged in sex work and spend time exploring their ­assumptions, provide social context to broaden their understanding of why young girls and women are pushed into or consciously decide to ­engage in sex work, and lastly, humanize black women who do not ­ascribe to classist respectability politics. As with planning, the next couple of days framing Night Women was equally important. Seraphin distinctly remembers telling the students, “We’re not supposed to read this story because it’s about a woman who is a sex worker.” From there, she played on the idea that she believed in the culture we had established as Haitian thinkers, and she felt that as a class, they could handle this discussion. However, it was their responsibility to demonstrate that they had indeed understood that this text required their highest level of maturity as well as willingness to inquire and raise their consciousness. The conversation ended by sharing that her job was not to tell them how to think, but provide them with different perspectives so that they could come to their own conclusion from informed explorations. The first activity was a basic word association exercise (depicted ­below) in which Seraphin placed the words “women of the night” in the center of a web and asked students to fill in as many words and phrases that came to mind. And as expected, students did not shy away from naming the disparaging terms that were associated with women in sex work: “THOT (that hoe over there), whore, prostitute, desperate, ­demoralized, slut, deviants, nasty” and phrases such as “they ask for it, at risk for STI, do it for fun, lack of education” quickly filled in the web. A discussion followed as to why they believed sex workers were framed as such. Much of the consensus was anchored by the idea that women who engaged in sex work had done so by choice and by some shortcomings of their own lack of moral grounding; it is also stated that they made the conscious decision to “sell their bodies” to support themselves (Figure 2.4). This staged the reading of Night Women by disrupting deeply seated assumptions and providing a social context that might problematize their perspectives or at least provide students with alternative reasons as to why one enters sex work. That summer, news had broken about the abuses of UN peacekeepers with vulnerable women in the population they were charged to protect. On July 13, 2015, we read as a class, the

50  Wideline Seraphin et al.

Figure 2.4  Common Words that Describe Sex Workers.

Washington Post report, “U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti had ‘transactional sex’ with hundreds of poor women.”27 Students were instructed to annotate the news article with questions and reactions to the news story. To provide further contextualization of the situation facing the young girls and women, we read an editorial published by The Root entitled “The Sex-Abuse-Prison Pipeline: How Girls of Color Are Unjustly A ­ rrested and Incarcerated.” The article focused on the often-ignored connections between sexual violence against young girls their age and the punishment they receive, which is usually in connection with the sexual violence that has been perpetuated against them. The editorial discussed instances where black and brown girls who attempt to flee abusive situations are arrested for truancy and running away. From there, we discussed again, some of the arguments the author was making in regard to young black and brown girls and students were able to recognize key points. This word association discussion and reading of contemporary texts worked to frontload the reading of Night Women, which was among the shortest stories in Krik? Krak! Seraphin had students make note of what they learned from the central character in their independent reading of the story. Students also interwove and connected the programmatic 2nd week theme of “Marasa—duality” to the character’s depiction of day women as mother and night women as sex worker. Reassuringly, most of the discussion of the main character centered primarily on her role as a mother. Students first made note of her son, her love for him, and the lengths she went to protect him from knowing the full nature of her work.

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  51

Conclusion This chapter provides a persuasive argument for why it is important to use Edwidge Danticat’s writings as a tool to activate critical self-­ reflections grounded in the sociocultural realities of white supremacist patriarchy, believing that Danticat’s stories provided counter-narrative discourses that culturally affirm and empower young Haitian students. At the heart of the work was crafting engaging classroom activities in which the students’ lives as young, black, Haitians were the center of the learning experience. There are rare opportunities in which Haitian students see themselves reflected in the cultural medium in U.S. schools where they learn to read, write, and think about the world, and themselves. HELP’s conceptual framework of literacy supported the use of literacies that were relevant to students, such as discussion of racism/xenophobia in “Children of the Sea,” and gender/sexism in Night Women. In “Children of the Sea,” racism and xenophobia manifest in the Discourses of the refugees while adrift on imperiled boat. Students learned from character dialog that Haitian refugees were treated less than ­human and perceived as undesirable to the receiving countries. S­ tudents’ responses and questions to these manifestations reveal that this may have been the first time they engaged in academic dialogue on such forms of dehumanization. This is what makes “Children of the Sea” and Danticat’s work overall vital for young Haitian students. Her narratives actively disrupted and complicated their understandings of racism and introduced them to how it often works in conjunction with xenophobia. Students were left asking subsequent questions as to why Bahamians would treat Haitians like dogs considering they were both Blacks, and why African countries had internal conflicts. These moments of pause provided an opportunity to delve into the racialization of blackness and Haitianness and the ways in which people of color can also be enactors of the white supremacy patriarchy. Reading “Children of the Sea” gave the students and the teacher a place to start and work through these types of tensions where students can see themselves in characters in the story and question the social responses and treatment based on their positionality. What makes these readings encouraging is the hope that students can now name the phenomena for what it is the next time they encounter it— whether it be in text or in their lived experiences. These detecting skills are crucial for Black immigrant youth occupying urban spaces in the United States. It should also create more compassionate individuals and reduce the likelihood that they would engage in the marginalization of others who are oppressed. Regarding gender construction and sexism, “Night Women” helped to reveal how capable young students, particularly girls, were harboring misogynistic notions toward women in sex work. While it remains to be seen if our time reading the short story actually precipitated a paradigm

52  Wideline Seraphin et al. shift for the class; reading the short story did generate a space where the teacher and classmate openly challenged misogynistic tendencies. In doing this, students were able to read the woman as a mother, as someone with knowledge to contribute to her son and society, and as a woman who lives in direct opposition to “day women” and the consequences of this binary. Danticats’ Krik? Krak! placed students at the heart of Haitian cultural and epistemological experiences providing the ability to connect to students through their historical legacy as Haitian youth, and the ways in which Haitians have experienced the world not only helped to see value in themselves, but also allowed them to piece together the conditions in which they reflect on their present context with a historical and cultural perspective on how their social conditions came to be. The beauty of teaching literacy in a culturally relevant context draws minority and immigrant students to learning related to their experiences and generations within their families by creating intimate spaces that engenders ­meaning-making and critical analysis countering the traditional white patriarchal U.S. school context. Too often, these individual voices are neglected and often make them disinterested in education and learning preventing them from developing the multiple forms of literacy self, interpersonal, and community that will allow them to be successful in their endeavors. The work of HELP and utilizing Danticat’s Krik? Krak! created a unique cultural relevant space where Haitian students could become rooted in literacies that famed their emerging Haitian epistemology.

Notes 1 Charlene Desir, “Diasporic Lakou: A Haitian Academic Explores Her Path to Haiti Pre and Post Earthquake,” Harvard Educational Review. 82, no 2. (2011): 278–295. 2 David L. Sam and John W. Berry. “Acculturation: When Individuals and Groups of Different Cultural Backgrounds Meet,” Perspectives on Psychological Sciences, 5 no. 4 (2010): 472–481, doi:10.1177/1745691610373075. 3 Charlene Desir et al. “Youth’s Spiritual Epistemology through a Culturally Based Summer Program in Florida,” in Haitian Youth in the Americas: Generations Transnational Circulation and Identities (Quebec: The Presses de I’Universite du Quebec, 2017). 4 Desir et al., Haitian Youth in the Americas: Generations Transnational ­C irculation and Identities, 337–338. 5 John Moritsugu et al., Community Psychology (New York: Rutledge, 2016). 6 Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (Harvard University Press, 1979). 7 Moritsugu et al. Community Psychology. 8 Geneva Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and ­Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010). 9 Kurt Lewin, A Dynamic Theory of Personality ( Upper Saddle River: ­Prentice Hall, 1935). 10 Julian Rappaport, “Studies in Empowerment: Introduction to the Issue,” Prevention in Human Services 3, no. 2–3 (1984): 1–7.

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  53 11 Charlene Desir. “Lòt Bò Dlo: Across Waters: Haitian Students Search for Identity in US Schools.” PhD diss., U of Harvard, 2006. 12 Kyrah Malika Daniels, “Mirror Mausoleums, Mortuary Arts, and Haitian Religious Unexceptionalism,” Journal of the American Academy of ­Religion 85, no. 4 (2017): 957–984. 13 Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith. “Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers.” 2006. Accessed on April 26, 2017. doi: 10.1057/9780312376208. 14 John P. Gee, “Reading as Situated Language: A Sociocognitive Perspective,” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44 (2001): 714–725. 15 Maisha T. Fisher, Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary ­Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2008). 16 Francois Duvalier. “Haiti…Papa Doc and His People.” Interview by Ralph Renick. Channel 4 WTVJ, March 22, 1966. 17 Jean-Claude Duvalier. Interview by Soledad O’Brien. Al Jazeera America, September 4, 2013. 18 Edwidge Danticat, Children of the Sea (Vintage 1996), 12. 19 Eighth-grade girl, 2015. 20 Seventh-grade girl, 2015. 21 Eighth-grade girl, 2015. 2 2 Eighth-grade girl, 2015. 2 3 Eighth-grade girl, 2015. 2 4 Seventh-grade girl, 2015. 2 5 Eighth-grade girl, 2015. 2 6 Danticat, “Children of the Sea,” 14. 27 Justin Moyer, “Report: U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti had ‘Transactional Sex’ with Hundreds of Poor Women.” The Washington Post. (2015); ­Accessed April 26, 2017. www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/ 11/report-u-n-peacekeepers-in-haiti-had-transactional-­sex-with-hundredsof-poor-women/?utm_term=.22e4b978f9ea

Bibliography August, Stephanie, Charlene Desir, Pamela Hall, Gallagher Sue, and Seraphin Wideline. “Haitian Youth’s Spiritual Epistemology through a Culturally Based Summer Program.” In Florida Haitian Youth in the Americas: G ­ enerations, Transnational Circulation and Identities, eds. Herns Marcelin, Toni Cela and Henri Dorvil, Quebec: U of Quebec P, 2017. Berry, John W. “A Psychology of Immigration.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 57, 2001, 615–631. Bronfenbrenner, Urie. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979. Cela, Toni, and Henri Dorvil. Haitian Youth in the Americas: Generations, Transnational Circulation and Identities. Quebec: U of Quebec P, 2017. Coatsworth, J. Douglas, Maldonado-Molina Mildred, Pantin Hilda, and Szapocznik Jose. “A Person-centered and Ecological Investigation of Acculturation Strategies in Hispanic Immigrant Youth.” Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 33, no. 2, 2005, 157–174. Daniels, Kyrah Malika. “Mirror Mausoleums, Mortuary Arts, and Haitian ­Religious Unexceptionalism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 85, no. 4, 2017, 957–984.

54  Wideline Seraphin et al. Desir, Charlene. “Diasporic Lakou: A Haitian Academic Explores her Path to Haiti Pre and Post Earthquake.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 82, no. 2, 2011, 278–295. ———. “Lòt Bò Dlo: Across Waters: Haitian Students Search for Identity in US Schools.” PhD diss., U of Harvard, 2006. ———. “Understanding the Sending Context of Haitian Immigrant Students.” Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 2008, 73–93. Duvalier, Francois. Haiti…Papa Doc and His People. By Ralph Renick. C ­ hannel 4 WTVJ, March 22, 1966. Fisher, Maisha T. Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspecitives. London: Routledge, 2008. Gay, Geneva. Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Gee, John P. “Reading as Situated Language: A Sociocognitive Perspective.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 44, 2001, 714–725. Heath, Shirley B. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Lankshear, Colin. Changing Literacies. Buckingham: Open UP, 1999. Lewin, Kurt. A Dynamic Theory of Personality. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1935. Koneru, Vamsi K., Amy G. Weisman De Mamani, Patricia M. Flynn, and ­Hector Betancourt. “Acculturation and Mental Health: Current Findings and Recommendations for Future Research.” Applied and Preventive Psychology, vol. 12, no. 2, 2007, 76–96. doi:10.1016/j.appsy.2007.07.016. Marín, Gerardo, and Raymond J. Gamba. “Acculturation and Changes in ­Cultural Values.” In Acculturation: Advances in Theory, Measurement, and Applied Research, eds. Kevin M. Chun and Gerardo Marin, 2003, 83–93. doi:10.1037/10472-007. Michel, Claudine. “Of Worlds Seen and Unseen: The Educational Character of Haitian Vodou.” Comparative Education Review, vol. 40, no. 3, 1996, 280–294. doi: 10.1086/447386. ———. Tapping the Wisdom of the Ancestors: An Attempt to Recast Vodou & Morality through the Voice of Mama Lola & Karen McCarthy Brown. Boston: U of Massachusetts, 1996. Michel, Claudine, and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith. “Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers.” 2006. Accessed April 26, 2017. doi: 10.1057/9780312376208. Moritsugu, John, Elizabeth Vera, Frank Y. Wong, and Karen Grover Duffy. Community Psychology. New York: Routledge, 2016. Moyer, Justin Wm. “Report: U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti Had ‘Transactional Sex’ with Hundreds of Poor Women.” The Washington Post. June 11, 2015. Accessed April 26, 2017. www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/ wp/2015/06/11/report-u-n-peacekeepers-in-haiti-had-transactional-sex-withhundreds-of-poor-women/?utm_term=.22e4b978f9ea. Páez, Mariela M. “English Language Proficiency and Bilingual Verbal Ability among Chinese, Dominican, and Haitian Immigrant Students.” Equity & Excellence in Education, vol. 41, no. 3, 2008, 311–324. Rappaport, Julian. “Studies in Empowerment: Introduction to the Issue.” ­Prevention in Human Services, vol. 3, no. 2–3, 1984, 1–7.

“We are the Haitian Think Tank”  55 Saar, Malika Saada. “The Sex-Abuse-to-Prison Pipeline: How Girls of Color Are Unjustly Arrested and Incarcerated.” The Root. July 09, 2015. Accessed April 26, 2017. www.theroot.com/the-sex-abuse-to-prison-pipeline-how-girls-ofcolor-ar-1790860479. Sam, David L., and John W. Berry. “Acculturation: When Individuals and Groups of Different Cultural Backgrounds Meet.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 5, no. 4, 2010, 72–481. doi:10.1177/1745691610373075.

3 Teaching Genre as Method in The Dew Breaker Nathan A. Jung

Following the publication of her debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory in 1994, Edwidge Danticat’s body of work has expanded into diverse and often-unexpected areas. A conservative tally of the different genres she has explored in her career to date turns up at least nine distinct categories, including novels, short stories, young adult novels, travel books, memoirs, essays, picture books, film scripts, and “short story cycles,” the latter of which serve as the focus of this chapter. The sheer breadth of this growing corpus presents teachers with both opportunities and challenges. In terms of opportunities, Danticat’s concern for transnational identity and more specifically, for involuntary migration, is given important coloration by the variety of generic lenses she employs. In terms of challenges, this exact same variety requires major contextual scaffolding to help students discern the points of comparison and departure from established generic traditions observed in her work. To sort through these opportunities and challenges, this chapter focuses on the short story cycle genre employed by The Dew Breaker (2004) and Claire of the Sea Light (2013). Using The Dew Breaker as an exemplar text, I argue that genre theory can be a useful tool for students seeking to engage Danticat’s complex, evolving relationship to several established literary traditions. Genre analyses are unique insofar as they entail both evidentiary observations drawn from a single text, and a classification system for organizing these observations across various texts. This system gains validity through its wider application, and yet, it is continually readjusted by the introduction of new texts that change the operating parameters of the genre in question. This paradox raises highly teachable questions: what is gained by relating Danticat’s work to other short story cycles? Further, how does The Dew Breaker grow from (and revise) a long-standing generic tradition, arguably inaugurated in its contemporary form by Sherwood Anderson? Genre theorists are concerned with the contentious nature of genres, or specific types of texts, which are seen to “constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them” (Chandler 2). Their work has a clear place in

The Dew Breaker  57 answering the formalist and literary-historical questions raised above. However, it can address other questions too, including those on the relations between national literature and national identity. Multi-polar texts like The Dew Breaker, which in terms of content alone require students to read across national borders, frequently use entrenched generic frameworks to comment on the tensions between American literary canons and the increasingly transnational cultural productions that interface with such canons. As a result, this chapter takes an additional step in applying the concept of “genre” to the diverse migration narratives that Danticat corrals into her intricately linked novel-in-stories. The ­multiple histories of movement observed between migration narratives in The Dew Breaker also inhere in the interplay between empirical formal ­cataloging and social constructivism found in genre theory itself. This more expansive understanding of “genre” will prove useful to teachers seeking to organically relate discussions of migration, the short story cycle, and American literature in their lessons. The chapter begins with a general overview of The Dew Breaker, which offers orienting summary material for those unfamiliar with the text, in addition to a reference-ready overview for those who are ­revisiting it. This section also details the many questions raised by the formal structure of The Dew Breaker; these questions provide the basis for the chapter’s second section on genre theory, which offers a pedagogical framework for teaching Danticat. The chapter then looks more specifically at the genre of the short story cycle, and asks how the ­internal arrangement and historical lineage of this particular genre relate to ­contemporaneous works like The Dew Breaker. Having outlined past and present critical approaches to the short story cycle, the chapter expands its perspective on “genre” to encompass migration studies, and thereby links formalist and postcolonial analyses. Finally, the chapter offers two proposals for applied learning exercises that teach genre as a method for assessing The Dew Breaker.

Theme and Form in The Dew Breaker Published in 2005, The Dew Breaker revisits many of the key themes found in Danticat’s earlier work. These themes include traumatic ­violence, involuntary dispersion, and transnational culture, to name only a few. Previously, she had published (in order) the aforementioned debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, the short story collection Krik? Krak! (1996), and the novel The Farming of the Bones (1998). ­However, while The Dew Breaker builds on these earlier texts, it also continues a streak of generic experimentation evident in its two immediate predecessors (a travel book, and a picture book). It is true that Rocio Davis1 and others have viewed Krik? Krak! as a fully integrated short story cycle; The Dew Breaker, though, is a far more obvious exercise in the

58  Nathan A. Jung genre, and thus requires teachers to address its generic lineage more directly. The Dew Breaker comprises nine stories, or chapters. Each story/ chapter has a single title, and is relatively independent of other story/ chapters, insofar as they all have standalone properties like a distinctive narrator, and mostly unique characters. The first and last entries to the text, however, are directly related; they function as bookends that speak to Danticat’s title, and provide important thematic introduction and closure for the intervening material. For this reason, they deserve sustained inquiry, as they exhibit some of the key features of Danticat’s chosen genre. “Dew Breakers,” are the agents of state violence in Haiti, whose machetes disturb the dew during the killings they perpetrate during the early hours of the morning. The first story (“The Book of the Dead”) has an epiphanic arc that builds toward a daughter’s realization about her ­father’s role in this state violence. The story begins with the daughter (Ka, an aspiring artist) and her unnamed father delivering a statue she made of her father to a Haitian American television personality. The statue portrays her father as a noble martyr, it reflects Ka’s belief that he was an innocent victim of violence in Haiti, and that he maintained the burden of this violence after emigrating to the United States. While true in some respects, the sentiments expressed by this statue trigger an unforeseen reaction on the part of her father. Before they ­arrive at their destination, he reveals to Ka that he destroyed her work. He did so because, in his view, the statue falsely represented his relationship to Haitian violence. In reality, he was the perpetrator of crimes while in Haiti, and not the victim. He was a prison guard, or Dew Breaker, and to his mind, the statue would make permanent a false narrative about his homeland identity; as he says to his daughter, “Ka, your father was the hunter, he was not the prey.” Abetting Ka’s illusions about his life ­(evident in the statue) would prevent him from taking full responsibility for his actions. Instead, he seeks to put these actions into balance with his hostland identity as a devoted, pacifistic father and husband (consider, for example, the use of third-person in the above quote, which suggests the significant contrast he still wishes to draw between his two lives). These considerations, prompted by the statue’s misleading testimony, trigger the revelation of the truth of his life in Haiti to his daughter. The concluding story relates the circumstances of life in Haiti that led to his involvement with state violence, and the events leading up to his departure from the island and later marriage to Ka’s mother. This backstory, which presents a dehumanized version of the father contrasting sharply with his empathetic presence in the first story/chapter, is withheld from readers for the majority of the text. In other words, instead of offering these two “Dew Breaker” stories in a direct sequence, The Dew Breaker inserts seven stories between them, which have varying degrees of connection and/or distance to the characters in these bookend pieces.

The Dew Breaker  59 While one middle story does revisit Ka’s family during a Christmas Eve mass (this entry is importantly focalized through her mother, and occurs before the revelations of the first story), the remaining stories/chapters focus on other characters in the Haitian diaspora, and shuffle between the United States and Haiti in their settings. Characters sometimes recur via obvious allusion, but they are never granted speaking roles outside of their specific segments. The figure of the Dew Breaker, which centers on the father but which also assumes an anonymous and generalized symbolic status, shadows these middle stories. In so doing, the figure provides one form of consistency that elevates the project beyond the generic realm of a short story collection. However, this consistency develops only in fits and starts, and leaves students in the position of having to think recursively about what they have already read in terms of the final bookended piece. There is much to discuss about the specific interconnections and gaps between these nine stories. However, I would like to focus more on the nature of these ­interconnections and gaps themselves, as a stimulus to considering issues of student reception, and by extension, to considering how teachers might best approach the text in a genre framework. Without guidance, students might easily be confused by the piece. If they are expecting a novel, for instance, they may be thrown off by the disconnection ­between the stories, particularly when they first encounter a break in continuity between the first and second entries. Alternatively, if they are expecting short stories, they may miss important connections between the different entries in the work, and thus miss the development of key symbols and characters. This ambiguous readerly situation is a potent pedagogical opportunity; it forms the basis for my claims about genre’s utility in teaching The Dew Breaker. For this reason, I will now speak more directly to the nature of genre theory, and the short story cycle, before suggesting some concrete exercises that can integrate these ideas into student analyses of Danticat’s text.

Genre as Method According to Ronald Gottman, the general editor of the “Genres in Context” series published by Routledge Press, “genre studies have been a central concern of Anglo-American and European literary theory for at least the past quarter century” (vii). Further, Gottman notes, “Genre has also become an indispensable term for trade publishers and the vast readership they serve” (vii). Yet, despite this ubiquity in the academy and in the marketplace, he notes that genre is “among the slipperiest of literary terms, as an examination of genre theories and their histories will suggest” (vii). Genre is thus simultaneously familiar and strange: a basic fact of scholarship, commercial advertising and even inventory arrangement, which also readily melts away under direct scrutiny.

60  Nathan A. Jung This combination of nearness and distance makes the topic very hard to teach. For example, genre criticism is rooted in formal observations about ­singular texts. Yet, genre itself is an impossible thing to arrive at solely via “close-reading,” as it also requires familiarity with formal patterns occurring across a very broad corpus of texts. General education students in particular cannot be assumed to ­possess this familiarity. I learned firsthand the difficulty of teaching genre in the fall of 2012, as a graduate instructor. My syllabus for this intermediate-level undergraduate English course (“Genres of Globalization”) aimed to reach students pursuing degrees outside the humanities. The course presented what John Tomlinson calls the “complex connectivity” (2) of social, technological, and economic development across local and global scales found in globalization as a series of different generic stances (for example, utopian and dystopian genres representing ­contrastive ideas of the “global village” and “McWorld”). Organizing the course around the narrative treatment of such global themes in science fiction, the bildungsroman, absurdism, and other genres would, I had thought, allow students to survey the many different permutations of genres observed across such texts, and help them interrogate how globalization operates in part as a cultural phenomenon. We did reach this point, but not without significant detours, which inform my perspective on teaching Danticat. As it happened, my students were unfamiliar with the basic idea of genre, let alone the conventions associated with specific case studies like the short story cycle. Without the benefit of such established knowledge, and without the time to ­provide substantive overviews of major genres (any one of which could easily subsume an entire syllabus), I needed to balance an introduction to the theory of genre in a very basic sense with two other critical elements: the details of the short story cycle genre, and also the actual migration narratives in Danticat’s text. Genre itself provided the resources to accomplish this task, but only when taught as a method, and only when applied by students to readings of The Dew Breaker. Instead of (for example) assigning and lecturing critical readings on genre theory, which would have required more readings and more in-class time given over to lectures-based presentations and discussion, framing genre as a methodological orientation fostered comparative, student-driven analyses of the novels and poetry on the syllabus. This approach allowed students to tackle the more abstract questions of genre through applied exercises. Such exercises empowered them to generate arguments about genre based on their individual, systematic readings of the numerous gaps and points of connections evoked by The Dew Breaker both internally and in conversation with other texts, without fear of misunderstanding or misapplying the premises of genre theory as discussed in scholarly discourse. ­ efinition To get to this point, however, students did require a working d of genre that allowed for its implementation as a methodology. For this

The Dew Breaker  61 definition, I turned to excerpts from Rene Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature. While this is a much older text than is typically used for theoretical primers in the contemporary classroom (it was published in 1956), the definition of genre advanced by these authors proves useful in the methodological agency it affords to readers. Their approach to genre does not rely solely on codified conventions that must be taught, understood, and recapitulated by students. Instead, Wellek and Warren argue that the very nature of genre mixes formalism and social constructivism. Genre, in their words, is, clearly, descriptive. It doesn’t limit the number of possible kinds and doesn’t prescribe rules to authors. It supposes that traditional kinds may be “mixed” and produce a new kind…It sees that genres can be built up on the basis of inclusiveness or “richness” as well as that of “purity” (genre by accretion as well as by reduction)…it is interested in finding the common denominator of a kind, its shared literary devices and literary purposes. (225) In its emphasis on description and the location of “shared literary ­devices” and a “common denominator,” the definition provided by Wellek and Warren clearly invests in an analytical approach to identifying formal characteristics in texts. Yet, at the same time, their emphasis on mixture, readerly production, and textual openness points to the reflexive nature of genre theory, which intervenes in the very genres it identifies. Framing genre theory in this way—as an intervention based on ­flexible, practicable analytical systems – helped alleviate the pressure on my students to know exhaustively the long traditions of genre forms, which again, are impossible to convey to general education students in a ­semester-long course, especially when working from the content ­mandates of a comprehensive survey. It did so for two reasons. First, it helped them put their focus squarely on identifying the core characteristics of given texts. Second, it helped them recognize a certain creative and effectual aspect to their work as critics. In outlining this methodological orientation to genre, I found it first helpful to lay out the difficulties associated with teaching genre described in detail above. I explained to my students that genre is at once a post-facto taxonomic exercise, a highly codified cultural convention, and an ever-evolving creative ­template. Our goal with Danticat, I explained, was not to force the text into a ­prefabricated generic framework, but instead to dwell in the questions raised by its form. These questions, I explained, are inherent to a text like The Dew Breaker, whose very genre, while established in certain respects, requires us to rethink the parameters by which we catalogue novels, short stories, and whatever lies between. Put this way, as an exercise in establishing analytic systems to confront ambiguity, my students proved surprisingly adept at the processes of classification that inform genre-based methodologies.

62  Nathan A. Jung More concretely, I encouraged students to view genre as an a­ ctivelearning process based on the accumulation and analysis of ­observation points. Contemporary instances of genre debates helped ­introduce students to the idea of genre as a process, or method, which mixes elements of both prescription and description. For example, we watched YouTube clips of metal aficionados arguing about the underlying distinctions between “thrash” and “sludge” subgenres. To the best our ability, we talked about the musicological basis for these arguments, balancing this formalist work against the evident stakes involved in such generic arguments for the cultural identity of the commentators. While most students followed my lead in being ignorant of these particular musical subgenres, the premise of the metal debates proved accessible, as we all regularly draw comparisons and distinctions between cultural signifiers to situate them within and/or without our own realms of personal identification. We also discussed Netflix genre categories, and the algorithmic assignation of user recommendations based on viewing habits, which are themselves based on taxonomic genre categorizations. Exploring the mixture of form and culture underlying such taxonomies provided an accessible point of entry to our discussions of generic conventions. It did not require an assumption of exhaustive expertise, but instead, a willingness to approach texts with a critical eye on their labels, and the methods we use to label them. This general orientation subsequently led into a more focused discussion of short story cycles. Short Story Cycles Research on the genre known variously as “short story cycles,” “short story sequences,” “composite novels,” and otherwise was inaugurated by Forrest Ingram in 1971. Ingram notes several considerations in defining the short story cycle against novels and short story collections, including the role of editors, and the degree to which authors originally conceived of their stories as being part of a larger project. Noting the complex issues of intention and structural variation evoked by the form, Ingram eventually arrives at the following definition: a short story cycle is “a book of short stories so linked to each other by their author that the reader’s successive experience on various levels of the pattern of the whole significantly modifies his experience of each of its component parts” (19). He thus locates short story cycles on a spectrum between short stories, on the one hand, and the novel, on the other hand. In this framework, the degree of unity found between the component parts of a text dictates the place of the text as a whole on this spectrum; as discrete stories become more independent, for instance, the text slides toward the short story collection end of the spectrum. Alternatively, as the stories become more interrelated, the text moves nearer toward the novel form.

The Dew Breaker  63 Several later critics, including Maggie Dunn and Ann Morris, have usefully developed Ingram’s work. These authors exchange the title of “short story cycle” for “composite novel,” which situates the form ­under examination nearer to novels than short story collections. Composite novels are described as follows: “the composite novel is a ­literary work composed of shorter texts that—though individually complete and a­ utonomous—are interrelated in a coherent whole according to one or more organizing principles” (xiii). Dunn and Morris make two key c­ ontributions: first, they enumerate the organizing principles of composite novels, which may include tropes like common settings, single protagonists, collective protagonists, recurrent patterns, and processes of fiction-making. Second, they provide two bibliographies which will prove useful to teachers looking to situate Danticat in a ­longer ­literary-historical tradition: the first list “Chronology: Composite ­Novels and Precursors,” gives an extensive bibliography of examples of the composite novel form published between 1820 and 1993. The second list, “An Annotated List of Selected Composite Novels,” offers an annotated bibliography that is meant, “To assist students, teachers, and other interested readers in choosing composite novels that suit their classes, research projects, and general reading” (xiv). Contemporary works on the genre come from J. Gerald Kennedy, who usefully connects what he calls the “short story sequence” to place-­ specific literary traditions. Kennedy observes, “The proliferation of short story sequences is truly a global phenomenon” (viii); however, he also states the following, which places the genre in a local, national context: The pragmatic affinity for short stories that shaped the literature of the United States decisively in the nineteenth century seems to persist in our national avidity for organized story collections. Perhaps the very determination to build a unified republic out of diverse states, regions, and population groups—to achieve the unity expressed by the motto e pluribus unum—helps to account for this continuing passion for sequences. (viii) This perspective is useful insofar as it connects the short story cycle to national literary canons, and makes an effort to describe the features of the genre in terms of a distinctive national project. For Danticat’s work, this is important material to cover in some form, as it suggests the degree to which the text situates itself in a generic canon that is highly affiliated with nationalist culture, while also, by virtue of its major concern for transnational culture, requiring revision of the borders and project of “American” literature. Kennedy distinguishes texts like Danticat’s from other entries into the American canon of short story cycles. He accomplishes this through a

64  Nathan A. Jung focus on the nature of community, which is employed as an ur-concept in the national project of American literature: The attentive reader will discover in many of these essays a recurrent interest in the problem of community and its relation to the fictional form under discussion. Some story collections literally “represent” communities; others imply by an interweaving of voices and ­narratives a communal consciousness. Whereas ethnic and minority sequences often affirm an ongoing sense of community, collections portraying mainstream, middle-class life typically emphasize the precariousness of local attachments. (xiv) This focus on community helps orient the kinds of readings required when American identity “goes global,” but only provisionally. More ­recently, James Nagel introduces a similar notion, when he writes: …for the last century many of the most important works of this kind were written by authors from differing ethnic backgrounds suggests that despite its ancient history, the story sequence offers not only a rich literary legacy but a vital technique for the exploration and depiction of the complex interactions of gender, ethnicity, and individual identity. (10) Despite their obvious contributions, both Kennedy and Nagel have a difficult time addressing the unique challenge texts like The Dew Breaker pose to the very idea of a “national” literature. In particular, they both assume a framework of cultural assimilation into the homeland state that ignores the expansive interest Danticat and others place on connections to homeland sites. In terms of teaching Danticat, the questions raised by this uneasy relationship between American literature and transnational diasporic culture are far more important than a blanket rejection or acceptance of the claims of such critics. It is more useful to focus on the generic parameters of a national literary canon: in other words, to have students question what characteristics are used to cluster texts under a specific flag, especially for authors like Danticat, who are clearly concerned with populations residing at least partly outside a single nation. Scholarship on Danticat has addressed this question more directly, and added thematic considerations concerning diasporic migration that should accompany any lessons on genre in The Dew Breaker. The delicate balance between fracture and coherence evoked by short story cycles, for example, resonates with trauma theory. Trauma is a foundational scholarly approach to involuntary migration in diasporic culture; the structural features of repetition, reconfiguration, and displacement neatly correspond to the formal features of short story cycles as a genre. Silvia Martínez Falquina, for example, approaches The Dew Breaker

The Dew Breaker  65 as an intervention in two critical strands of trauma theory. More to the point of this chapter, she understands the text’s rendition of trauma and migration as linked to the short story cycle genre, which Falquina notes flits between openness and closure. This alternating structure is seen as crucial to diasporic identity, related as follows: “Moreover, the short story cycle in its centripetal and centrifugal impulses may be useful to account for the contemporary world, but it cannot be univocally associated to one specific identity” (180). Falquina’s emphasis on the short story cycle’s aptness for representing “the complexity of the Haitian diaspora” (171) speaks to overlap between formal and thematic nuances drawn out by employing genre as a reading method. Even when students circumscribe their analyses to the subgenre of diasporic migration, the variety of further migration categories clustered under this banner beg for precisely the kind of relational critical approaches triggered by the modular structure of the short story cycle. By teaching genre as a method that relies on cataloguing points of comparison and contrast in The Dew Breaker, we might usefully expand the remit of genre theory in ways that contribute more explicit social and political weight to its formalist inclinations; we might, in other words, help students actively engage the broader question of why and how form matters.

Genres of Migration In other words, teaching genre as method for students interacting with The Dew Breaker should strive to exceed purely formal concerns. Indeed, as indicated, the application of genre to globalization forms the basis of my interest in the topic, as genre both speaks to literary form and tradition, and forms a natural bridge that connects these concerns to the diverse experiences of migration in an age of globalization. In other words, defining genre as an exploratory exercise in self-­reflexively categorizing formal observations applies equally well to the diverse ­migration discourses contained in texts like The Dew Breaker. The core benefit of such an approach to teaching genre is that it allows for a postcolonial orientation by virtue of applied method, as opposed to content alone. This approach to genre as a method for engaging the diverse trajectories of movement in Danticat and elsewhere draws specifically on the discipline of comparative migration studies. This broad, emerging field cannot be adequately encompassed in a chapter focused on teaching Danticat; that said, I can offer some orienting glosses and a relevant example to help indicate the applicability of scholarship in this vein to classroom engagements with The Dew Breaker. In my view, comparative migration studies seek to defamiliarize categories like “immigrant” through attention paid to the manifold ways in which migration experiences differ from and inflect one another. Defamiliarizing such terms is

66  Nathan A. Jung an important undertaking at a time when discourses on migration tend to ignore nuance. Migration comes to us via many different lenses—­ cultural, political, legal, and historical—which refract many different narratives of cross-border movement. These stories must be disentangled to some degree to avoid the collapsing of categories into an indistinct ­category of (for example) “migrant.” Again, it is impossible to treat every type of migration comprehensively in this chapter. However, the migration experience explored in The Dew Breaker—diasporic migration— covers so much differential terrain in and of itself that the methods-based approach to genre proposed in this chapter is useful in breaking up the assumed conventions of even this single, specific sub-category. Robin Cohen’s scholarship on diaspora provides an excellent point of entry. Cohen’s critical approach in Global Diasporas: An Introduction is typological, insofar as it approaches the complexities of diasporic migration with a classificatory mindset. To grapple with the ever-­expanding circulation of the term “diasporic” across different populations, Cohen differentiates between types of diasporic culture, beginning with what he calls archetypal “victim” diasporas. Victim diasporas are ­characterized by a “break event” in their histories (slavery or pogroms, for example), and an ensuing “collective memory and myth about the ­homeland, its location and its achievements” (Cohen 54) arising from mass ­involuntary migration. The Dew Breaker clearly addresses such victim diaspora frameworks. However, a number of critics (including Michelle Wright2 and Silvio Torres-Saillant3) have disputed “victim” ­diasporas as a g­ eneral descriptor for diasporic experience. While certainly open to ­criticism, Cohen’s typological approach offsets the predominance of any one ­category precisely through its comparative approach, which proves apt for the kind of applied genre analysis advocated for in this chapter. The Dew Breaker, in its very employment of the short story cycle, invites such a comparative approach. In order to unpack its view of diasporic culture, readers must approach the question of migration with some systematic intent, as the structure of the text abuts different characters with different relationships to different homeland states. Students must generically define the migration types employed in stories dealing more nearly with Cohen’s description of diasporic communities against other migration categories like tourist, refugee, or undocumented worker. In the case of The Dew Breaker, the story/chapter “Night Talkers” offers a salient example of this imperative, as it stages a contrast between two diasporic “return narratives.” Return narratives describe a common story structure in diasporic literature wherein dispersed ­characters return to their homeland state. Such returns are often quest-like, and often proceed with an intention of reconciling disparities between ­hostland and homeland identities. In “Night Talkers,” the main character, Claude, travels back to Haiti to let his grandmother know that his landlord (Ka’s father) is likely the Dew Breaker that killed his parents.

The Dew Breaker  67 Claude’s motivation in returning is ultimately debatable, but he may be seeking to confirm an impulse for revenge. This impulse demonstrates the tendency in return narratives predicated on victim diaspora paradigms to confront the cycle of traumatic violence issuing from involuntary dispersal, as Claude both experiences the aftershocks of trauma in the hostland, and returns to the homeland in order to come to grips with the origins of these aftershocks. More worryingly, his consideration of the actions to be taken in light of his identification of the Dew Breaker suggests another turn of the cycle of ongoing bloodshed. And yet, the story/chapter builds toward Claude’s meeting with another character, Dany. Dany is by all accounts a Haitian American with no direct connection to Haiti; he was thoroughly assimilated to American culture, became involved with drugs, and killed his own father as a result. In Dany’s case, the origin of trauma becomes harder to locate. As opposed to return narratives that fix the homeland state as a site of perpetual violence, Dany finds life in Haiti rehumanizing; his unconditional acceptance among the community ­despite his outsider status speaks to cultural essentialist discourses in diasporic culture that present the homeland space as a salve for violence. The notion that these twin narratives might interact within the segment of a single story/chapter only speaks to the urgent need for further comparative work across multiple story/chapters. In grappling with the task of classifying the formal characteristics of The Dew Breaker itself, students must also grapple with the genres of migration found both within and across its various segments. In form and content, structure and migration, teachers can assert the contingent, provisional nature of the categories they establish, and make sure that students know that the categories they define, while based on observable fact, are not ontological, and are thus subject to change based on the actual contents of the work they explore. This is the major empowering feature of teaching genre in The Dew Breaker as a method. In-Class Exercises The methodological emphasis I have placed on teaching genre in The Dew Breaker is born from its classroom application. Having established the critical background informing this understanding of genre as a method for combining formal and social analyses, I would now like to discuss more concretely how such a model actually applies in the classroom, and to highlight the ways it might help students address the complexities of The Dew Breaker in direct exercises. When assigning Danticat’s text, teachers have great flexibility in deciding how much contextual material on genre they choose to offer students in advance. For those seeking a comprehensive critical overview, the lists in Dunn and Morris’ book offer excellent surveys of entrants to the short story

68  Nathan A. Jung cycle, while the work of Ingram, Dunn and Morris, Kennedy, Nagel, and others in this chapter form an initial bibliography for those wishing to assign critical pieces on genre and the short story cycle in particular. I have included a syllabus that integrates such material into a comparative approach to migration topics in the short story cycle genre, and puts Danticat’s work in conversation with other related texts. However, one might alternatively have students confront the confusion of the text with no context, and use this as a teachable moment. In either case, once the text has been assigned and read, there are further applications in terms of lectures, discussion, and assignments that deserve brief handling. Lectures on The Dew Breaker can involve many different elements. Based on my previously discussed experiences, I have found it unnecessary to assign critical readings on the topic of genre and/or deliver expansive lectures on the topic. This is due to the fact that all of the core items of concern can be treated in an interrogative form, via exercises that respond to basic questions raised in lecture. These questions include the prompts of “what do we call this text,” and “how does this text relate to American literature” outlined in the previous sections of this chapter. Most importantly, such questions, delivered in lecture, are meant to provide a stimulus to class discussion, which is a precursor to the individual student’s engagement with genre as a method. Teachers can raise open-ended questions about the connections between characters and settings in different chapter/stories, such that students can also raise different contributions to an evolving, class-wide system of tracking such connections. Incorporating discussions into an ongoing, graphic taxonomic system that classifies stories, settings, and characters based on student input is, in my experience, a highly effective way to both provoke discussion and showcase the cumulative effect of minute formal observations. Teachers can get creative with this system, to the extent that different sections might have different categories, columns, and color-coding based on the observations gleaned from discussions. In keeping with my overall emphasis on treating genre as a methodology, this approach also resonates with process-based composition pedagogies. With every recurrent chapter/story, students can make new entries to the established system, which they know in advance to be arbitrary, but useful. Once the text has been read, the class as a whole can discuss how the end “data” compares, and how different perspectives on migration relate to the formal interconnections of the text outlined visually in the accumulated graphic. In terms of assignments, I have composed two exercises designed to allow students to apply methodological approaches to genre in The Dew Breaker. These exercises are based on the premise that the uniqueness of the short story cycle lies in its modular nature. As a result, the two following exercises ask students to participate in reconfiguring the text.

The Dew Breaker  69

Exercise 1: Editorial One of the fundamental formal distinctions teachers wish to impart to students of literature is the difference between plot and story. This exercise aims not only to make such a difference immediate, but also to connect the weight of structural decisions to the thematic explorations of migration in The Dew Breaker. While this exercise could be conducted after students have read two or more stories, it makes more sense to introduce it after students have completed reading the work. The first step in the exercise is to assign each “chapter” of the book an alphabetical designation. This designation is a convenient shorthand that allows for the reshuffling of stories required by the rest of the exercise. Having assigned these designations, the exercise asks students to rearrange the received story/chapters of The Dew Breaker in chronological order. They can do this in small groups or independently; it might also be assigned as an out-class project, and could work well in the context of a community blog or even survey. In the second part of the exercise, students are asked to assume the role of editor to Danticat’s work. The basic premise of this assignment is that, as editors, the intact chapter/ stories have been inadvertently spilled across on their desk. The order of the stories as intended by Danticat is unclear, and she cannot be reached to make the needed decisions regarding the overall structure of the text. The publication date is looming; editors are thus put in the position of having to figure out the order of the chapter/stories, and whether or not any should be cut out altogether from the sequence. The one stipulation I place on this assignment is that students cannot choose to replicate the original order of the stories. In addition to changing the order, they must provide a brief critical account of their rationale for reordering the story/chapters. In my assignment prompts, I also ask that this rationale include some discussion of how their rearrangement might influence reception of the migration narratives collectively expounded by The Dew Breaker. This portion of the exercise could also occur in-class; however, assigning it as an outside activity would allow for more reflection on the parts of students. Finally, teachers could tally their different orderings to present an overview of general points of agreement or otherwise.

Exercise 2: Creative Whenever and however possible, I draw out the diverse skill sets of my students through assignments that demonstrate critical engagement with texts through a variety of different means. Therefore, while I maintain the benefits of traditional research essays, I try to engineer creative acts into the learning objectives of such essays. This orientation is exemplified in the second exercise I devised with regard to The Dew Breaker.

70  Nathan A. Jung It can function for other texts as well, particularly those that hew closely to the tension between parts and whole that characterize the short story cycle (my syllabus includes several examples of such texts for teachers to consider). For this exercise, students contribute another “chapter” to The Dew Breaker. In keeping with the working definition of genre as always-­ already mixed and evolving, I encourage students to consider the generic form they would like to introduce to the text. I also encourage them to consider the impact of their addition to the text’s perspective on ­migration. In terms of generic forms, I advocate a fairly large openness. One obvious route would be to compose an original short story that might be “slotted in” to the novel-in-stories. This gives students with creative writing backgrounds an opportunity to engage with the author. For students that are less given to creative composition in this sense, I also encourage multi-media additions. Students can work in song, video, nonfiction prose, or any other medium or genre of their choosing. This affords a wide variety of additions that students can present and discuss collectively. There are stipulations to this openness. The first is that students must consider how their addition reinforces, contests, and/or modifies the established cycle of The Dew Breaker. Along with their creative ­addition, they must provide a brief critical account that demonstrates their ­consideration of such concerns, especially regarding the modulation to the migration narratives advanced by the narrative. This, I find, helps achieve the learning outcomes of the class by focusing on the dual senses of migration I have previously outlined. In terms of assessment, creative work often poses a challenge; therefore, students were asked to compose proposals, vetted before they initiate the composition of their additions. This helps me provide certain parameters, which must be met in advance, and grading is predicated on the student’s evident willingness to meet these parameters in good faith. The results of these additions are shared in class, prompting discussion and further formal analysis of the work as a whole. The technique was very successful in engaging students through alternate assignments, while also hewing close to the learning outcomes concerning the short story cycle and the differential fields of migration in Danticat’s work. Genre’s ability to overlay these elements is fundamental to my ­advocacy of teaching it as a method in The Dew Breaker. For students, this ­contribution opens up ways to discuss not only diasporic migration, migration generally, or literary form, but also the ways in which these factors mutually inflect one another, and the ways in which their own systems of description and classification might produce new insights into the ambiguous nature of Danticat’s text.

The Dew Breaker  71

Notes 1 Davis, Rocio. “Oral Narrative as Short Story Cycle: Forging Community in Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Krik? Krak!’” Identities, special issue of MELUS 26.2. (2001): 65–81. 2 Wright, Michelle. Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage ­Epistemology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2015. Print. (Italicize the book title). 3 Torres-Saillant, Silvio. “One and Divisible: Meditations on Global ­Blackness.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 29 (2009): 4–29. Web. 6 Sept. 2010.

Bibliography Chandler, Daniel. “An Introduction to Genre Theory.” Daniel Chandler ­Professional Website. 11 Aug. 1997. visual-memory.co.uk/Daniel/­documents/ intgenre/intgenre.html. Web. 10 Sept. 2017. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print. Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. Print. Dunn, Maggie and Ann Morris. The Composite Novel: The Short Story Cycle in Transition. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. Print. Falquina, Silvia Martinez. “Postcolonial Trauma Theory and The Short Story Cycle: Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker.” ES. Revista de Filologia ­Ingelsa 35 (2014): 171–192. Print. Gottesman, Ronald. “General Editor’s Statement.” Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. Genres in Context. 7–8. Print. Ingram, Forrest. Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century: Studies in a Literary Genre. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Print. Kennedy, J. Gerald. “Introduction: The American Short Story Sequence – ­Definitions and Implications.” Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. Ed. J. Gerald Kennedy. ­Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print. Nagel, James. The Contemporary American Short Story Cycle: The Ethnic ­Resonance of Genre. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 2001. Print. Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Culture. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1999. Print. Wellek, René and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956. Print.

4 StoryCorps Incorporating Local Oral History Collections in the Classroom Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon Introduction In spring 2017, students at Indian River State College (IRSC) began using the free app, StoryCorps, to record personal narratives of ­fellow ­community members in order to provide an oral account of those who live on the Treasure Coast of Florida. The purpose of this app is to ­provide “a way for individuals to connect in a meaningful way with those close to them, and to gain insight into the lives of others.” IRSC ­Libraries led the effort to begin the oral history collection via StoryCorps as part of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read grant awarded in 2016. In select classes, students gained deep understanding of ­immigrant experiences or cultural values of communities through face-to-face i­nvolvement documenting the stories of others while at the same time provided a public service via the publication of their interviews. The lesson served to expand IRSC’s study of the diverse Treasure Coast population while directly addressing part of the college’s mission of embracing ­diversity, developing a highly skilled workforce, and providing cultural enrichment and lifelong learning. Local recordings on immigration, language learning, music, college readiness, food, culture, reading, and more have been recorded and ­archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and are available for classroom use. This essay seeks to share learning objectives, lesson plans, and evaluative results of this effort and provide resources to aid others wishing to launch similar projects.

Jour des Aieux Oral History Project While immersed in our current digital world, a time before computers, let alone a time before there was writing, is difficult to imagine. Those who lived in an oral culture in the time before literacy valued different things, thought in different ways, and communicated with each other much differently. A topic that connects the present StoryCorps project to the past is the understanding of the role of memory where communication is concerned. Those who lived in oral cultures depended on their

StoryCorps  73 memory for everything. This reliance on memory determined meaning. Since only so much information could be retained at a time, the here and now took precedence over things that happened in the past.1 Dayto-day life dictated which words were used repeatedly and the meanings assigned to those words. Time and place, along with relationships, were the driving force in determining what was valued and what was retained. In performances during the primarily oral time, recitations were conducted in a formulaic way, and the pieces of the story that were shared at each performance were most likely unique, with parts of the story added, omitted, or enhanced depending on the narrator’s feelings at the time and how the audience was responding to the story and storyteller. 2 Memory continues to be an aspect of oral history collection that is intensely studied. An oral telling of a story provides meaning which cannot be provided by timelines and other fact-based data, 3 even if retellings of the same events by different people will often bring about different versions of the same event. Given all these differences, as well as the time that has elapsed since those times, why would a group of librarians and instructors at IRSC launch an oral history project in 2017 using the ­StoryCorps app as part of their programming for an awarded NEA grant? The answer is that despite the differences between the past and the present, stories and those who tell them remain powerful in today’s world. Stories shared from person to person provide a point of view not captured in other historical accounts. Active listening is a skill required of most college graduates, yet dedicated activities to help students ­improve this skill are difficult to implement.4 Despite the transition from oral tradition to literacy to the digital revolution, remnants of orality ­remain necessary in today’s culture. Being able to express verbally, by way of talking, about what one has read and summarize the information one has read is a critical skill for students to master—in this way the oral and literate skills inform one another.5 Orality continues to be a necessity. The tools to understand and explore orality are constantly changing, but the ability to create and share stories remains relevant. What Is StoryCorps? StoryCorps is an organization that was created in 2003 to gather stories from all over America. Interviews of everyday people are collected and stored in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. There are permanent recording booths in several cities as well as mobile booths that travel the country. In 2015, the mobile app equivalent was launched, which allows anyone who downloads the free app to participate in the project without the need to visit a StoryCorps booth—permanent or mobile. Over 100,000 people have contributed interviews since 2003, of which some are selected, edited, and broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR). Oral history interviews deal in open-ended qualitative

74  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon data, holding it outside the purview of most Institutional Review Boards (IRB).6 The StoryCorps app requires users to acknowledge consent to have their recordings uploaded to the StoryCorps website and be accessible to all. A Historical Context for StoryCorps The role of performance is a connecting point worthy of exploration between orality and current day StoryCorps. Communication differences between oral and written accounts of a story are notable. Abrams notes “each oral history is a performance and the understanding that the meaning or interpretation of the source lies not merely in the content of what is said but also in the way it is said.”7 In historic oral storytelling, the same words and patterns were used repeatedly. The rhyming and repetition allowed storytellers to remember cherished parables and ­fables from generation to generation, but it also allowed the storyteller to change up the story depending on the audience that the storyteller had in front of them. This interactivity between the interviewer and interviewee is often what makes the StoryCorps radio segments so moving and what will make class projects engaging. In a recent StoryCorps educational project similar to IRSC’s, the focus of the assignment was on developing active listening skills for students.8 There are numerous social and economic benefits associated with mastery of active listening, and utilizing the StoryCorps platform allows for immediate evaluation on the part of the students.9 The shift from oral stories being written down, and then recorded, to now being recorded and played back on demand via a smartphone app is a perfect example of remediation as described by Bolter.10 Personal stories being handed down from one generation to another is a long-held tradition. When these stories were written down, they were preserved and could be shared with more people. A famous example of this type of transcribed interview is the New Deal Federal Writer’s Project in which the government sponsored over 6,000 writers to interview over 100,000 Americans.11 This project, aimed at employing out-of-work authors, recorded the life experiences of thousands of Americans. Orality offers an opportunity to understand one another in ways that the written word cannot provide. We must be careful in how we appreciate the recorded narrative. When an oral interview is transcribed, for instance, the pauses are left out. The emotion of the narrator’s voice is absent. Without orality, “we flatten the emotional content of speech down to the supposed equanimity and objectivity of the written document.”12 Oral dialogue that is accurately captured, such as with the StoryCorps app, allows for human emotion as well as the words to be expressed via the interview. Portelli claims, “Oral sources give us information about ­illiterate people or social groups whose written history is either missing or distorted.”13 Oral history is what Abrams terms a mutable

StoryCorps  75 genre, meaning it may start as a personal exchange but then may be transformed into something else, “such as a scholarly article or a film or theatre performance.”14 Remediation is particularly noticeable in the Storycorps.me platform, where recorded stories from the app are available for browsing online. The app prompts users to assign keywords to stories that they record and upload to the platform. These keywords can refer to locations, organizations, or almost any of a wide array of topics. In an oral culture, an audience’s makeup as assumed by the storyteller often determined the story they were told. The storyteller would alter each telling to meet the expectations of the live audience. The remediated version of storytelling in the StoryCorps platform is the ability for the audience to dictate what type of story they want to hear based on the keyword typed into the search box or selected from a list generated from the creator; these lists are constantly growing based on the stories shared via the app. Bolter specifically points to culture’s shifting expectations of the digital to re-envision how content is received. In the StoryCorps platform, “cyberspace is not, as some enthusiasts have argued, divorced from the natural and social world that we know; rather it is an expression and extension of both.”15 The new way of sharing and listening to stories via StoryCorps has provided a more flexible way for Americans to learn about and hear perspectives from one another. These highly personal stories are shared and the audience in cyberspace is able to self-select their own experience. Not only is StoryCorps remediating previously transcribed stories and oral stories told person to person, but also it is doing so in ways that are more authentic. By utilizing the app, the interviewer and interviewee can pause, reflect, and craft the story they wish to tell, including uploading a digital photo to provide a visual connection for the listener. The recording and photo can be viewed along with a description and the keywords to provide context to the recording. These attributes of the StoryCorps app provide opportunities for the creators to customize the experience for the listener. This expression of self is a perfect example of Bolter’s idea that technology could “participate in our ongoing cultural redefinitions of self, knowledge, and experience.”16 Project Description IRSC Libraries began the Jour des Aieux Oral History Project as part of the NEA Big Read grant program in spring 2017. The NEA Big Read book chosen was Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat. The book is Danticat’s telling of her family’s history, with a focus on her father, who immigrated to America before sending for Danticat and her brother years later, and her uncle, who raised her during that time in Haiti. Brother, I’m Dying tells the story of Danticat’s childhood and immigration to New York from Haiti by moving back and forth through time

76  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon to share her experiences and those of her family members. Danticat’s written family history as told in her memoir is largely based on spoken stories passed down to her from her family members. Danticat also weaves in Haitian sayings and folktales from her culture’s oral tradition throughout the narrative. Facts and primary source documents were used to structure the timeline of events and provide additional details and context. The facts gathered from primary sources allow the reader to experience a more complete history by including events Danticat did not witness firsthand, because she was not yet alive or she was not physically present for them. To celebrate the storytelling tradition explored in Brother, I’m Dying and to give the IRSC community the opportunity to tell and preserve their stories, IRSC Libraries included the Jour des Aieux Oral History Project powered by StoryCorps in the NEA Big Read grant proposal. The goal was for the IRSC community to read Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat’s memoir and participate in events centered on the book’s themes including Haiti, immigration, storytelling, and family. Student and community member participation in Jour des Aieux took place at events and through service learning and non-service learning courses in spring 2017, including Elementary Spanish I, English Composition II, and American History: Reconstruction to the Present. Jour des Aieux is Ancestry Day, a Haitian holiday celebrated on ­January 2, which is where the project’s name derived. The project allows students and community members to tell, record, and preserve their stories using the StoryCorps app, which uploads their oral histories to be archived in the StoryCorps.me website and at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Recording the interviews allows the stories to be preserved for the future and for others to hear and learn about other people’s personal and cultural histories. IRSC Libraries is in the process of archiving the oral histories in their institutional repository as important pieces of community history. Goals The goals for the Jour des Aieux Oral History Project are meeting the learning objectives, preservation of the stories of Treasure Coast residents told via recorded oral interviews, and further use of the recorded oral histories as learning tools in the classroom and for use by community members and researchers. At the conclusion of the project, IRSC Librarians will archive the recordings and relevant metadata in the institutional repository. A training program for student archival participation will be developed beginning in summer 2017. One use of the preserved oral histories as a classroom tool will be as material to teach students in history courses proper archival methods as they work to add the recordings to the institutional repository. Exposure to the StoryCorps.me platform

StoryCorps  77 has already shifted how culture is taught in some IRSC Spanish courses. For instance, while discussing issues relevant to Spanish-speaking immigrants in the United States, the website was brought up in class and recordings on relevant topics were then played and discussed. Lesson Plan After testing the StoryCorps iPad app, IRSC Librarians created a l­esson plan for use by partner educators and an instructional handout for ­students and community participants. The lesson plan describes the goal and purpose of the lesson, and the oral history project as a whole, then follows the objectives, materials, procedure layout. The stated lesson goal and purpose was described in the lesson plan. It states: Students gain deep understanding of immigrant experiences or cultural values of other communities through face-to-face involvement documenting the stories of others, while at the same time providing a public service via the publication of their interviews. The lesson serves to expand the Indian River State College’s study of the diverse Treasure Coast population while directly addressing part of the school mission of embracing diversity, developing a highly-skilled workforce, and providing cultural enrichment and lifelong learning. The Oral History Project Goal and Purpose was listed as follows: ­“Indian River State College Libraries will publish a rich source of primary source material for use by students, faculty, and researchers around the world.” Learning Objectives The learning objectives for the two-part lesson which leads to a ­completed oral history recording are for students to learn to: • • • • • •

Communicate clearly: Communicate to audiences in a manner that is clear, accurate, and sensitive to cultural differences; Think critically: Use appropriate resources to improve understanding of human values and belief systems and apply this understanding creatively, rationally, and empathetically; Work cooperatively: Learn how to think, act, and feel in personal and social situations and apply this understanding toward working cooperatively with others in diverse communities; Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose; Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and access and use information ethically and ­legally; and Create a digital story using 21st-century digital literacy skills.

78  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon The lesson was completed in two class periods. During the first class period, a librarian met with the class to describe the NEA Big Read program, the Jour des Aieux history project’s purpose and goals, and the connection to Danticat’s works including Brother, I’m Dying and Krik? Krak!, which was the Just Read, Florida! selection for students in the Adult Education programs. Danticat’s works Brother, I’m Dying and “Caroline’s wedding,” a short story included in her book Krik? Krak!, are examples of narrative writing which tell immigration stories and describe aspects of life in a new country. The hope was that in meeting with and interviewing someone, possibly from a different country, and with their own personal narrative to share, students would connect with the interviewee and their culture and history, the text, storytelling, and the oral tradition as depicted in Danticat’s works. During the first lesson, it was explained to students that the oral ­histories will be stored online and in the American Folklife Center, as well as potentially in IRSC’s institutional repository. Students were given the opportunity to opt out or to participate anonymously. Great care was taken to ensure students understood that their recordings would be public and searchable. Students were advised to either not include their (full) name or focus on topics and questions they felt comfortable sharing with the world. Special considerations were discussed including the possibility of anonymity for those interviewing community members and the necessity of release forms for all parties. The final part of the first class period was devoted to downloading and signing in to the StoryCorps app (if the students would be using their own devices) and becoming familiar with the app. IRSC Libraries offered iPads for students completing the interviews during class time, during a Big Read event, or in a library by appointment. Students going out into the field to interview community members were instructed to download the app on their smartphones or tablets and take care to use an alias during setup if they would like to remain anonymous. Students were provided with handouts describing how to use the app and what to include for the metadata fields. The first class meeting ended with instructions for the students to begin preparing for their interviews by identifying someone to interview, an overall direction for their interview, and writing interview questions including ideas for potential follow-up questions. These components differed based on the course and the assignment as structured by the professor for that course. See Appendix A for a copy of the handout. For those conducting the interviews during class time, the second lesson focused on conducting and recording the interviews. The librarian arrived with iPads loaded with the StoryCorps app. Students received a refresher on what was covered during the first lesson. Using a document projector to show the steps for preparing an interview in the app was found to be helpful. Librarians provided opportunities for questions and

StoryCorps  79 answers. Students were then given the rest of the class period to find a quiet place to record their interviews with their classmates. For some courses, students paired up and took turns recording their interviews of one another. A librarian and/or the professor were available to help with any technical difficulties and to offer guidance on adhering to the assignment parameters for that particular course. Ideally, at the conclusion of the second session, interviews were successfully submitted via the StoryCorps app with the keyword IRSCReadsDanticat and IRSC included somewhere in the keywords or location field so that librarians and professors could locate the recordings for grading and preserving. Incorporation into IRSC Courses One traditional section of English Composition II at the Mueller Campus in Vero Beach, FL, participated as a class for a graded assignment. The students chose their own teammate from within the class and took turns interviewing each other, creating two distinct oral histories. The professor allowed the students to choose a topic for the interview. Many of the students used the sample questions provided in the StoryCorps app. A few pairs decided to go another direction focusing on a current event close to their hearts or their education and career path. One section of American History: Reconstruction to the Present used the StoryCorps project to interview community members in St. Lucie County about their experiences and memories of desegregation in the local area. The students received a condensed version of the lesson plan from an IRSC Librarian after receiving the assignment information and instructions from their professor. The IRSC Librarian and professor co-taught the StoryCorps lesson catered to the students’ unique participation in the project. Students downloaded the app on their personal devices and iPads were provided for those without a device handy. Using the document projector and an iPad loaded with the StoryCorps app, the librarian walked the students through the steps for creating an account, adding an interview, and preparing an interview. A sample was recorded and then all metadata was entered. Students asked questions as they arose. Technical questions were fielded by the librarian, while the professor addressed questions related to the class assignment. Two sections of Elementary Spanish I incorporated the StoryCorps project into the curriculum as a service learning assignment. The ­students in the Spanish course were encouraged to find a partner during Encuentros, times when the Spanish students visit an English as a Second Language (ESOL) classroom to practice conversational skills and learn about each other’s culture, or to arrange to record someone they already knew who has lived in a Spanish-speaking country. The Spanish course students participated in the lesson plan with an added cultural sensitivity component to ensure the students were understanding and

80  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon respectful toward their native Spanish-speaking peers. Sample questions were discussed during the lesson in which the Spanish instructor and the librarian shared appropriate as well as inappropriate questions to ask during the interviews. Oral History and Libraries Outside of the classroom, IRSC Libraries also promoted Jour des Aieux to students and community members who visited any of the libraries. This promotion included descriptive Jour des Aieux bookmarks and a page on IRSC’s LibGuide describing and promoting the project. The Pruitt Campus Library is a joint-use library with the St. Lucie County Library System. In addition to serving the students on the Pruitt Campus, the library also serves the St. Lucie West and Tradition communities in St. Lucie County. Several community patrons expressed interest and were able to record their stories at the library. The librarians shared some of these stories as examples during the StoryCorps lesson in the participating courses. Search #IRSCreadsDanticat at storycorps.me to browse recorded interviews. Results There was formal participation in the StoryCorps lesson plan and project as a class requirement for a total of four sections of three courses in the spring semester of 2017. The largest challenge involved access to students. IRSC Librarians do not carry course loads and were dependent upon faculty interest in the StoryCorps project in order to incorporate the lesson and record it as a graded assignment. For instructional faculty interested in including this or a related assignment in their curriculum, this barrier is removed for blended and face-to-face learning and surmountable for fully online courses. In reviewing the oral histories submitted at the time of this writing, it is clear that the students generally met the learning objectives through the completion of the two-part lesson and the oral history interview project. Some of the learning objectives are difficult to measure definitively, but in listening to the recordings, it appears that the students and the interviewees succeeded overall in communicating clearly and thinking critically. Students excelled particularly in working cooperatively and in creating a digital story using 21st-century digital literacy skills. While the quality and clarity of the interviews varies proportional to the amount of preparation put into developing the questions and deciding on the general direction, all students worked cooperatively and respectfully with their partners. In listening to the recorded oral history interviews, it is occasionally evident that the interviewer and interviewee

StoryCorps  81 misunderstood one another. In the vast majority of these occasions, the interviewer asked appropriate follow-up questions to more clearly define the path of the interview. Sometimes nervousness and a lack of familiarity with the partner appeared to contribute to the difficulties that arose in communicating clearly. The learning objective of thinking critically was met through active listening and appropriate, relevant responses to the interviewee’s answers and stories. Students are often asked to demonstrate their ability to think critically in writing. The opportunity to foster active learning skills, quickly understand, and process the story and information being told, and then to use that information to generate relevant, follow-up questions is a worthwhile, oral, critical thinking exercise. All of the students succeeded in finding and working well with a ­partner. Some students interviewed a classmate or family member, ­others interviewed a person from another class and area of study, and yet others interviewed community members. Some students took turns in the interviewer role, creating two separate recordings. The training provided before students began recording is believed to have helped them to conduct the interviews and interactions with an appreciation of cultural differences. The interviewers asked questions and follow-up questions that demonstrate their understanding of the complexities of culture. They asked their interviewees about where they consider home, the food commonly eaten there, the geography of the area, the demographics and history of their communities and families, traditional dances, popular sports, language, and values. Students demonstrated an understanding of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information by ensuring that the content of their StoryCorps projects including the recorded interview and any connected digital photographs consisted of original content ­created by the interviewer and interviewee. All participating students were required to sign a release form giving permission to post their recordings and photos online at the StoryCorps.me site and archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The opportunity to participate anonymously was also provided. This option was not considered initially, but some participants voiced concerns about tying their identity to their oral histories because of their undocumented status or the sensitive nature of the recorded conversation. This concern demonstrates that students understand the ramifications of an individual’s digital footprint and the potential economic, legal, and social issues that can arise from telling one’s story “on the record.” The learning objectives of learning to use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose and learning to create a digital story using 21st-century digital literacy skills were met in learning to use the StoryCorps app and iPads to successfully complete and save their interviews, and seeking out help from a librarian when help was needed.

82  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon Most students successfully used the StoryCorps app to set up, prepare, record, and upload their interviews without additional assistance. Many students were not accustomed to using iPads or the accompanying operating system. None of the students were previous users of the StoryCorps app. The project gave students the opportunity to practice locating and installing an app, exploring and using keywords, taking a digital photo, and using unfamiliar software and hardware. Some students had difficulty with the technology. Most of the difficulty could be tied to not reading the handout instructions prior to their interview and not allowing enough time for successful project completion if they did experience technical difficulty. The instructors and librarians received a few frantic students who recorded their interviews outside of the app or did not make an appointment ahead of time to use library equipment. These hurdles were overcome by assistance from the librarians. In future iterations, additional tools, such as videos and tutorials, will be created to serve as a reminder for how to successfully use the ­StoryCorps app. Future Considerations When launching a similar project, there are several policy considerations to make. First, educators may want to check with their institution’s administrative entities about the legalities and best practices involved in recording students and community members and housing those recordings online. It is recommended to share policies or best practices regarding safety and well-being with students, especially those conducting their interviews outside of the classroom. Policies regarding traveling and working with interviewees in their homes should be determined. Those launching similar projects should have a plan in place to mitigate any issues which may arise from asking questions which cause the interviewees concern. IRSC Libraries created release forms and asked all student participants to sign them. A separate release with space for a parent or guardian signature was provided for minor students. Release forms are being stored in locked office drawers. Another key component of this project is that participants were never asked to evaluate or analyze any aspect of their experience during any part of the oral history collection—they were only contributing oral recordings to the massive StoryCorps database.17 The StoryCorps app does contain language about permission and copyright violation, but the use of releases is encouraged, especially in the case of minor students. During the first lesson, the project, the app, and online storage of the oral histories are explained fully to the students. When participants will be from the community, we recommend to present these considerations to them when possible and to provide written information for the students to provide to the person they are interviewing.

StoryCorps  83

Conclusion From a preservation standpoint, this project could be much more effective and comprehensive through further engagement with instructional faculty or a community organization that motivated students or community members to take the time to record the oral histories of those living in the Treasure Coast. Because IRSC Librarians do not carry course loads, our ability to compel students to prepare and record oral histories interviews was limited. This limitation has led to a collection of oral histories, which, while interesting, is not representative of the community as a whole. From an educational perspective, the Jour des Aieux Oral History Project was a worthwhile endeavor. The majority of the recordings are informative and enlightening. The students were clearly engaged and interested during the recordings. The feedback from students was positive and many stated that they had never participated in something similar previously. The majority of students met the learning objectives of the lessons and project. As a library program and part of the NEA Big Read grant period, the oral history project was a success. The project provided additional exposure for other components of the Big Read including events and the chosen book, Brother, I’m Dying. Through their participation in this project, students were able to interact with Danticat’s memoir in a different way. Students were able to interact with Danticat’s immigration story and the rich storytelling culture described in her memoir were experienced in a new way by telling, or helping another tell, their own stories. Through the Jour des Aieux Oral History Project, the IRSC community was able to learn a modern way of sharing stories and preserving them for others to enjoy.

Notes 1 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (London: Routledge, 2012), 46. 2 Ibid., 59. 3 Lori Ann Garner, “‘Stories Which I Know to be True’: Oral Tradition, Oral History, and Voices from the Past.” Oral History Review 43, no. 2 (20 June 2016): 263–291. 4 Nathaniel Simmons and Kelly E. Tenzek, “‘Listening Is an Act of Love’: Learning Listening through StoryCorps.” Communication Teacher 30, no. 1 (2016): 18, doi:10.1080/17404622.2015.1102307. 5 Matei Calinescu, “Orality in Literacy: Some Historical Paradoxes of Reading.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 6, no. 2 (1993): 178. 6 Lyda Wright, “Macon Memories: An Oral History Project at Randolph-­ Macon College.” College & Undergraduate Libraries 18, no. 1 (2011): 19, doi:0.1080/10691316.2010.525397. 7 Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London: Routledge, 2010), 22. 8 Nathaniel Simmons and Kelly E. Tenzek, “‘Listening Is an Act of Love’: Learning Listening through StoryCorps.” Communication Teacher 30, no. 1 (2016): 17–21, doi:10.1080/17404622.2015.1102307.

84  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon 9 Ibid. 10 Jay David Bolter, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001). 11 Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London: Routledge, 2010), 4. 12 Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State U of New York P, 1990), 48. 13 Ibid., 47. 14 Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London: Routledge, 2010), 25. 15 Jay David Bolter, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001), 98. 16 Ibid., 189. 17 Alexis E. Ramsey, Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2010), 265.

Bibliography Abrams, Lynn. Oral History Theory. London: Routledge, 2010. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001. Calinescu, Matei. “Orality in Literacy: Some Historical Paradoxes of Reading.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 6, no. 2 (1993): 175–190. Freund, Alexander. “Under Storytelling’s Spell? Oral History in a Neoliberal Age.” Oral History Review 42, no. 1 (2015): 96–132, https://muse-jhu-edu. ezproxy.net.ucf.edu/journals/oral_history_review/v042/42.1.freund.html. Garner, Lori Ann. “‘Stories Which I Know to be True’: Oral Tradition, Oral History, and Voices from the Past.” Oral History Review 43, no. 2 (20 June 2016): 263–291. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge, 2012. Portelli, Alessandro. The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany: State U of New York P, 1990. Ramsey, Alexis E. Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2010. Simmons, Nathaniel, and Kelly E. Tenzek. “‘Listening is an Act of Love’: Learning Listening through StoryCorps.” Communication Teacher 30, no. 1 (2016): 17–21, doi:10.1080/17404622.2015.1102307. “StoryCorps,” 2017, https://storycorps.org/. Wright, Lyda. “Macon Memories: An Oral History Project at Randolph-Macon College.” College & Undergraduate Libraries 18, no. 1 (2011): 16–36, doi:10 . 1080/10691316.2010.525397.

Appendix A

Student Handout



1 2 3 4

Tap the StoryCorps icon on the IRSC iPad. Tap + to begin a new interview. Tap prepare an interview. Title your interview: IRSC Reads Danticat: Partner Name interviewed by Your Name 5 Tap What questions will you ask. 6 Browse through the categories to see suggested questions, or write your own! A good starting place: What is your name? How old are you? Where you are from? What is your background? (location, region, cultural background, first language, etc.) Is there a story you would like to preserve? Is it your story or a story you were told? How old were you when the story took place? Who told you the story? How old were you when you first heard it? Who is in the story? Tell me about some traditions that have been passed down through your family. When and how did they get started? Tell me a great story you know about someone in your family. Are there any classic family jokes, stories, or songs you can share with me? What do you see as your family’s legacy? What do you hope will be your legacy? Are there any traditions that have been passed down in your family? Can you tell me about them? 7 Tap View My List to see your selected list of questions—be sure to pick at least 7–10 questions in order to have an interview length ­between 10–20 and twenty minutes. 8 Tap Who Will You Interview to enter partner’s name and email address and also tap Add Participant and add your name and email address. 9 Record your interview.

86  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon 10 Tap Done when complete. It will continue recording until you ­confirm you are finished. 11 Fill out post-interview questions. Summary: Include a short sentence or two which describes the subject matter of your interview. Keywords: Include the suggested keywords below, plus any which describe your interview content: General: IRSCReadsDanticat, NEABIGREAD Organization: IRSC, Indian River State College, Location: Ft. Pierce, FL Picture: If you feel comfortable, post a picture of the two of you. If you mess up, don’t worry, just keep going. This is real life in real time, so it won’t be perfect.

Appendix B

Lesson Plan

Jour des Aieux Oral History Project, powered by StoryCorps Lesson Goal & Purpose: Students gain deep understanding of immigrant experiences or cultural values of other communities through face-to-face involvement ­documenting the stories of others, while at the same time providing a public service via the publication of their interviews. The lesson serves to expand the Indian River State College’s study of the diverse Treasure Coast population while directly addressing part of the school mission of embracing diversity, developing a highly-skilled workforce, and providing cultural enrichment and lifelong learning. Oral History Project Goal and Purpose: Indian River State College Libraries will publish a rich source of primary source material for use by students, faculty, and researchers around the world. Objectives Communicate clearly: Communicate to audiences in a manner that is clear, accurate, and sensitive to cultural differences Think Critically: Use appropriate resources to improve your understanding of human values and belief systems, and apply this understanding creatively, rationally, and empathetically Work cooperatively: Learn how to think, act, and feel in personal and social situations, and apply this understanding toward working cooperatively with others in diverse communities Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally Create a digital story using 21st century digital literacy skills

88  Kendra Auberry and Angie Neely-Sardon Materials • iPads (provided by the IRSC Libraries) • StoryCorps app (loaded on the iPads) • Script handout • Interview questions Procedure 1 Students will be familiar with narrative writing/memoirs from reading Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying or “Caroline’s Wedding” from the short story collection by Danticat, Krik? Krak! 2 Librarians will initiate discussion by asking some general questions about elements of her memoir writing and a short introduction to the project prior to the recording date. 3 Students will listen to a clip of an interview already created followed by an impromptu live interview to show them how easy it is to be interviewed/conduct an interview. (https://storycorps.me/interviews/) 4 Students will receive a script handout along with the library iPads to see how to navigate the StoryCorps app. 5 Students should practice with the StoryCorps app prior to the day they meet the person they are interviewing. Jour des Aieux Oral History Project IRSC Libraries and partners are holding events as part of the NEA Big Read: IRSC Reads Brother, I’m Dying program in spring 2017. Our goal is that the IRSC community will read Haitian American author E ­ dwidge Danticat’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying and participate in events c­ entered around the book’s themes including Haiti, immigration, storytelling, and ­ oliday celebrated on family. Jour des Aieux is Ancestry Day, a Haitian h January 2. The oral history project is an opportunity to interview someone about a story from his or her life or the life of a family member. Recording the interview allows the story to be preserved for the future and for others to hear it and learn about other people’s personal and cultural histories. What is StoryCorps? StoryCorps is an independently funded organization whose mission is “to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.” You may have heard their recordings on NPR. The recordings are interviews between two people which offer a chance to learn about the person ­being interviewed and some unique aspect of or story from his or her life. ­StoryCorps offers a free app we will be using to record our oral histories.

StoryCorps  89 How to Participate Each oral history project will need an interviewer and an interviewee. Decide which one you plan to be. Way, either your recording will only be a few minutes so you should come prepared with the brief story you want to be asked about or the list of questions you want to ask someone else. Prepare your story. If you would like to tell a story, choose one before you arrive to record. Some story ideas include: • • • •

Your immigration story Your family’s immigration story A folktale you remember from your childhood A story someone in your family used to tell you about your family

Prepare an outline or chronology of your story. The interviewer will move the recording along using their prepared questions, but if you have your story clear in your mind, it will help things go more smoothly. Create a list of interview questions. If you will be the interviewer, come prepared with a list of interview questions. Question generator by StoryCorps: https://storycorps.me/ question-generator/?view=best-questions A good starting place • What is your name? • How old are you? • Where you are from? What is your background? (location, region, cultural background, first language, etc.) • Is there a story you would like to preserve? • Is it your story or a story you were told? • How old were you when the story took place? • Who told you the story? How old were you when you first heard it? • Who is in the story? • Tell me about some traditions that have been passed down through your family. When and how did they get started? • Tell me a great story you know about someone in your family. • Are there any classic family jokes, stories, or songs you can share with me? • What do you see as your family’s legacy? What do you hope will be your legacy? • Are there any traditions that have been passed down in your family? Can you tell me about them?

Part II

Gender Alliance, Pedagogy, and Engaged Learning

5 (Re) Writing the Black Female Body or Cleansing Her Soul Narratives of Generational Traumas and Healing in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory Tammie Jenkins The Black women’s literary tradition was once believed to have begun in the United States with oral and written texts by Lucy Terry, Francis Harper, and Harriet Jacobs. However, recent scholarship has opened this perspective to include simultaneous works produced in other parts of the diasporic world such as Jamaica, Trinidad, and Cuba in which women of African descent in these regions used their words to ­impart their narratives of lived experiences into global conversations of ­womanhood and sexuality. In this literary tradition of Black female ­authors, Edwidge Danticat endeavors to have the voices of Haitian and Haitian ­A merican women included in diasporic dialogues of Black ­womanhood and ­sexuality in Breath, Eyes, Memory. Published in 1994, this book began as a series of essays chronicling Danticat’s life in Haiti and her immigration to the United States at the age of twelve. Focusing on a specific family of women, the Caco, Danticat documents the unspoken traumas experienced by Black women in the trans-­ Atlantic world through the characters of Martine and Sophie. Her novel is considered as a semi-autobiographical, first-person narrative told from the perspective of Sophie Caco. Like Sophie, Danticat moved to New York at the age of twelve a few years after her parents had immigrated. Elvira Pulitano determined that Danticat employs situated knowledge to create “diasporic sites” that enable her to recontextualize Haiti as both homeland and distant land.1 This is evidenced in Sophie Caco’s journey from girlhood to womanhood as she travels from Haiti to New York to live with her biological mother, Martine Caco, and back to her native land for closure two years after her eighteenth birthday. Using her lived experiences as a Haitian American woman, Danticat constructs her character’s narratives as splintering dialogues

94  Tammie Jenkins connected to a common source and location to document the history of the Caco family. This chapter utilizes Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, ­Memory to examine the ways that a diasporic Black author blends historical facts and fictions with fragments of her own lived experiences as pedagogy (re) writing discourses of the Black female body and the hidden shame of Black women in the trans-Atlantic world. Using the women of the Caco family, specifically Martine and Sophie, I explore how generational ­traumas are repeated in their lived experiences. I employ Janet Wright’s description of pedagogy as “empowerment that comes from acting on one’s own behalf,” to illustrate how the mother-daughter dynamics between Martine and Sophie are predated by Black diasporic women attempts to (re) write their narratives in larger societal conversations regarding womanhood, femininity, and sexuality.2 I explore the expectations associated with Black womanhood that contributes to the traumas Martine endures and inflicts on Sophie. Utilizing relevant ­excerpts and citations from the novel, I consider how Danticat uses her words and their attached meanings to link her characters to their ancestral past, while enabling them to (re) write their bodies as sites of resistance, locations of healing, and spaces of empowerment. In this chapter, the following guiding questions are employed: What are the generational traumas ­experienced by Martine and Sophie? In what ways does Danticat use the links between the past and the present to (re)write the body of her female characters? How does healing occur in the novel for Martine and Sophie? What are the pedagogical strategies employed by Martine and Sophie? In what ways do Martine and Sophie become empowered?

Testing, Sexual Assault and Multigenerational Transgressions During the institution of slavery, Black females were exposed to a ­barrage of inhumane and sexualized mistreatment. They were subjected to brutal beatings, coerced breeding, and forcible rape as a means of ascertaining physical and psychological control over their bodies. In Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Bell Hooks maintains that “rape was a common method used to subdue recalcitrant black women. The threat of rape or other physical brutalization inspired terror in the psyches of [Black] women.”3 She determined that the systematic use of sexual assault against Black women permeated their consciousness as a whole and facilitated their low social status and continuous devaluation into the present. This is a contention that Danticat revisits in Breath, Eyes, Memory with sexual assaults and violence serving as textual ­sceneries and metaphors for mother-daughter relationships, especially Martine’s and Sophie’s, in which both are simultaneously silent and verbal in their interactions with one another and other characters.

(Re) Writing the Black Female Body  95 The women in the Caco family were impacted not only by the legacy of plantation slavery in Haiti, but also by their culture’s obsession with female purity and ensuring that their daughters virtue remained intact until they were married. Starting at the age of their first menstrual cycle, their mother inserts one of her fingers into the girl’s vagina feeling for her hymen. If resistance is met, the hymen is believed intact, otherwise she is deemed to have failed her test. Just as in Haiti, female chastity was an important part of Black American culture as well. The expectation that Black females would preserve their virginity until marriage had been practiced in various forms by Black Americans. For instance, mother’s observed the way their teen-aged daughters walked and noted whether her pattern had changed, sniffed their undergarments for traces of semen, or had her stand with her knees together noting if her thighs touched (vagina down to knees). If changes were perceived, the girl was taken to a doctor who visually conducts the test by looking directly at the vaginal opening and informs the mother if the girl’s hymen is broken or unbroken. Although these Black Americanized versions were slightly less invasive than their Haitian counterpart, the act of testing remained a humiliating experience for the person enduring this type of sexualized inspection. These often futile acts recontextualized the Black female body as an eroticized border crossing in which memories of the past are revitalized in the present. In Breath, Eyes, Memory female purity testing is a generational ­practice originating in the rural areas of Haiti which over time spread to the more urbanized regions of the country. These tests were performed by mothers to ensure that their daughters remained pure and able to find a suitable husband. These conceptual discourses are utilized by Danticat to “defy conventions [and] represent rape and other sexual trauma [in ways that were] concretely grounded in women’s experiences and affirms the reality of their trauma.”4 For example, when mother and daughter reunite in New York, Sophie realizes that she bore no resemblance to her mother, Martine, the woman she had often compared to Erzulie Dantor, the Haitian Vodou goddess of women and children. This deity is Sophie’s version of the ideal mother, a myth she developed in Haiti and transported to New York in much the same way that Martine had brought her the memory of her sexual assault. After Sophie’s arrival in New York, Martine begins reliving her experiences in Haiti with greater intensity that eventually draws Sophie into her mother’s generational ordeal and mental instability. Martine became obsessed with ensuring that the sins of her past were not visited upon Sophie. She viewed Sophie as the manifestation of her unfulfilled potential and the person that will uplift the family by restoring honor to the Caco name. Their budding relationship is tried when Sophie began embracing more Americanized perspectives such as freedom to choose one’s own path. At the age of eighteen, Sophie developed a fondness for Joseph, an African American musician who lived near them. The pair secretly

96  Tammie Jenkins dated and Joseph proposed marriage which Sophie later accepted. Their ­attachment coupled with Martine’s own fears, led her to implement the old Haitian custom of female purity testing which the Caco women had endured for generations. After Martine caught Sophie sneaking in late one night from an outing with Joseph, Martine tested her for the first time to the shock and dismay of Sophie. She stated “she took my hand with surprised gentleness, and led me upstairs to my bedroom. There, she made me lie on my bed and she tested me.”5 Sophie was stunned by the way her mother portrayed an aura of empathetic care as she employed one of her fingers to check Sophie’s vaginal area for signs of violation. When Martine learns that Sophie is still a virgin, she is temporarily satisfied as she excited the room and left Sophie to recover the pieces of her dignity alone. From her first test to the day that Sophie’s hymen was broken, Martine performed weekly purity examinations on Sophie in hopes of saving her daughter from the nightmares that she lived daily. These checks violated Sophie’s body in the same way that Grandma Ife and her unidentified father had desecrated Martine’s. Over the six years that Sophie lived with her mother, Martine had inadvertently transferred her anxieties, phobias, and internalized ­generational suffering to Sophie most of which was anchored in this most hated and dehumanizing practice. The history of the Caco women in Breath, Eyes, Memory was one of trauma that included sexual assault, acts of transgressions, and silencing. Each of which marginalized and ostracized the narratives of Martine and Sophie in the novel. Like the women in the Caco family, their diasporic sisters were marked by the remnants of slavery and subjugation in which Black women writers endeavored to break the cycle and (re) write these discourses based on their lived experiences.

(Re) Writing the Past as Present Early Black women writers were concerned with representations of Black females in larger societal discourses of womanhood and sexuality in literary works. Through the incorporation of historical accounts Black women writers began engaging in intertextual conversations with one another and the larger society. These narratives were framed by oral tradition in which “black historical experiences” were refashioned as an artistic expression in dominant discourses.6 She, further, described texts written by Black women as a metaphorical laying on hands in which their African traditions and Black cultural practices were explored via their written words. Maintaining that “[B]lack woman’s relationships to history is first of all a relationship between mother and grandmother,” Susan Willis discovered that Black women use texts handed down (orally or written) from their female ancestors as inspiration for the recreation of these social narratives in a present-day context.7

(Re) Writing the Black Female Body  97 For instance, in Haiti, Grandma Ife endeavored to resolve the conflict between Martine and Sophie by having the younger of the two walk toward her elder. Grandma Ife said, “Sophie, walk to your mother.”8 Sophie did not adhere to Grandma Ife’s command, instead she stood frozen by her memories of living with Martine and the harsh words in their final conversations. Sophie was ordered once more by Grandma Ife to move toward ­Martine, who intervenes and states that “It is okay” as she begins to walk toward Sophie. Martine’s decision to greet Sophie first marks a turning point in their relationship.9 She demonstrates her willingness to break with social expectations and her hope for a new start with Sophie. Expanding the dynamics embedded in Black women hidden traumas and their mother-daughter implications, Danticat employs the characters of Martine and Sophie to explore how these conversations are ­derived from the sharing of lived experiences in ways that contribute to the creation of new knowledge. Their works revealed a Black woman’s consciousness that redefined the Black female body through their unconventional use of literary forms and Standard English language. Studying Breath, Eyes, Memory as a set of intertextual narratives in which the character of Sophie is used to “frame [and to] (re) write” D ­ anticat’s ­interactions with herself and others, Nancy F. Gerber found that ­Danticat utilized encoding to rupture and to negotiate “the boundaries between [Sophie] and her mother Martine.”10 These are the narratives that Danticat used to shape the story of the Caco women, particularly the bond between Martine and Sophie. Utilizing intergenerational conversations, the women of the Caco ­family retell narratives of their marginalization in ways that ­unsilenced their voices and add new layers to their present discourses. These ­characters draw on the African oral tradition of storytelling to pass on knowledge, instill values, or explain customary practices such as doubling, female purity testing, and the role of Black women in their community. ­Exploring the use of mythological narratives in works written by ­female Caribbean writers, Heather Hewett discovered that these authors ­employed ­cultural scripts to deconstruct the ways that Black women are ostracized in larger societal conversations of womanhood. This is e­ vident in Martine’s and Sophie’s accounts of Martine’s sexual assault by a man they both associate with the Tonton Macoutes. The Tonton Macoutes (1957–1986) is the name given to the unofficial private militia of President Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and later, his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.11 This group’s name is derived from Haitian folklore in which Uncle Gunnysack kidnaps, murders, and consumes the remains of unruly children. The Tonton Macoutes under orders from one of the Duvaliers or by their own volitions committed theft, murder, and forcible rape against Haitian citizens from all walks of life. Perhaps this knowledge contributed to the conclusion reached by

98  Tammie Jenkins the Caco family that the person who sexually assaulted Martine was a member of the Tonton Macoutes and not just a random individual ­unaffiliated with this group. First, Martine offers her abbreviated version in which she tells Sophie that “a man grabbed me from the side of the road, pulled me into the cane field, and put you in my body.”12 Even though Martine’s account is oversimplified due to Sophie’s age at the time of this retelling, the premise remains the same in later renderings. Martine continued, I did not know this man. I never saw his face. He had it covered when he did this to me. But now when I look at your face I think it is true what they say. A child born out of wedlock always look like its father.13 Disavowing any knowledge of her assailant’s identity, Martine unconsciously revealed to Sophie the possibility that she resembles her unidentified father. Perhaps Martine’s conclusion is based on Sophie’s unfamiliar facial features or the lack of prevalent contours that are the hallmark of the Caco family. Yet, Sophie’s internal dialogue adds another level to Martine’s story years later. She has reconciled herself with the circumstances surrounding her mother’s sexual assault and her conception. In her rendering, Sophie explained that her father might have been a Macoute. He was a stranger who, when my mother was eighteen years old, grabbed her on her way back from school. He dragged her into the cane fields, and pinned her down on the ground. He had a black bandana over his face so she never saw anything but his hair, which was the color of eggplants. He kept pounding her until she was too stunned to make a sound. When he was done, he made her keep her face in the dirt, threatening to shoot her if she looked up.14 In Sophie’s version, her mother was an innocent victim of a vile man who sought to use her body for his own pleasure and discard her afterwards. Martine was “grabbed,” “dragged,” “pinned,” and “pounded” by a man who physically subdued her before penetrating and impregnating her with Sophie. This account inadvertently provided Martine with power over her destiny, which was reappropriated by her rapist who had to violently subjugate her to ensure her submission to his desires. Martine’s body, in Sophie’s rendering, is rewritten through her age which was changed from sixteen to eighteen. Hence, Martine was a young adult whose narrative becomes embedded in girlish naivety as evidenced by her walking home alone from school. She was then ­emboldened by Sophie who described how Martine was maliciously beaten “until she

(Re) Writing the Black Female Body  99 was too stunned to make a sound” indicating that ­Martine endeavored to resist the advances of her rapist, but was overpowered.15 By submitting to her assailant, Martine demonstrated her innate ability to ­endure, but she relinquished her personal power to her rapist which he maintained until her death. At which time Sophie was able to move past the pain of her existence toward healing her unseen wounds. Through the ­incorporation of historical accounts of Black women’s lived experiences, Danticat uses Martine and Sophie as literary portrayals of Black ­women’s ancestral past in ways that rewrite the bodies of her female characters in the present. These interconnected ­relationships serve as bridges linking Black women, their ancestral past, and their present across time and space.

Cultural Scripting, Remembering, Healing Mysticism has been a part of the lives of human being since the dawn of mankind. Individuals in various parts of the world search for deeper meaning to their existence, in addition, to compromising divine explanation for natural phenomena. This is true of African who worshipped deities referred to as orishas through ritual, music, chants, and sacrifices. These were the religious elements that traveled to the New World aboard the slave ships as enslaved persons endeavored to reestablish connections between their African homeland and that of their diasporic locations. Once they arrived in the Americas, enslaved persons were forced to convert to Catholicism and discontinue their long-held sacred practices. They reinvented their traditional deities syncretized with Catholic saints in an effort to heal their wounded souls and remain connected to their African and other cultural heritage. The recovery process in Breath, Eyes, Memory is anchored in the spiritual beliefs of the characters. Upon her arrival in New York, Martine visited churches whose services reminded her of her spiritual practices in Haiti. She finally settled on a Pentecostal church where she worshipped and prayed for the wounds of her past to reconcile with her present. But, Martine still remembered the myths, deities, and other spiritual practices of her homeland, which she shared with Sophie. While Sophie clung to the goddess Erzulie ­Dantor for strength and comfort, Martine relied on the Marassas for inspiration and support. Both Erzulie Dantor and the Marassas are deities who protect children than the poor. For Sophie, Erzulie Dantor was the ­image of the mother she desired, whereas the Marassas represented the ­mother-daughter bond that Martine wished to have with Sophie. Each relied on their spiritual roots in Haitian Vodou as a foundation for healing their unspoken pain and their injured psyches. People endure emotional scars which are either treated in isolation based on the symptoms they manifest rarely holistically explored. ­Physical traumas that elicits disturbing responses such as Martine’s

100  Tammie Jenkins night terrors or Sophie’s sexual phobia and bulimia are seldom perceived by these individuals as the result of a disconnect between their spiritual life and mental acuity. Martine, for instance, initial trauma began shortly after her first menstrual cycle. She was periodically tested and systematically violated by her mother, whose finger was a precursor to the male phallus that sexually assaulted her when she was sixteen years old. ­Sophie described Martine’s irrational fears and subsequent ­ostracism from her family. She stated that for months she [Martine] was afraid that he would creep out of the night and kill her in her sleep. She was terrified that he would come out and tear out the child growing inside her. At night, she tore her sheets and bit off pieces of her own flesh when she had nightmares.16 Sophie explained how Grandma Ife sent Martine to live with a rich mulatto family in Croix-des-Rosets to do any work she could for free room and board, as a restavek. Even though my mother [Martine] was pregnant and half insane, the family took her in ­anyway because my grandmother had cooked and cleaned in their house for years, before she married my grandfather.17 These ordeals fragmented Martine’s psyche which was then ­compounded by the lack of family support she received immediately following her ­sexual assault and impregnation. Grandma Ife in an effort to save ­Martine sent her away in hopes that she would find peace and heal from the emotional trauma she had endured. Instead, Martine became more emotionally scarred and mentally detached reality upon her return to La Nouvelle Dame Marie with Sophie, she “tried to kill herself several times” which facilitated Tante Atie, her older sister, to assume the role of surrogate mother to Sophie.18 However, Martine’s death, twenty years later, healed her of all the anguish she had sustained from her first purity test to her last breath. Whereas, Sophie realized that she need additional assistance to ­overcome the sexual traumas she had experienced. She joined a sex phobia which enabled her to express her feelings regarding the purity tests and the ways in which she violated her body with the spice pestle. Sophie was able to trace her reluctance to fully experience pleasure when making love with her husband, Joseph, to Haitian purity testing. She makes an impromptu visit to Grandma Ife where she expresses her disdain with this practice. She stated that “it is the most horrible thing that ever happened to me. When my husband is with me now, it gives me such nightmares that I have to bite my tongue to do it again.”19 Grandma Ife endeavors to assure Sophie that her feelings are temporary. She ­explained that “with patience, it goes away” which Sophie replied that “it does not.”20 This prompted Grandma Ife to tell Sophie that a mother assumes the responsibility for the safety and well-being of their

(Re) Writing the Black Female Body  101 child (ren) and she later gives Sophie an Erzulie statue as a peace offering. This gesture reminded Sophie of the ideal mother that she had once imagined was Martine. After a night of cleansing tears, Sophie awoke in Grandma Ife’s home with renewed vigor and purpose as she went for a morning jog. Her path was dirt roads, graves, and hills with each symbolizing her journey toward intrapersonal freedom and reconciliation with her mother, heritage, and homeland.

Labyrinths, Old Death, Symbolic Rootedness, New Life Many of the fore-mothers in the Black women’s literary tradition, ­utilized storytelling to speak out against the social stigmas or to remove the mental shackles of their patriarchal subjugation experienced by Black females in the United States and the diasporic world. For example, Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl used her ­narrative to create a cipher which permitted her voice to be heard in larger ­societal ­discourses and provided inspiration for her diasporic ­sisters who ­remained in physical, mental, or social bondage. Jacobs drew on her life as a slave girl in the home of Dr. Flint. She described the constant barrage of ­sexual innuendo and attempted sexual assaults she endured. She broke the p ­ rotocol by choosing to enter into a relationship with Mr. Sands, one of Dr. Flint’s white neighbors. From their union, two children were born, but Dr. Flint remained undeterred. Faced with an almost impossible decision Jacobs chose to flee Dr. Flint’s grasp and make her way north. Once she settled into her new life, Jacobs told her story to abolitionists who transcribed and published her account. Her novel provided a first-hand account of the horrors of enslavement and the ways in which Black females were sexualized by white men. Jacobs’ autobiography served as a source of inspiration for other Black women and a rallying cry for them to share their stories with the world. This custom continued in new forms as each generation endeavored to add their narratives to these larger discourses. Danticat, in Breath, Eyes, Memory, introduced the characters of ­Martine and Sophie Caco as examples of Black women who endeavored to live their lives in spite of the traumatic experiences they had endured. The novel’s storylines and plot-points juxtapositioned their social interactions while paralleling the narratives of Martine and Sophie between Haiti and the United States. Martine, initially, fled Haiti in hopes of leaving her nightmares and sexual assault behind; however, in her dreams she relived this incident. Her paranoia increased when she became pregnant by Marc. Martine told Sophie that her unborn child had talked to her. She stated …it spoke to me. It has a man’s voice, so now I know it’s not a girl. I am going to get it out of me. I am going to get it out of me, as the stars are my witness. 21

102  Tammie Jenkins Her fears and untreated psychological disorder facilitated her break with reality. In her diminished capacity, Martine began hearing her rapist’s voice which contributed to her decision to have an abortion. She went to the clinic to have the procedure, but was given twenty-four hours to think about her choice. Unable to bear the thought to having the baby and unable to quiet the voice of her rapist in her head, Martine chose another option—suicide. Lying on the cold bathroom floor, Marc found a bloody, semiconscious Martine. She died in route to the hospital ­after explaining to Marc why she decided to end her pregnancy and life simultaneously. Later, Marc told a distraught Sophie that Martine “had stabbed her stomach with an old rusty knife. Seventeen times.”22 The seventeen had significance in some way to the narrative of Martine. Perhaps she was seventeen when the actual rape occurred or when she gave birth to Sophie or seventeen was the number of times her rapist called her a filthy whore. Nevertheless, the Martine’s act of self-mutilation signified her desperate attempt to return her body back to her rapist and to reclaim her lost spirit. This empowered Martine by enabling her to determine the best path for her life based on the previous experiences. Her suicide freed her from the trauma of her sexual assault and broke the impact of the generational trauma she had endured. Unlike Martine, Sophie was able to name her pain and find liberation in deciding her own pathway. For instance, Sophie in an act of defiance broke her own hymen. This became an act of empowerment which ended the antiquated dehumanizing practice of purity testing, but resulted in her being kicked out of the house by Martine and contributed to their two year estrangement. Mother and daughter reconciled their past by returning to Haiti and forging a new relationship in the present. Sophie was then able to r­ eclaim her body by accepting that her family is her family and that Martine had only done what she felt was right. Sophie concludes her journey by accompanying her mother’s lover, Marc, and her body back to Haiti for burial. However, doing the funeral Sophie was overcome with feelings of love, anger, guilt, and remorse as she left the services and took refuge in a nearby sugar cane field. She vengefully attacked the stalks with her bare hands. By destroying the crops, Sophie symbolically broke with her past and emerged from the cane field empowered. She was now free to live her life on her own terms.

Conclusion/Educational Approaches The Caco women silently endured years of generational traumas spanning at three generations. Much of their turmoil was self-inflicted based on the social customs of their family and community while other was the result of their attempts to break away from tradition and forge new paths. Rooted in the African oral traditional of storytelling, Breath,

(Re) Writing the Black Female Body  103 Eyes, Memory was written on a trajectory that moves from Haiti to the United States and back. Employing these locales as her literary mediations between history, people, and cultural landscapes, “Danticat’s narratives” opened spaces in her character’s narratives and social interactions that were transgressive and fluid in ways that disrupted their use of (re) m ­ emory and nostalgia in their internal and external dialogues with one another. 23 This chapter examined the ways that Edwidge ­Danticat blended her lived experiences with historical facts in ways that allowed her to (re) write discourses of the Black female body and ­expose the hidden shame of Black women in its discourses throughout the trans-­ Atlantic world. The concept of education with regard to ­teaching the work of Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eye, Memory removes her narratives from semi-autobiographical to that of historical realistic fiction. However, using the contents of this novel in conjunction with the characters of Martine and Sophie, Danticat reconfigured their ­narratives of lived experiences in the context of currere. Cindy Kissel-Ito describes this concept as “a framework for autobiographical reflection on e­ ducational experiences from a subjective and narrative perspective.”24 This translates into Danticat use of stories from her childhood with her unique ability to connect them to those of Black women in the trans-Atlantic world. With the character of Martine representing the ancestors and Sophie their descendants each endure their traumas in ways that embolden them to uncover hidden pieces of themselves and one another that had been suppressed by years of suffering and marginalization. The generational ordeals that plagued the women in the Caco family are traceable to the impact of plantation slavery on the construction of the Black female body and the need to police it as a sexualized space. Their narratives were anchored in mother-daughter conflict relived in ways that placed each on a continuum of care-giver and gate-keeper in which one employs purity testing to silence and marginalize the other. In a fashion similar to her diasporic counterparts, Danticat used events from her life to (re) write the true history of Haitian and Haitian American women as situated knowledge in which ancestral memory played a dominate role in constructing the Black female body in a present-day context. Resolution to their inner and external persecution was centered in spiritual practices (e.g. Haitian Vodou) connecting them to a higher power while enabling them to question one another about past events and to share their pain with others. By recognizing aspects of themselves in others Black women writers are then able to empathize with their sisters and heal the wounds of their family history of devaluation. This enable Black women authors such as Danticat to share their narratives of lived experiences and to provide alternative interpretations for past events through parallel narratives reconceptualized in the present. Hence, enabling them to overcome the psychological traumas of their ancestry and finding freedom.

104  Tammie Jenkins

Notes 1 Elvira Pulitano, “Landscape, Memory, and Survival in the Fiction of ­E dwidge Danticat,” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 6, (Dec. 2008): 2. 2 Janet Wright, “Lesbian Instructor Comes Out: The Personal Is Pedagogy,” Feminist Teacher 7, (Spring 1993): 26. 3 Bell Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 18. 4 Beauty Braggs, “Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory: Historicizing the Colonial Woman,” in Literary Expressions of African Spirituality, ed. by Carol P. Marsh-Lockett and Elizabeth J. West (New York: Lexington Books, 2013), 178. 5 Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 83. 6 Joanne Veal Gabbin, “A Laying on of Hands: Black Women Writers ­Exploring the Roots of Their Folk and Cultural Tradition,” in Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and the Contemporary L ­ iterature Renaissance, ed. Joanne M. Braxton and Andree Nicola McLaughlin (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989), 249. 7 Susan Willis, Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience (Madison: The U of Wisconsin, 1987), 5. 8 Danticat, Breath, 161. 9 Ibid., 162. 10 Nancy F. Gerber, “Binding the Narrative Thread: Storytelling and the ­Mother­ emory,” Journal Daughter Relationship in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, M of the Association for Research and Mothering 2, (Fall/Winter 2000): 188. 11 Michael J. Stevens, “What is Terrorism and Can Psychology Do Anything to Prevent It? Behavioral Science and the Law 23, (July/August 2005): 6; S­ usana Vega-Gonzallez, “Exiled Subjectivities: The Politics of Fragmentation in the Dew Breaker,” Revista Canaria de Estudios Inglese 54, (Apr. 2007): 183. 12 Danticat, Breath, 59. 13 Ibid. 14 Danticat, Breath, 138. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid; Marcela Moyano, “Understanding The Restavek Phenomenon in Haiti Through Storytelling and Film,” International Relations and Diplomacy 3, no. 2 (Feb. 2015): 143. Moyano defines the term restevek as a system of servitude, historically practice in Haiti, in which children are sent away to live with wealthy families who could better provide them food and shelter. 18 Danticat, Breath, 138. 19 Ibid., 16. 20 Ibid., 156. 21 Ibid., 221. 22 Ibid., 229. 23 Pulitano, “Landscape,” 2. 24 Cindy Kissel-Ito, “Currere as Transformative Storytelling in Religious Education,” Religious Education 103, no. 3 (June 2008): 339.

Bibliography Braggs, Beauty. “Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory: Historicizing the Colonial Woman.” In Literary Expressions of African Spirituality, edited by Carol P. Marsh and Elizabeth J. West, 163–184. New York: Lexington Books, 2013.

(Re) Writing the Black Female Body  105 Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Federmayer, Eva. “Violence and Embodied Subjectivities: Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Scholar Critic 2, (Dec. 2015): 1–17. Gabbin, Joanne Veal. “A Laying on of Hands: Black Women Writers E ­ xploring the Roots of Their Folk and Cultural Tradition.” In Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and the Contemporary Literature ­Renaissance, edited by Joanne M. Braxton and Andree Nicola McLaughlin, 246–263. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989. Gerber, Nancy R. “Binding the Narrative Thread: Storytelling and the Mother-­ Daughter Relationship in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, ­Memory.” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 2, (Fall/Winter 2000): 188–199. Greenwood, Ashley. “Floating Roots: Diaspora and Palimpsest Identity in ­Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Watermark 7, (2013): 191–203. Hewett, Heather. “Mothering across Borders: Narratives of Immigrant M ­ others in the United States.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 37, no. ¾ (Fall/­ Winter 2009): 121–139. Hooks, Bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981. Kissel-Ito, Cindy. “Carrere as Transformative Storytelling in Religious Education.” Religious Education 103, (June 2008): 339–350. Moyano, Marcela. “Understanding the Rastevek Phenomenon in Haiti through Storytelling and Film.” International Relations and Diplomacy 3, no. 2 (2015): 141–150. Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric ­Review 5, (Autumn 1986): 34–47. Pulitano, Elvira. “Landscape, Memory, and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 6, (Dec. 2008): 1–20. Stevens, Michael J. “What is Terrorism and Can Psychology Do Anything to Prevent It?” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 23, (July 2005): 1–20. Willis, Susan. Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience. Madison: The U of Wisconsin, 1987. Wright, Janet. “Lesbian Instructor Comes Out: The Personal is Pedagogy.” Feminist Teacher 7, (1993): 26–33. Valiela, Isabel. “The Distorted Lens: Immigrant Maladies and Mythical Norms in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications 9, (2015): 1–11. Vega-Gonzalez, Susana. “Exiled Subjectivities: The Politics of Fragmentation in the Dew Breaker.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Inglese 54, (2007): 181–193.

6 Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak! Recovering History through the Silent Canvas Lisa Muir

Because of our constant participation in a state we call the present, we are ironically an integral part of a finite space of time we do not fully grasp. Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat does not explain her native Haiti either historically or geographically in her collection Krik? Krak!; instead, a non-Haitian reader comes to understand what it means to feel Haitian, to live a painful historical present, one permeated with powerlessness, dread, and fear. Unless part of Duvalier’s pack of roving soldiers, the male characters of these ten seemingly disconnected stories exhibit little self-esteem and even less support to the females in their lives, whose voices have been dismissed. The women, on the other hand, while holding even less power than their male counterparts, have bonded within an underground community of support by using silent communication and repetition, which transcends the chronological, moving generations both back through history, and ultimately forward again. The act of turning speech into the habitual over time results in a sense of repetition so ingrained as to go seemingly unnoticed, yet, when understanding has been achieved, the legacy is female strength against male aggression. Women dominate Danticat’s Krik? Krak! Nonetheless, they are ­controlled by male figures who appear, though usually only briefly, as cruel and controlling figures. At the crux of Krik? Krak! are the women living in the aftermath of male destruction following the 1937 massacre of Haitians by Dominican forces. In order to cope, they formed a secret society as protection, using a repetitive construct of communication so removed from the patriarchy as to be considered a unique form of ­silence itself. In other chapters of Krik? Krak!, subsequent generations of their daughters do the same, some, for instance, holding their tongues in ­traditional public arenas such as marriage, some even entering the realm of insanity, a more personal and impenetrable type of silence. Latin American writer Denise Chávez points to the potential disruption caused by previous generations in Loving Pedro Infante (2002) when her character Irma laments that contemporary women are left “playing out our parents’ melodramas, our ancestors’ locura. We’re stuck either on the altar or in the gutter” (230).

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  107

Danticat’s Daughters Danticat’s daughters, seem to be sentenced to the same fate, strive to move beyond their parents’ locura—sometimes actual madness, other times the absurd and unforeseen circumstances of their lives. But only the casual reader would say that Danticat leaves her female characters to gather themselves up or to fall apart. Instead, the women learn control through a kind of silenced ritual. For instance, while Caroline’s mother Hermine Azile in “Caroline’s Wedding,” the penultimate story in Krik? Krak!, mourns that the past “fades a person” (213), it has been that very past that Danticat’s characters have been shown to have previously perched on in multiple chapters for support. Yet, so many unanswered questions remain in Danticat’s work that it would be foolish to impose the conventions of Western fiction upon it. They are for the reader who believes in a beginning, middle, and end for historical events. Violent political upheaval has become the norm for Danticat’s characters who live in abrupt historical moments, which occur as implosions, to use Edouard Glissant’s term, within the violence of literary space. The result is women who learn control through ritual; however, ritual can only counter violence and provide comfort when involving a lengthy but healing repetition which no longer requires conventional communication, evidenced in the fifth piece, “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” when the maternal strength within Krik? Krak! is revealed. The first four chapters of Krik? Krak! move fluidly through time, ­ hirty-seven” ­“Children of the Sea” during a military takeover, “Nineteen T decades earlier, and “A Wall of Fire” and “Night Women” hovering somewhere between. By the following piece, “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” the mentally unstable Marie has become nearly mute, ­except to her “daughter” Rose whom she happily chats up about her day, praising her for her own quiet nature in never crying. M ­ arie’s employers speak only derogatorily about her, not to her, and the ­Dominican groundskeeper likely raped her, and the lack of male/female communication clear when the delusional Marie laments, “I should have asked his name before I offered him my body.” Of course, her e­ xplanations for picking up the dead and discarded Rose from a gutter and mothering it come as gibberish to the Dominican groundskeeper who turns her into the gendarmes. The story’s end presents Marie’s imagined silent tableau of a unified family: “We made a pretty picture standing there. Rose, me, and him. Between the pool and the gardenias, waiting for the law” (100). A look at Marie’s female ancestors clearly demonstrates their cross-­ generational survival through silence and ritual. By “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” Marie is as much abandoned by her husband as she is a runaway wife. She sees her mother Josephine only in her dreams where, though she is introduced to her grandmother and great grandmother, no exchange follows. Separated from her abusive husband,

108  Lisa Muir Marie lies alone in bed at night. Above her, her spectral mother notes, “She is now the last one of us left” (94), confirming the female silencing to follow if Marie is to have no child of her own. Marie, of course, yearns to be a mother but lost multiple children, significantly all girls, to miscarriage. She had even named each, offering emerging identities which were silenced before even any nascent speech could be uttered. Only here, halfway through Krik? Krak! do the female relationships between disparate characters become clear, revealing the chapters are not as separate as they seem. Danticat does not present her generations in chronological order so “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” ­becomes revelatory concerning the matrilineal bonds within previous chapters. In addition, the extent to the strength acquired through silent ritual practiced across the generations becomes evident. The reader recalls Marie’s mother Josephine, introduced in the earlier “Nineteen Thirty-Seven,” going mute herself at the imprisonment of her mother, Defilé, accused of murdering a child, as well as the ability to perform fantastic feats like possessing wings of fire. Defilé is purposely presented, along with the other female prisoners, as an unnamed ward stripped of her identity as well as the ability to speak to the male guards. Though she is able to speak to Josephine at her visits, there is little exchange given Josephine’s inability, or unwillingness, to talk, verbal exchanges of the present ­having become too emotionally wrought to be effective. A generation even earlier, in 1937, Defilé had watched her own mother Evaline being hacked to death by Trujillo’s henchmen, the dictator’s aim to silence a nation through abrupt banishment, causing Haitian workers to flee Dominican soil over the Massacre River. To cope with the devastation, survivors, including Josephine and Jacqueline, who also lost her mother in the massacre, soon after formed the Daughters of the River, creating a ritualized and protective language to ensure future safe encounters. While the covert wording in the questions and responses between the members when they meet in subsequent days, and then in later years, is beautiful, to outsiders the exchange becomes nonsensical, at first a curious but ethereal inquiry followed by a wandering response, and then another, and then another. Those not Daughters would perceive no satisfying concrete information, the conclave devolving into pretty gibberish. To the Daughters of the River, however, the necessary repetition of precise wording confirms safety and comprehension in the same way that religious chanting serves to express an understanding of the fundamentals of a belief system too personal to express, though profoundly understood by the participant. A lack of clear expression, what can be seen as mindless chanting on the part of the faithful, or mere repetition on the part of the Daughters of the River, ironically and silently conveys a depth of understanding by the speaker/participant. The din of what may appear to the outsider as tedious and redundant causes a regularity, its continuance offering comfort. The underlining

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  109 meaning has been silenced to others through its repetition. Therefore, in their exchange of ritualized questions and responses, the women express fear and loss as well as hope and life, not to anyone but themselves. Turning speech into the habitual may appear to imply a purposeless superficiality, but the ceaseless nature of the participant actually reflects an enduring strength. Two margins exist in Danticat’s life and fiction: the mappable dark line between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and the invisible line drawn in the early 1980s between Haiti and the United States due to refugee arrivals. While both lines divide, such divisions cause border crossers to search for community, a feeling Danticat echoes when she writes in her introduction to The Butterfly’s Way (2001), “Haiti has nine geographic departments and the tenth was the floating homeland, the ideological one, which joined all Haitians living in the diaspora” (xiv). History offers no mythic truth, but this does not mean that border dwellers are not ready to find credibility in their lives. Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) contends that border dwellers find strength from the lack of a concrete frontera, that “cultural collision” (100) creates “a new consciousness” (102). If borders can become fluid, so can time; therefore, this same collision can happen within time and between generations, evidenced by the ability of Marie, as seen in “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” to commune with her maternal ancestors, and later Hermine Azile, in “Caroline’s Wedding,” part of a church full of Haitian parishioners mourning a boatful of Haitian refugees sinking to their deaths. “Ma says all Haitians know each another,” says her daughter Grace, reinforcing the blurred lines between generations and time (169). Therefore, groups do not necessarily have to be transported or colonized by an authority to a single place to feel invisible lines of division and work to subvert them; similarly, women need not feel the burdens and restrictions of violent patriarchal authority in order to interact in meaningful ways. Releasing themselves from the chronological partitions of time, whether engaging in repetition that seemingly suspends time, or silence, which can halt progress altogether, the result still can be cross-generational meaningful communication within a timeless space. Today, we are all aware of the subject writing himself, but more frequently herself, into existence. One’s existence, of course, relies on time and place, and Edouard Glissant’s essay “The Novel of the Americas” (1989) offers insight into understanding the “assumptions around which” he feels “the work of the writers in the Americas instinctively revolves.” He calls a “tortured sense of time,” more specifically the “haunting nature of the past,” an “essential obsession” in American authors. For Glissant, the problem is not necessarily that of clarifying chronology. Instead, “The American novelist, whatever the cultural zone he belongs to, is not at all in search of a lost time, but finds himself struggling in the confusion of time,” and dealing with “snatches of time that have been

110  Lisa Muir sucked into banked up or swirling forces” (144). For Danticat, influenced by both Haiti and the United States, these “snatches of time” must be repeated in order to be understood. They must be returned to and charted, but because they become ritualized over time, the instruction need not be spoken. Yet, they must be repeated even when the repetition seems to yield no understanding, when no clarification could be verbalized in conventional ways. They must be repeated sometimes, seemingly, just for the sake of repetition. This ritualized repetition, however, is performed merely for the sake of completion, and provides hope for escaping the repetition, but, ironically, it is only through the repetition that one can ever hope that she, or a future generation, will escape the cycle. In other words, progression must involve repetition since repetition means the hope of escape. If the repetition were to stop, the hope would be lost and the lack of ritualized action would become a kind of collapse. Danticat’s more youthful characters offer this hope, but not in a pedestrian, idealistic way since their lives are frequently spent combating crushing social forces that offer them no opportunities. Instead, Danticat’s characters turn backward, returning to a sense of generational location, confounding time patterns in order to implode them and move forward. As stated, Danticat’s focus is on maternal generations, so repetition for male characters does not yield the same understanding. In “The Missing Peace,” following “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” the young soldiers Toto and Raymond repeat the safety signal, but their act becomes useless when the sign has been changed, unbeknownst to them, resulting in one shooting and wounding the other. The male use of language is shown as too situational, too random. Yet, in the same story, the grandmother of Raymond’s friend LaMort has saved herself throughout the decades by repeating “God’s regime” when questioned by various soldiers and so-called authorities of her allegiance to any number of regimes in power throughout her lifetime. LaMort’s own use of repetition occurs when she refuses to acknowledge her name, which clearly refers to her mother’s death at childbirth and which diminished her existence from the start, chooses to be called by her dead mother’s name Magdalène, resurrecting, or repeating, her mother’s existence. To do so is literally impossible, yet throughout Krik? Krak! female family members have been satisfyingly standing in for one another.

Women Solidarity and Caribbean Aesthetics The women of Krik? Krak!’s stories have learned to find strength in simplicity by looking beyond the violence around them within an ­environment of relative safety. For instance, the story of Princesses in the seventh piece “Seeing Things Simply” moves readers away from the dangers of Port au Prince to the seeming quiet security of a resort town with gleaming-white sandy beaches. In the very title “Seeing Things Simply”

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  111 the word simply serves to wipe away all the complexities that violence entails, for the women of Danticat’s stories have learned to find strength in simplicity by looking beyond the violence around them within an environment of relative safety. Similarly, the unnamed girl-author of the final piece, “Epilogue: Women Like Us,” sits within a feminine setting, almost encased in protection by a group of adult women working in a kitchen around her. Maternal comfort is evident in each story; therefore, Princesse’s nudity as a painter’s model in “Seeing Things Simply” does not seem sexual or overexposed, and the dangerous use of paper and pen in the girl-author’s hands in the epilogue creates less jeopardy than the women around her profess. As such, body and paper represent the silent white canvas on which each girl will compose her future, rather than having it written for her. Yet, the works’ young female characters are not mature enough to progress on their own, evidenced by the fact that each requires a mentor, who tacitly approves of her dangerous acts, encouraging her to view life through different perspectives, rather than through political male violence, which has always been the same in terms of crushing a populace and grinding it away. For instance, because of artist Catherine in “Seeing Things Simply,” Princesse desires to reach further, to capture and “paint the sound that came out of the shell,” and she hopes to portray “the feel of the sand beneath her toes.” Most telling, she wants “to paint herself,” feeling a power to create, not be created (137). Much later the girl-author of the epilogue sits within the protection of her mother’s legs, learning the “rules” of life, as her mother braids the strength of one thousand women into her hair. She stresses to readers that “With every step you take, there is an army of women watching over you” (222). And if such unity were not enough, “the old spirits … live in your blood” (223). While the daughters of Danticat’s various stories are guided by mentors and protected by many, their maturation remains far away, so each is yet to fully recognize her potential power; still, hints emerge. The narrator of “Seeing Things Simply” states clearly that “Each time she went to Catherine’s, Princesse would learn something different” (133). Each encounter becomes a lesson, with the lessons eventually transcending place and even the need for Catherine’s presence, emphasized when Princesse, alone at the beach during mentor Catherine’s week-long absence—which feels to the reader like a deliberate test on her mentor’s part—wonders at three spots of her own blood caused by the tip of a conch shell dripped onto her white shirt, “seeing in the blank space all kinds of possibilities” (138). Later when viewing a painting of herself created by Catherine, she “slowly becom [es] familiar with what she saw there” (139), portending a silent nascent ability to understand her future capabilities. “It struck Princesse that this is why she wanted to make pictures, to have something to leave behind even after she was gone, something that showed what she had observed in a way that no one else had and no one else would

112  Lisa Muir after her” (140). At the story’s end, Princesse draws two simple faces in the sand, and while they remain in a rudimentary state, she is now the painter. Similarly, the girl-author of the epilogue, too, has named each of her braids for the lost women, so their identities “come rolling off [her] tongue” with strength and ­confidence (224). Further defying the limits of categorization is Danticat’s ­deliberate presentation of ten separate stories. Krik? Krak! is described as a ­collection, but Danticat’s word choice is so precise that the stories read almost as poetry. That Danticat means to imply the ties between ­generations is clear, but the ties are meted out so rarely that the gulfs between generations in particular relationships emphasize the difficulty in connecting with history’s participants. Yet Danticat’s deceptively ­simple, separate short stories depend on one another so deeply that by the end of the work the reader may think Krik? Krak! should more appropriately be labeled a novel. These ties have far less to do with plot than with ­emotional understanding of lived experience, so much so that when Danticat offers the few direct maternal connections, as she does in “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” and later in “Caroline’s Wedding,” they profoundly affect a reader’s sense of a people and place. Glissant’s differentiation between matured modernity, “developed over extended historical space,” and lived modernity, “that which is abruptly imposed” (148), helps readers comprehend Danticat’s characters’ need to return to the point of historical entanglement, to a landscape, which is “open, exploded, rent” (145). To confront time, for Glissant, is to “deny its linear structure,” to struggle against the limits of time “in order to reconstitute the past, even when it concerns those parts of the Americas where historical memory has not been obliterated” (145). I would add, perhaps especially when historical memory has not been obliterated. Time for Glissant “implodes in us in clumps, transported in fields of oblivion where we must, with difficulty and pain, put it all back together if we wish to make contact with ourselves and express ourselves” (145). For Danticat, the violence of literary space allows for relocation to the historical locura of ­Glissant’s “lived modernity,” that which has been “abruptly imposed.” The ten stories of Krik? Krak! become beacons of light which snap off just as quickly as they offered illumination, yet with each fleeting glimpse at historical eruption, Danticat’s emphasis on the mother/child relationship remains constant, and it is through these relationships and imploded moments that both Danticat and the reader are able, as Glissant would say, to “make contact” within the violence of the literary space. The relationships remain so constant in some cases that it can ­appear the women are somewhat callously substituted for one a­ nother, as when Jacqueline appears at Josephine’s door one morning in ­“Nineteen ­T hirty-Seven” to begin the process of taking the place of Josephine’s ­dying and imprisoned mother. Studying the woman at her door,

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  113 Josephine even acknowledges her incarcerated mother’s potential, should she have “a chance to survive,” to possess the same “layers of ‘respectable’ wrinkles” she sees on the face of the interloper Jacqueline (34). When readers encounter Josephine’s confined mother, however, they find a woman so starved her skin is “falling in layers, flaps” (36), and who makes anything edible last for months by swallowing only the saliva produced through chewing the food pieces she keeps hidden in her pockets. Still, she “emerge[s] as a ghost,” the verb emerge still implying power (35). Jacqueline, too, re-emerges from the past. The seriousness of the question-and-answer exchange between a tentative Josephine and the visitor, mother-figure Jacqueline, completed literally to ensure the survival of each, is countered by the beauty of their ritualized wording involving drinking “dew” and finding one another through “the light of the mermaid’s comb.” But as equal a presence is Josephine’s deceased, and therefore silenced, mother Défilé who uses the visitor Jacqueline to “speak[ ] through me” (45). Though Défilé is already dead, having been beaten by the prison guards and then her body burned, she harbors and protects the feminine unspoken, which the substitute female mentor, obviously silently approved by Défilé, is able to tap since, for Jacqueline, “Her blood calls to me from the ground” (46).

Female-to-Female Mentorship The same cross-generational mentorship is evident in “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” when the unstable Marie picks up the discarded corpse of an infant and mothers it for several days, imagining herself married to the Dominican gardener and their employers’ grand house they desire to be their own. Marie calls out possible names for her new “daughter”—Eveline, Josephine, Jacqueline, Hermine, Marie Magdalène, Célianne—women of varied places in Haitian history. Moreover, the names are all ones the reader has heard or will hear within ­Danticat’s stories. By denying the linear structure of time, Marie is able to blend the women together through the presence of their absence. Generational differences disappear in the confrontation with history and time as the women appear above Marie’s bed at night. Encouraged, rather than ­discouraged, by her mother’s depiction of her as “the last one of us left,” she is introduced to the other ghost women “because they had all died before I was born” (94). Marie, whose every pregnancy has ended in ­miscarriage, interrupts time herself with her appropriation of Rose. “[I] had taken on her soul as my own personal responsibility” (98), says ­Marie, ignoring the decaying skin of the infant and covering her g­ rowing stink with perfume. On a first reading it becomes easy to label both Marie and Josephine’s imprisoned mother Défilé delusional. Marie is unable to recognize death in the infant’s purple lips, its silence, and its strong odor, a mixture

114  Lisa Muir Marie likens to “gardenias and fish” (94). At the story’s end she will be arrested for Rose’s murder, more specifically for “eat[ing] little children who haven’t even had time to earn their souls” (99). Yet, despite her young age, the infant Rose can be seen as a member of a mentoring feminine clan, instructing Marie silently how to take on her role of motherhood. Josephine’s jailed mother Défilé hails from “Thunderbolts, lightning, and all things that soar” (45), and faces a variety of similar accusations. Initially imprisoned for the murder of a small child in her care, her sentence is extended to life when guards decide she has “wings of flame” (35) and is capable of taking off her skin at night, cleverly fooling them by donning it quickly in the morning (36). However, the women are far more connected than their unfortunate associations with dead children imply. Marie’s abduction of Rose can be seen as an attempt to continue a succession of females by confronting the rules of time. Marie transforms Rose the infant into one of the ghost women above her bed, noting that Rose “had aged in four days as many years as there were between me and my dead aunts and grandmothers” (98). Therefore, despite her young age, the infant Rose can be seen as a member of the mentoring feminine unspoken, instructing Marie silently how to take on her role of mother. Danticat further erases the borders between stories, generations, and time when Défilé, Josephine’s imprisoned mother, is revealed to be Marie’s grandmother, implying Josephine herself is Marie’s mother. The women of Krik? Krak! are always already existing, unwilling to give up the “permanent, ritualized truth” of their existence (­ Glissant 1989, 14–15). They are able to walk through worlds of being, and they continue even in their absence because they refuse to yield to the forces of colonization or domination. For Glissant, a group’s preservation after domination requires the conscious effort of collectivity: “The flight of the Jews out of the land of Egypt was collective; they had maintained their Judaism, they had not been transformed into anything else,” a collectivity he feels was not necessarily maintained by Caribbean Creoles, no longer African. Glissant writes in “Reversion and Diversion,” I feel that what makes this difference between a people that survives elsewhere, that maintains its original nature, and a population that is transformed elsewhere into another people (without, however, succumbing to the reductive pressures of the Other) and that thus enters the constantly shifting and variable process of creolization (of relationship, of relativity), is that the latter has not brought with it, not collectively continued, the methods of existence and survival, both material and spiritual, which it practiced before being uprooted. These methods leave only dim traces or survive in the form of spontaneous impulses. (15)

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  115 Whereas the men of Krik? Krak! are shown to wreak havoc, women are able to defy Glissant’s censure by maintaining ritual, one overarching function of Danticat’s works, already implying an understanding of codes. Those participating come to understand through the experience of ritualization rather than an initial reading of rules or goals to be attained. Collisions with men cab stop their stories temporarily, until they rejoin the female continuum. Before turning to how men actually contribute to female mentorship, I must discuss their powerlessness, a result of the political state. While women ignore the rules of time, space, and history, men are frequently portrayed as ineffectual in Krik? Krak!, not necessarily because of their ignorance, which is certainly a valid consideration in an underprivileged and undereducated society, but because they align themselves with the law and the codes of chronological time and history. The young soldiers of “The Missing Peace,” for instance, forget a password and one shoots another, and Guy, of “A Wall of Fire Rising,” exposed his simplicity the moment he met Lily, his future wife: “It’s because you have those stars in your eyes,” he later tells her. “That’s the first thing I noticed about you when I met you. It was your eyes, Lily, so dark and deep. They drew me like danger draws a fool” (72). An adherence to law confines the three unnamed family members of Danticat’s first piece “Children of the Sea” to the putrid outhouse as they listen helplessly to the shouts and commotion next door while ­members of the tonton macoutes beat to death their neighbor Madan Roger. When the wife of the story tells her husband, “you cannot let them kill somebody just because you are afraid” (as recorded later in a letter by their daughter in her undereducated script), her husband’s response represents fear as well as a practical understanding of the law: oh yes, you can let them kill somebody because you are afraid. They are the law. It is their right. we are just being good citizens, following the law of the land. It has happened before all over this country and tonight it will happen again and there is nothing we can do. (17) Male characters in Krik? Krak!, only able to exist in the present, ­resist emotional understanding of one another. The letter-writing daughter’s boyfriend, also unnamed, a desperate member of the doomed boat making its way to Miami, writes of the pregnant fellow boat member ­Célianne as she is about to give birth, “I have moved to the other side of the boat so I will not have to look inside Célianne” (18). Certainly this can be interpreted as a respectful response to the birth process, but the male writer cannot bring himself to learn too much about those on the boat with whom he is about to die. He already knows too many painful ­details of the poor girl giving birth: how soldiers ordered her brother to “lie down and become intimate with their mother” (23), how the

116  Lisa Muir soldiers then took turns raping Célianne, how she later took a razor to her face in anger and desperation, how she was just fifteen. Moreover, men can become powerless when with one another, disarming each other as witnessed by the father in the latrine who later must give up all his money and his ancestral land in order to save his daughter from a fate like Célianne’s. Men, in fact, become easy to fool because they do not recognize the unification of ritual and believe too blindly in the professed codes of history. In addition, female eroticism can subvert male political dominance, since women are not passive in erotic relationships. In “Night Women,” for instance, the unnamed prostitute’s customers either do not realize, or choose not to realize, that they are part of a succession of men who partake of her services. Of an Emmanuel she says, “Tonight he brings me bougainvillea. It is always a surprise” (87). The prostitute perpetuates her own set of ritualized stories, for she has already prepared for her growing son’s future questions. “Should my son wake up, I have prepared my fabrication. One day, he will grow too old to be told that a wandering man is a mirage and that naked flesh is a dream. I will tell him that his father has come, that an angel brought him back from Heaven for a while” (88). The belief in dreams helps conquer the limits of time and space. In order to deal with her work as a “night woman,” she believes in ghost women who “ride the crests of waves while brushing the stars out of their hair” and who avoid lying “next to the lifeless soul of a man” (85), rather than “day women” who daily “march one another to the open market half a day’s walk from where they live” (88, my italics). Using Glissant’s terms, she separates the women of “matured modernity,” the day women, those who have ritualized their lives by repeating that which has “developed over extended historical space,” in other words that which has always been done, and “lived modernity,” actions which cause a return to historical entanglement and cause her to writhe within the confusion of time. Not only does storytelling keep alive the notion of Glissant’s abrupt moments of “lived modernity,” but the act of storytelling is ritualized throughout Krik? Krak!. From the start, in “Children of the Sea,” the unidentified, desperate boat members, hoping to reach Miami and a new life, but dealing with a leaky boat instead, tell stories in an effort to reassure one another in the endless sea. These same passengers ­seemingly become part of a tragic repetition nine chapters later in “Caroline’s ­Wedding” when a New York priest reads during a Mass a list of 129 names of Haitian refugees who had drowned off the U.S. coast just that week. Protagonist Grace, born in Haiti but now a U.S. citizen, has attended the service merely as a kindness to her mother but is chilled by the list, for “many of those listed might have been people that I had known at some point in my life” (167). The two chapters of this discussion occur during different eras, and Grace was only two years old when brought to the States by her parents, but the characters have become

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  117 merged and time murky and too hard to contain. The solemnized reading of 129 names mirrors the earlier ritualized telling of stories on the doomed boat, calling “Krik Krak!” out of necessity rather than as the game played by Caroline and Grace in the safety of a sisters’ bedroom, significantly located in the U.S., within the same chapter. But before condemning either a father who gives in completely to ­soldiers, or a woman who fantasizes about ghost women who live on unimaginable planes of existence, the degree of the landscape’s domination must be taken into account. While dominance in Danticat’s work involves oppression of the most crushing kind, complete domination also “introduces into the new relationship the insidious promise of being remade in the Other’s image, the illusion of successful mimesis” (­Glissant 1989, 15). The hope of the father in “Children of the Sea” is to one day regain his money and land. He believes by acting with the law he will become part of the law. He does not transcend law as does the prostitute of “Night Women” who lives so far outside society due to her occupation and confusion with the confrontation of lived reality that she learns to endure by believing in timeless stars and women of the skies. Part of acknowledging history’s importance is comprehending a future. The males of the book contrast the female characters by destroying Haiti’s past, seeing an artificial future in upheaval. They do not realize that they tear down the possibility of posterity with every violent act. In their acknowledgement of a painful history, the women, instead, create the possibility of a destiny. As an antidote to the violence, illiteracy, and poverty in Haiti, Danticat presents female mentorship as the way out of the hopelessness of the country. Though men remain largely ineffectual within the book, except when committing destructive acts, Danticat still uses her male characters as a way to elevate her female characters. Though the progression is slow, Danticat’s male characters still manifest a pattern of loss to eventual gain. For instance, her first male character, the unnamed young man in the initial chapter, simply becomes lost at sea, but Danticat soon moves to Little Guy in “A Wall of Fire Rising,” a seven-year-old boy who, though he loses his father, is left in the care of his mother. While women obviously dominate Danticat’s stories, by the penultimate chapter, “Caroline’s Wedding,” a father is able to offer useful advice to his grown daughters within their dreams, largely, I would argue, because the location has shifted to the States, allowing a certain equality in male/female mentorship that was impossible in Haiti. Hence, men actually help to set up female mentorship as early as the first chapter, “Children of the Sea,” where we read of the overwhelming loss of the unnamed young man and passengers fleeing Haiti for Florida on a boat of questionable construction and worthless maintenance during the Duvaliers’ reign. He “too become[s] a child of the sea” (28), and the reader, like his unnamed girlfriend waiting in Haiti, must ­resolve his death by moving on, the girl with her life and the reader to the

118  Lisa Muir following chapter, for the characters are left behind in each of Danticat’s stories, all of which serve to effectively interrupt the reader’s own sense of chronology. But while the young man has essentially disappeared, been wiped off the earth as Duvalier had intended, his young girlfriend will receive female mentorship allowing her to continue writing on the pages of her own canvas. Her letters, written in silence to her disappeared boyfriend, will become words with meaning to the world. The reader does not know it yet, but she will be transformed, at least symbolically, into the unnamed young girl of the epilogue, who writes with determination amidst the verbally opposed but silently accepting women of a Haitian kitchen. But before this transference, she must grow up, and silent female mentorship means more than simply being left under the guidance of a sympathetic mother and an angry father, whom she finally realizes does not necessarily hate her boyfriend but has endured a tragic loss of self: giving up his money and ancestral lands in order to protect his daughter from being raped by Duvalier’s tonton macoutes. Though the family will flee from Port au Prince to provincial Villa Rose as soon as they are able to obtain enough gas for their car, the last page of “Children of the Sea” leaves readers stranded in the family’s yard, a kind of stagnancy on the page, as the young girl writes to her boyfriend “from the bottom of the banyan tree” (28), mirroring his own abandonment at the bottom of the sea. But Danticat has feminized the environment’s stagnancy with the use of a banyan tree whose unique aerial roots grow tall like limbs before turning back toward the earth to create thick new trunks; hence, sitting under a banyan tree can feel like being in a small, dense forest, the protection from the tree’s multi-faceted elements guarding against the unknowns of the outside, much in the same way a mother’s arms envelope an upset child. The drowned boy has been wasted, suffering as a result of males guarding the state rather than the populace; yet, the girl is being held in a covey of protective feminine silence, her future still alive. The same scene confounding time is repeated in “Epilogue: Women Like Us,” a daughter’s hair being braided by her mother among a group of protective kitchen poets. From the complete loss of two men’s identities in “Children of the Sea,” Danticat turns to Little Guy of “A Wall of Fire Rising,” whose hapless and hopeless father dies due to a balloon jump—or accident— guided by the foolish notion that he is able to fly a hot air balloon. While his crushed body lies in front of Lili, his wife, and son, Lili asks the foreman to leave his eyes open: “My husband, he likes to look at the sky,” she says, closing Danticat’s story (80), but metaphorically opening up a world for her son. Guy, the husband, while unable to live with the same hopelessness as his own father, prior to his death had told his wife that he knew she could “take things as they come” (73). Both before and after her husband’s death, Lili encourages her son’s memorizing of the lines of a play hailing Boukman, the legendary revolutionary for Haitian

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  119 independence, while father Guy is more likely to complain about his son’s mumbling; therefore, her guidance has hereto, and will in the future, mean far more than that of her husband. Guy’s recognition of this fact helps ease the stark reality that he, too, is yet again a male character in Danticat’s stories who has abandoned his family while a woman silently prevails. Merely through Lili’s support of his memorization, the lines, although already written, become the canvas onto which Little Guy will forge himself, though at this point in his young life he is merely mimicking “the voice of one of the forefathers of Haitian independence in [a] forced baritone” (57), perpetuating history in a linear sense. Guy’s lack of mooring will transform by the end of Krik? Krak!, in “Caroline’s Wedding”, into a father, though deceased, who has garnered enough stability within the States to speak words of wisdom to his ­twenty-something daughters Grace and Caroline, still under the protection of their mother’s roof. The transformation is clear when they come to listen to both parents with equal amusement as well as need, yet the sisters’ mother is very alive while the father is stuck in a kind of stasis in death. Despite the rise in the status of male characters, Danticat’s prose is female-driven and the women’s advice remains delivered largely in the form of silence or within a secretive context. Mentor Catherine paints young Princesse in the privacy of her apartment or on a lonely beach in “Seeing Things Simply.” The prostitute of “Night Women” feeds her son on a diet of dreams, angels, and ghosts, saying of their relationship, “We are like faraway lovers, lying to one another, under different moons” (85–86). While the unnamed woman clearly creates a world in order to cope with, or rather dismiss, the reality of her prostitution, and while she may also sleep with men in order to buy food for her son in a ­practical sense, her main goal, indeed the reason for her very existence, remains conceiving a stable world for her son. Ironically, to be successful, it is another without boundaries involving the potential for the return of an unnamed father and disregarding the conventions of a typical day. In fact, she is already lost to herself, having given up her own identity. She remains merely a ghost-like voice. Certainly as a self-professed “night woman” she has no identity within the community, the “day women” always far away, but she invites her invisibility by describing herself as having long ago been swallowed up by the environment, herself now the color of the earth—“I am stuck between the day and night in a golden amber bronze” (84)—her stories the only bit of her left. When one day the reality of what she calls her “work” comes crashing through the door of her one-room shack, her concoctions and inventions will lose weight for her newly cognizant son. But until then she will protect him through a kind of silent, secretive mothering. “Should my son wake up,” she assures herself, “I have prepared my fabrication” (88). Without any surviving children of her own, the unstable Marie “plays” mother to a dead child for a few days, all the while guided by her own

120  Lisa Muir deceased mother and countless deceased female relatives that appear in Marie’s nighttime dreams in “Between the Pool and the Gardenias.” Here, again, women speak silently throughout the chapter. Marie ran away from her philandering husband after multiple miscarriages, children she never spoke to or at least only communed with silently during their gestation, subsequently mothering the dead Rose she retrieved from a city gutter. The child’s stink and the body’s rotting status concern her only enough to steal perfume from her employer and bathe the child daily, for Rose has given her a mission of mentoring, however brief it may be: “I always knew they [her female relatives] would come back and claim me to do some good for somebody. Maybe I was to do some good for this child,” Marie concludes (95). While my own conclusion may be criticized due to Marie’s delusional perspective, such a view has already implied the release of time constraints and temporal organization. Most importantly, Marie’s mother did not need to verbally instruct her daughter; Marie knew merely from their appearances at night what she was to do: “You see, I saw these faces standing over me in my dreams—” she begins to explain once the authorities have been called (99). Of course, their silent messages written on a canvas of air will mean nothing to the male gendarmes who will arrest her, but Marie will take the silent strengths of these women to her prison cell. The ritualized action is both created and controlled by the women, set far apart from the proscribed control and rites, for instance, of the ­ancient church. The Josephine/Jacqueline relationship of “Nineteen ­Thirty-Seven” begins, for example, with the ritualized asking and ­answering of a lengthy set of questions that only someone a part of the secret society of women could answer. The figure of the Madonna ­Josephine brings her imprisoned mother is mentioned by the women only for the sake of revealing that Josephine has been well aware of her mother’s trick of ­using oil and wax to make the Madonna “cry.” The church is exposed as ritualized bunk whereas the deep meaning of mother/daughter, and substitute mother/substitute daughter, relationships is clearly demonstrated. Josephine may feel she is visiting her mother in order to comfort her, but it is rather for the ritualized exchange of maternal figures. Though the women speak, they may as well be silent since not a single bystander other than a fellow daughter of the river would understand their verbal exchange.

Hope for Tomorrow After her mother’s death by burning, Josephine confirms, “And then I saw the crystal glow of the river as we had seen it every year when my mother dipped my hand in it” (48). Through Jacqueline’s touch, ­Josephine envisions the Massacre River in 1937, where her mother had first taken her at five years old. Placing her daughter’s hand in the water,

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  121 Défilé had thanked the river: “Here is my child, Josephine. We were saved from the tomb of this river when she was still in my womb. You spared us both, her and me, from this river where I lost my mother” (40). Fleeing from Dominican soldiers, only Défilé had made it to the Haitian side of the river. The young and pregnant woman had watched as her mother was hacked to death by Trujillo’s pursuing forces. Later that night she gave birth to Josephine. As Josephine recalls, during subsequent visits her mother would tell her, “We were all daughters of that river, which had taken our mothers from us. Our mothers were the ashes and we were the light” (41). At the prison, Jacqueline explains to Josephine that her mother’s “wings of flame” were real. Not only has Défilé gone up in flames literally in the prison yard, but in 1937, heavy with pregnancy, Défilé had “leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river.” Her skin glowed red with blood, “which at that moment looked as though it were in flames” (49). The continuum welcoming, both maternal and child substitution, is even more compressed and complex in “The Missing Peace,” where Lamort and Emilie are simultaneously mother and child. Lamort, the fourteen-year old, was born a woman according to Emilie, an American journalist who visits Lamort’s small town in search of her own missing mother. She tells Lamort, “They say a girl becomes a woman when she loses her mother…. You, child, were born a woman” (116). The notions of secure biological family ties, and of time as containing fixed moments, are further resisted when Lamort worries that her grandmother “will be mad at me if I get killed” by the soldiers Emilie interrogates concerning her mother (119), as though death was simply another phase of existence and Lamort, her name already implicating her in death, would still be around to endure her grandmother’s punishment. The relationships continue to transcend prescribed roles and biological definition. Despite Emilie’s obvious status as an adult, once she acknowledges the loss of her own mother, she marks the moment that she, too, has become a woman like Lamort, who has been to her both young guide and ­maternal ­protector (121). Because Lamort, too, has briefly enjoyed the maternal support of ­Emilie, rather than the thick-skinned care of a grandmother who ­deliberately named her granddaughter at the death, and for the death, of her own daughter, she is able to transcend generations and biological ties by asking to become Marie Magdalène, taking her dead mother’s name. And because Emilie’s dreams of hearing her mother call her name while sinking into a river—the river from “Nineteen Thirty-Seven”—make her a participant with the other women in the history of eruption, she is able to voice her mother’s name aloud—Isabell—a woman who now, in death, exists more saliently in an instant of historical eruption. Emilie drapes the purple blanket made from material scraps of her mother’s life around her shoulders, its heaviness becoming the embodiment of

122  Lisa Muir her mother, comforting her daughter in silence exchange and reinforcing the final scenes of “Children of the Sea” and “Epilogue: Women Like Us,” neatly and purposely the first and final chapters. Like Josephine, ­Emilie is not an actual “daughter of the river,” but at this point daughters ­Josephine and Emilie can be said to become sisters of the river, both equal members of a hereditary line of women. Hence, Défilé’s existence as loss has sharpened the intensity of her lived modernity. In this case, it is the exhuming of names due to absence that ensures the mother’s existence. Both women have gone missing, Lamort never having met her mother, and the body of Emilie’s mother never recovered. Without corporeality, they become ghost women themselves, defying time and place through their participation, however involuntary, balancing on an uneasy fulcrum within history’s moments, which have been abruptly imposed.

Conclusion Patricia Goldblatt (2000) writes, “Colonizers are not just intruders from another place, but can be even those with whom one shares indigenous space” (46). Today’s new immigrant writers and readers, “rootless and often exiled,” resist the label of irrelevance, demanding to “complete the partial knowledge previously recorded: knowledge derived from only one point of view” (Goldblatt 47). Danticat’s female characters do the same, refusing their irrelevance. John S. Christie (2015) insists “the process of remembering and understanding and retelling ­constitutes a reason to exist.” Living “hybrid lives” means finding identity in a life “spread out in fragments.” Christie points to the resulting central struggle in Latino fi ­ ction: “tension that can only be partially resolved in an acceptance of permanent dualness, of hybridity” (3). Language may have become ­diffused, but the result is deeper emotional ­understanding. The novel therefore becomes a vehicle of negotiation, according to ­Jacqueline Stefanko (1996), navigating between estrangement and loss, since ­“border-crossing has become a site of resistant and liberatory ­possibilities” (50). In the end, daughters that are more contemporary must ­repeat their mother’s folly in Danticat’s work. That Danticat’s daughters ­repeat their mother’s locura, however, does not mean their destruction but their strength. To return to maternally populated ­locations, within interrupted spaces of time, leads not to upheaval but to comfort. Therefore, women climb over and through biological borders separating generations in a concerted search for a missing community.

Bibliography Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Chávez, Denise. Loving Pedro Infante. Washington Square Press, 2002.

Female Mentorship in Krik? Krak!  123 Christie, John S. Latino Fiction and the Modernist Imagination. Routledge, 2015. Danticat, Edwidge, ed. Krik? Krak! Vintage-Random House, 1994. ———. The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States. Soho, 2001. Glissant, Edouard. Caribbean Discource: Selected Essays. Translated by J. ­M ichael Dash, UP of Virginia, 1989. Goldblatt, Patricia. “Finding Voice for the Victimized.” MultiCultural Review, vol. 9, no. 3, 2000, pp. 40–47. Stefanko, Josephine. “New Ways of Telling Latinas’ Narratives of Exile and ­Return.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, 1996, pp. 50–69.

Part III

The Global Classroom, Transnational Community, and Cross-Cultural Communication

7 Out of the Classroom and into the Community Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy

Introduction We inverted our traditional English and Interdisciplinary college classroom practices by encouraging our students to participate in a month-long community-wide reading program that had selected Edwidge Danticat’s memoir Brother, I’m Dying as the common text. Encouraging our students to learn in complicated and necessary spaces, our “classrooms” became coffee shops and breweries, church basements, and libraries. Through outside events and discussion groups, we learned with our students about Haitian history and culture, the complications of the U.S. immigration system, and immigration narratives. These opportunities gave students access to additional “texts” that expanded and ­complicated Danticat’s memoir. Using Brother, I’m Dying as a community text helped us identify the lyric spaces and braids that connect Danticat’s text, the lives of our students, and our own community. Ultimately, it helped our students become better readers, writers, and thinkers. Edwidge Danticat’s powerful and haunting memoir, Brother I’m ­Dying, invites the reader to enter a poignant lyric braid where ideas ­overlap in complex patterns. Set against the backdrop of political unrest in Haiti, Danticat’s narrative weaves her family’s history across borders and beliefs, exploring the connections between family, immigration, and identity. Danticat concludes the opening chapter of Brother, I’m Dying with an address to her writing process. She writes: I write these things now, some as I witnessed them and today ­remember them, others from official documents, as well as the ­borrowed recollections of family members. But the gist of them was told to me over the years, in part by my Uncle Joseph, in part by my father. Some were told offhand, quickly. Others, in greater ­detail. What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of ­sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at ­re-­creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time. I am writing this only because they can’t.1

128  Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy In this passage, Danticat gives us a sense of the braid that will spin the past and present together in amazing and intricate ways. It presents a nonlinear way of understanding family history and helps introduce the tone and structure of the book. Caught in this lyric space between two countries, between memory and moment, and between narrative and government policy, Danticat ­offers the reader a diasporic understanding of her experience. ­Roseanna L. Dufualt confirms this reading in her essay “Edwidge Danticat’s ­Pursuit of Social Justice in Brother, I’m Dying.” She writes: “[Danticat] adopts the viewpoint of the Dyaspora, a term she uses as if it were in itself a nationality.”2 Danticat uses this perspective to better understand her family’s story. Dufualt points out that, even in the first sentence of the book, Danticat is in an in-between space: caught between her pregnancy and her father’s diagnosis. This duality runs throughout the book—Danticat and her family occupy two worlds. Danticat’s father and mother emigrated from Haiti to New York City when Edgwidge was a child, leaving her and her brother under the care of her Uncle Joseph. While in Port-au-Prince, Danticat began to recognize the complexities of having two families in separate countries. When she and her brother finally joined their family in the United States, Danticat found another lyric space between two worlds. Though she remained close to her uncle and her Haitian roots, she began to adapt to U.S. customs and cultures. As Dufault points out above, this is an example of diasporic thinking. From this in-between space, Danticat searches for meaning within the lives of her family members. As educators, we saw a chance to engage our students in other ­nonlinear and “nontraditional” ways of thinking. Rob used Brother, I’m Dying across three courses: a first-year expository writing course, a ­pedagogy course for future teachers, and an upper-level creative nonfiction course. His first-year students focused on the U.S. Immigration system to find topics for in-depth research projects. Students in his creative writing pedagogy course looked at the memoir as a genre and discussed how to integrate a community-wide reading program into classrooms. Rob’s creative nonfiction students explored Danticat’s lyric braid and the relationship between form and content. In each course, students paid close attention to Danticat’s critical thinking within her personal diaspora. Deb used Brother I’m Dying as a primary source in an interdisciplinary seminar course for first-year students. Using the lens of hospitality, she and her students closely studied immigration stories and questions. They explored ways in which to respond to immigration issues and topics as individuals and as a community (for more descriptions of what we did in our respective classes, see Table 7.1). Across these courses, our teaching contexts and pedagogical reasons for using the book differed. Despite this, we both made intentional decisions to situate our discussions about Brother I’m Dying within larger

Out of Classroom and into Community  129 Table 7.1  Brother I’m Dying Curricular Connections Brother I’m Dying / Community-Wide Reading Program Curriculum Connections

College Course

Final project assignment: A short memoir asking students to identify areas in their own life where the felt caught “between” spaces. Students had to identify their own lyric braids and spaces, and then identify a relevant narrative to help explain the feeling. Final project assignment: An academic research portfolio asking students to build a project on some aspect of immigration. They took what they learned from outside events, book discussions, and classroom conversations and explored questions that arose while reading Brother, I’m Dying. Creative The community-wide reading program helped students design assignments and writing for syllabi that encouraged experiential and service learning. Students regularly teachers discussed the benefits of engaging with outside programs and activism. For much of the semester, the students continued to refer to this “text” as a way to rethink the possibilities of a classroom. Brother, I’m Dying also became an opportunity to explore memoir as a genre. Students wrote and explored their own lyric braids and spaces where they’ve felt caught between two worlds. Creative Students identified the lyric braid and space within Brother, I’m Dying. They nonfiction were tasked with writing their own memoirs, navigating the complex strands of their own lives. They also had to bring in a variety of perspectives into their own story and used research to add context and inform their readers. First year Prior to reading the book, students attended an immigration stimulation seminar workshop and met with an immigration lawyer to learn about her current work. They also read Chapter 1 of Danticat’s Create Dangerously. Students then read Brother I’m Dying over three class periods and wrote responses after each reading assignment reflecting on course themes (immigration, hospitality). After reading the book, students attended community book discussions and events and wrote written reflections on what they experienced as well as connections to the book.

First year writing course

national and local conversations about immigration. Ultimately, these conversations took Brother, I’m Dying beyond the walls of our classrooms by inspiring and challenging our students to place the book and its ideas within a larger framework. Our pedagogical choice to place Brother I’m Dying out of the ­classroom and into the community helped our students to experience a text and reflect on it in new ways. They began to question the U.S. Immigration System, and consider the possibility that the institution is outdated, complicated, prejudiced, and racist. They studied the immigration process and began to understand how national immigration issues such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals affect members in our local community, including some of their college peers, on a daily basis. Danticat’s text, taught in this way, helped our students engage with incredibly important cultural, social, and political issues, and understand the critical thinking processes on an empathic level.

130  Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy Against the backdrop of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, this heightened engagement grew increasingly important. Our students moved past sound bites, headlines, and tweets, and explored the s­ ubtleties and complexities of immigration within their communities. They questioned immigration policy and challenged campaign promises, explored complicated ideas about identity, and learned to thoughtfully engage with others. Our students began to see Danticat’s work as a tool to help them deepen relationships in their communities and examine their own stories and identities. In this chapter, we explore the pedagogical implications of taking ­Danticat’s book out of the college classroom and into the community, and offer pedagogical suggestions for situating Brother I’m Dying within larger contexts.

Community-Wide Reading Program and Connections to the Classroom The catalyst for bringing Brother, I’m Dying out of our classrooms and into the community was our participation in a month-long local ­community-wide reading project that chose Brother, I’m Dying as its selected book. The Big Read Holland Area, run by Hope College, takes place every November in Holland, MI—a small city on the eastern edge of Lake Michigan in the southwest corner of the state. The purpose of this program is to create and foster a culture where reading matters. By uniting the community in one book, the Big Read Holland used this shared experience of reading, discussing, and exploring the themes of the book as a springboard to learn from and listen to each other. The Big Read Holland Area is a collaborative effort with over fifty ­partnerships including various institutions, organizations, and ­businesses. Its programming scope is intentionally wide and designed to attract ­participation across generational, cultural, racial, and ­socioeconomic divides and experiences. Multimodal main events—films, food, music, art, and lectures—provide different perspectives, experiences, and angles for the chosen book. In 2016, the main events featured a keynote ­lecture by Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian food and educational event, a H ­ aitian drumming and dancing event, and a screening of Poverty, Inc.—a ­documentary that focuses on the complications of international aid. ­Additionally, the programming included lectures by a local ­immigration lawyer, a refugee social worker, a Caribbean historian, a Caribbean ­linguist, and a memoir scholar. Finally, a student exhibition of learning featured the artwork of 800 middle school, high school, and college ­students who created art in response to the book (see Table 7.2). Taking Brother, I’m Dying into the community helped tell the complicated story of Danticat’s family’s immigration from Haiti to the United States. Just as Danticat braids her family’s experiences with political

Out of Classroom and into Community  131 Table 7.2  B  rother I’m Dying Resources Documentary La Belle Vie: The Good Life Poverty, Inc. (2014), director Michael (2015), director Rachelle Salnave Matheson Miller www.povertyinc.org/ www.labelleviefilm.com/ Speaker God’s Vision For Haiti www. Bethany Christian Services—Refugee and godsvisionforhaiti.org/ Immigrant Services www.bethany.org/other-services/ refugee-and-immigrant-services Lighthouse Immigrant Daniel Jean-Louis (Haitian entrepreneur) Advocates http:// www.facebook.com/daniel.jeanlouis.14 lighthouseimmigrantadvocates. com/ Justice for Our Neighbor http:// “My family waited in line, why can’t jfonwestmichigan.org/ immigrants today?” Immigration Stimulation Workshop http://justice. crcna.org/church-between-borders (Grand Rapids, MI) Musician Geraud Dimanche, master Haitian drummer (Detroit, MI) www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMaRPLAv28k Food Chez Olga (Grand Rapids, MI) www.facebook.com/ Chez-Olga-GR-132059110146754/

history, folk tales, government documents, and personal testimonies, the community-wide reading program’s events and book discussions ­engaged students from several perspectives. By taking this multi-­angle approach, we began to identify the powerful questions and stories rooted within Danticat’s text and our own community. Both “texts”—the book, as well as the reading program itself—became lyric and multi-­disciplinary narrative braids that invited our students to engage in new ways of thinking. The main events and public book discussions of the community-wide reading program, held in a variety of locations, offered a variety of ­opportunities for student engagement. These opportunities initially ­represented to us possible supplementary material to how we used the book in our individual courses. We thought that requiring our students to attend main events or book discussions would give them an opportunity to reinforce classroom discussions. What we did not realize was how our involvement in this community-wide program became central to our understanding of the book and issues surrounding immigration. The public book discussions—held in art galleries, church basements, coffee shops, and breweries—gave students a chance to meet with neighbors, coworkers, and strangers. We all came together and listened to local immigrant narratives. Whether first generation or fourth, each community member began to understand the sacrifice and commitment it takes to come to the United States. Participating in the outside events and inviting community members to visit our classrooms gave our students access to additional “texts” that expanded on and complicated Danticat’s memoir. By sifting through and

132  Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy weaving together various narratives, our students began to read, write, and think in advanced ways. They began holding and considering complicated and disparate ideas with confidence and curiosity. In the end, we were no longer just studying a writer’s story—we were studying each other’s stories. We identified the lyric spaces and braids within our community and mapped the narratives in Brother, I’m Dying onto larger conversations in order to examine our lives against political, familial, and historical narratives.

Mapping the Narrative onto Larger Conversations To understand Brother, I’m Dying, we needed to understand the ­historical context from which it arises. Haiti’s complicated history helps inform Mira and Uncle Joseph’s actions. Across various political leaders, including the troubled legacy of Francois Duvalier “Papa Doc,” his son Jean-Claude Duvalier “Baby Doc,” and the violent coupe to overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, the Danticats navigated the political terrain with caution and pride. But it was the 2004 coupe to overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide that ultimately drove Uncle Joseph to the United States and his untimely death. In the process, he was transferred to the Krome Detention C ­ enter in Miami. When he enters Krome, Uncle Joseph becomes Alien 27041999, and Danticat’s prose turns cold and clinical to characterize the ­mistreatment of a man the reader has grown to love and respect. The generous and compassionate man who devoted his life to his family and ­congregants has become replaced—almost erased—by immigration officials. Troubling as it is, this cold and removed immigration language is a necessary strand in Danticat’s lyric braid. Understanding the complexities of the U.S. Immigration System is no small task and yet necessary to fully experience Danticat’s memoir. In an effort to learn more about immigration in the United States, many students participated in an interactive workshop on the ­challenges and complexities of “getting in the right immigration line” to become a U.S. c­ itizen. Led by a facilitator from a local non-profit ­organization, ­participants were given identity cards that described ­different ­immigrant scenarios. Participants read their identity cards and, based on the i­nformation given, considered which of the four visa options (employment, refugee/asylum, diversity, family) might allow them to immigrate ­permanently and legally to the United States. Our students quickly ­realized the difficulties inherent in each of these visa options. For employment, a job offer is necessary. For family, the wait time is ­significantly long, and only specific relationships can petition for one another—grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins do not qualify. For the diversity visa, the chance of being selected is 1 in 160, and a high school education and work experience are necessary. For refugee visas, people only qualify if they are fleeing persecution based on race, religion,

Out of Classroom and into Community  133 national origin, political opinion, or membership in a specific social group. Extreme poverty does not qualify someone for refugee or asylum status. Asking students to engage in the specifics of immigration allowed for a greater potential for empathy and understanding. Student interaction with Brother, I’m Dying deepened as our students began to empathize more closely with undocumented individuals, immigrants, and refugees in their respective communities. In a reflection essay, a student named Linda (a pseudonym) wrote: I left the workshop feeling eternally grateful. I think I felt this way because I got to be apart of a group of people, even if it was just for an hour that allowed me to feel a part of something. It was truly incredible because the group that was there was incredibly diverse. There were college students, elders, adults from the communities, families, Caucasians, Latinos, African American, you name it. And they were all there because they wanted to know how to understand immigration. We were all there because we cared. We care and want to have a heart that serves the stranger in a world that makes it hard sometimes to know how to do that. Here, Linda expresses appreciation for being “a part of something”— something larger than herself, a required course reading, or a college classroom. She felt solidarity with others in a collective desire to understand the U.S. Immigration System and experience. Another student, Zoe, responded similarly: I really enjoyed the workshop because I was able to see that a whole community was involved and interested in the same thing. I am not used to being involved in something like the Big Read, but being a little part of it makes me feel like I’m a part of something. I’m able to connect, discuss and listen to people from the community. I feel like Brother, I’m Dying is such a good book to be part of the Big Read. It gives people the opportunity to read about immigration and go into depth with a real personal story. This book really lets you feel much of what the immigrant experience is like. You have the father and uncle who are each suffering in their own way, but you see them trying to be strong for their family. That’s what many immigrants try to portray everyday; they try to hold in all their pain because they care more about their family than about themselves. I really enjoyed this book because of that. I personally was able to connect a lot of things to my parents, which is really interesting because it’s such a personal story yet people can still connect to it. Like Linda, Zoe enjoyed the fact that people across generational, ­socioeconomic, educational, racial, and ethnic groups came together around the topic of immigration. In her words, “a whole community

134  Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy was involved and interested in the same thing.” In her reflections about the event, Zoe makes the connection between Danticat’s story and her own. Danticat’s book offers one family’s immigration narrative, but our students’ involvements in the community encouraged them to hear and share other perspectives. Connecting Danticat’s experiences to others’ experiences was a vital aspect to our pedagogy. Different events in the community-wide reading program provided alternative stories, and thus, our course “texts” expanded to include these different narratives. These narratives, told in a variety of mediums including film, panel discussions, and music, ­allowed for different entry points into the book’s themes and topics. In the documentary, La Belle Vie: The Good Life, for example, ­documentary filmmaker Rachelle Salnave travels to Haiti to explore her own family’s immigration story as it relates to class in Haiti. S­ alnave’s identity struggles with being Haitian American demonstrate the ­myriad of ways in which immigration and citizenship affect people. Just as ­Danticat navigates the diaspora in Brother, I’m Dying, so too does ­Salnave in La Belle Vie. The experiences—though different—share that lyric and in-between space. Identifying and discussing the ­connections and contrasts between these narratives, allowed us to complicate a ­simplified understanding of immigration. At a book discussion held at a local hospital and led by a doctor, 70 people gathered to talk about Brother I’m Dying. This provided ­another kind of narrative for students to compare and contrast. In small groups, participants shared their own experiences with immigration and listened to others—for some, it was great grandparents who immigrated to the United States. For others, including two of Deb’s students, it was their own experiences of coming to the United States from Mexico. Nola ­reflected about her experience in this way: Everyone in our group loved hearing what “we college kids” have to say about their questions and the discussions along with the books and about our own lives. Every time one of the doctors leading the discussion had a question for all of us, before anyone had a chance to say anything he would directly look at all of us from Hope and say “Wait! Let’s hear what they have to say first!!” then everyone proceeded to intently nod at us. Participating in these events and having their stories affirmed by ­community members helped our students to see the power of their own narratives. Zira wrote: Just like Danticat, I also worry about where immigration will go next. I have many family members that have DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] and that are under temporary ­protective status. The fact that these resources can be taken away soon is scary.

Out of Classroom and into Community  135 Going to this event allowed me to appreciate Brother, I’m Dying even more. Danticat not only wrote this book for her father and ­uncle, she also wrote it for immigrants. She said that she hopes that her book can be used to better inform and prepare ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers. I hope so too. Zira’s comment demonstrates how entering a community conversation and engaging with neighbors in this braided, lyric, and multi-disciplinary way allowed students to approach the book as a record of human experience and collectively look forward and backwards in their own lives. Uncle Joseph’s tragic story helped students understand that the details and specifics of immigration narratives matter. The memoir gave students a common narrative to share and invited them to witness others. They discovered the importance of engaging with their community and discovered the joys of celebrating differences.

Becoming Better Readers, Writers, and Thinkers Whether teaching first-year composition or an upper-level workshop, Danticat’s text introduced all of our students to new tools and techniques in the writing process. As they read Danticat and began telling their own stories, students experienced a greater level of freedom to ­experiment and trusted that their message would come through in their work. They saw, in the ways Danticat told her story, a way through their own complicated lives. By studying Danticat’s ability to write clearly across difficult and intense stories, they witnessed writing as an act of discovery. Danticat’s process helped students feel as if they were figuring out their own questions and stories with Danticat. In her book Create Dangerously, Danticat affirms this idea of discovery within writing and reading. She writes: “I too sometimes wonder if in the intimate, both solitary and solidarity, union between writers and readers a border can really exist.”3 Active reading and writing connect the reader and the writer in a communal moment and encourage experiential reading. Thus, when approaching their own essays or written assignments with Danticat’s lyric and multi-genre perspective, students took structural risks, used innovative research, and relied on the power of narrative to connect us. Layered, fractured, and interwoven, the structure used in Brother, I’m Dying is as fluid as memory. Indeed, Dufualt suggests that the nonlinear structure of the book is a result of Danticat writing from the perspective of the “Dyaspora.” The duality inherent within Danticat’s own memory and imagination, and within the narratives of her father and uncle, are a result of occupying two spaces at once. Whether writing traditional ­research papers exploring immigration, memoirs presenting family histories, or personal essays examining their community, students ­examined the dualities present in their own topics. Through free ­writing exercises

136  Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy and small group discussions, they too began to see their s­ ubjects as ­complex and allowed their writing to drift to a space of discovery. This overlapping and braided approach helped students ­engage in ways that linear structures inhibit. We saw that our students turned to their own writing with a new sense of awe and imagination. They began asking tough questions, expecting messy answers, and trusting the power of story to help make sense of complicated issues. The heated conversations surrounding immigration during the 2016 national election became much more complicated and difficult to understand than who yelled the loudest on television. They heard the distant and cold policies debated, and saw the direct effects on their neighbors and new friends. This brought a real and palpable urgency to their reading, writing, and discussions. Our students also began to experiment with research. Students ­writing research papers on immigration health care saw the value in u ­ nderstanding the various cultural narratives surrounding health and healing. Students writing memoirs drew connections between their f­ amily stories and concurrent socio-political events. Those students who chose to bring a literary journalism perspective to community issues blended field reporting with narratives from the community. Throughout this multi-disciplinary research, the power of other’s stories became even more apparent. We also saw our students become better readers, writers, and thinkers in specific ways related to our individual course goals and outcomes. In the first-year composition course, students pushed themselves to research their own immigration experiences with new critical thinking skills. They found complicated answers to tough questions, and grew c­ omfortable examining opposing ideas by returning to the details of their research. Brother, I’m Dying helped students understand that research could be powerful, personal, and contribute to larger conversations. The community-wide reading program afforded them opportunities to take their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills into the field. It helped them realize that writing can actually connect and examine difficult and important ideas. In the writing pedagogy course for future teachers, Rob’s students saw themselves as both writers and educators. Their engagement and involvement with the community-wide reading program was truly ­inspiring. After attending events, the students built grade-appropriate assignments and projects for their future students. These bright students also ­explored the importance of inviting these programs into their courses. Many students wrote experiential and service learning projects into their syllabi. Further, these teachers and writers studied the conventions of the memoir genre and wrote their own. Along the way, they uncovered the importance and power of telling stories in nonlinear and complex ways. In the upper-level creative nonfiction course, Brother, I’m Dying ­offered a variety of opportunities to discuss the fundamentals of craft. By studying Danticat’s lyric braid, students began to recognize the struggle,

Out of Classroom and into Community  137 work, and beauty of weaving together the past and the present. They read passages from Danticat’s book, Create Dangerously, and reflected on the importance of sharing stories. These writers found new and complex voices in their own work. They felt encouraged to discover the in-between spaces of their own stories. Students explored their own narratives and identities, writing across race, gender, sexual, and spiritual borders. When they began to braid their histories and stories together, they uncovered the important and hard work of self-discovery through writing. In the interdisciplinary seminar class for first-year students, Deb’s ­students read a variety of immigration texts that were told from ­different perspectives, disciplines, mediums, and genres (e.g. film, memoir, essay, graphic novel, young adult fiction). Drawing on these texts and their experiences in the community, students researched an immigration-­related issue of their choice and used multimodal ways to present their findings by creating their own websites that were later shared with the college campus and larger community. Having an audience beyond that of a professor encouraged these students to become more confident in their writing skills and stronger in their desire to advocate for what they learned.

Conclusion Taking Danticat’s book out of the classroom encouraged our students to join the community as fellow readers. We challenged the traditional undergraduate notion of professor as authority and expert by l­earning about the U.S. Immigration System with our students, sharing our own immigration stories and—most important—listening to others. ­Similarly, participating in these events disrupted our students’ assumptions about the community and its members. Asking our students to engage in nonlinear and lyric thinking helped them redefine their own complicated and braided space in their ­community. Izzy reflected: The messages in Brother I’m Dying are not lessons I can forget about at the end of the semester. Issues of immigration are relevant more than ever in my life and the nation’s. Brother I’m Dying has made me slow down and think about the friendships I am making with international students here at Hope, and in general, my behavior towards others who are strangers. Although many years have passed since Danticat’s father and uncle’s deaths, the issues, ­questions and concerns surrounding their lives has meaning today. In a way, Brother I’m Dying was a way for me, Holland and the world to look back and forward at the same time. This approach gave us the freedom to push the “academic” conversation into a space where ideas like immigration and family are as complicated and profound as our community.

138  Deborah Van Duinen and Rob Kenagy Brother, I’m Dying is a powerful and important text in any classroom. Asking students to engage in a narrative that explores family history, identity, and cultural policies and practices helped them shed preconceived ideas on immigration. However, asking students to experience this text within a larger community allowed them to go ever further. Our choice to approach Danticat’s book through the lens of experiential learning, learning by doing and reflecting, produced inspiring and ­stunning results. Our students began to recognize that just as our own past and ­present have overlapping connections, communities also weave together in ­complex and powerful ways. Students began to empathize with their classmates, peers, and fellow community members in new and authentic ways. For some, Brother, I’m Dying and the community-wide reading program gave students their first real opportunity to interact with ­marginalized members of their community. They opened clear and thoughtful lines of communication with their neighbors, family members, and friends. For most students, their thinking processes transformed into critical engagement. They listened, asked smart and informed questions, and helped to create a deeper sense of community. Reading one text within a community and encouraging our students to take their learning out of the classroom helped them tune out the sound bites in order to examine the more thoughtful and engaging narratives surrounding U.S. immigration policies. It gave them opportunity to “involve themselves fully, openly, and without bias in new ­experiences… and to reflect on and observe their experiences from many perspectives”4 Driven by discussions with community members, documentary films, workshops, and music performances, students began to better u ­ nderstand the various experiences that connect communities, and the importance of exploring their own stories in thoughtful and powerful ways.

Notes 1 Danticat, Edwidge. Brother I’m Dying. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. 2 Dufault, Roseanna L. “Edwidge Danticat’s Pursuit of Justice in Brother, I’m Dying.” Journal of Haitian Studies (2010): 95–106. 3 Danticat, Edwidge. Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. New York: Vintage, 2011. 4 Kolb, David. Experiential Learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.

Bibliography Danticat, Edwidge. Brother I’m Dying. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. ———. Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. New York: ­Vintage, 2011. Dufault, Roseanna L. “Edwidge Danticat’s Pursuit of Justice in ‘Brother, I’m Dying’.” Journal of Haitian Studies 16, no. 1 (2010): 95–106. Kolb, David. Experiential Learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.

8 Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones Experiences from a Class in Ghana Moussa Traore Introduction The primary goal of this chapter is to provide insight into how to teach The Farming of Bones (1998) and Brother, I’m Dying (2008). The ­pedagogically oriented nature of the underlying goal for this chapter makes it mandatory for a summary and analysis of the two novels in this chapter. Much attention is also given to some important themes in the novels. The themes are discussed to serve as a yardstick that will aid ­discussions in the course and largely to place the pedagogical ­prescription the study offers in perspective. The themes that are explored include identity, immigration, oppression, discrimination, violence, and the pursuit of greener pastures as the two novels lay them bare. It appears imperative that for a more detailed study of the two texts, a theory that ably makes way for consideration of politics, economics, geography, and/or literature be considered. The chapter, therefore, considered the Theory of Ethnic Conflict as a theory that may provide students with the requisite background knowledge to the texts and its major themes. Much attention is however given to the design of a pedagogy for the teaching of the two novels. I propose in this chapter that the multidisciplinary approach is preferred in the teaching of both Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones. This multidisciplinary approach will expose students to the ­relevant background information of each of the novels, then a look at the ­socio-political standing of Haiti among several other things. The a­ pproach will also provide some background information about the author. The frequent ethnic conflict situations in the world today with never-ending warfare for assets, and against emigration, poverty, crime, etc., makes it very much needful that Edwidge Danticat’s texts Brother I’m Dying and The Farming of bones be taught in educational institutions. Teaching ­Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying and The farming of Bones is highly relevant in our time now more so than ever. Even as the world seems to

140  Moussa Traore get smaller by the day, the problems of one region quickly become the crisis of another. A quick glance at the ­geopolitical situation around us buttresses this point: the war in Syria opens the floodgates for refugees in Europe according to PSS-Current Crises in Syria- NATO: “the total death count (around 18,000 by July 2012) ­contain approximately 12,000 civilian deaths.”1 The humanitarian dimension underlines more than “90,000 ­refugees from Syria registered within the UNHCR (and other tens of thousands unregistered ones),”2 the shooting by police of African American ­people like: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland among others, triggered nationwide protests and riots and sparked heated racially charged discussions on d ­ iscrimination and oppression with a very similar incident in London in 2011 s­ parking riots after the shooting and death of twenty-nine-year-old Mark ­Duggan by London police during an intelligence-led, targeted vehicle stop ­procedure. This resonates with Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones, where human beings are left to die or simply slaughtered, just because they come from “another country.” The risks human beings are willing to take in pursuit of happiness or greener pastures are rather astounding and Haiti—as in Edwidge ­Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones—is not ­different. The chapter will throw light on how Danticat approaches the theme of migration and how family relations and relations between ­different countries are involved in this desire or project that human ­beings in general and Haitian in particular have to deal with. The p ­ aper uses the two novels under study as primary sources, and secondary sources are provided by works that are “central” in Black Diaspora studies like the works by W. E. B. Dubois, Langston Hughes, The Créolité proponents like Raphaël Confiant and others. Since this article has a pedagogical dimension, important contributions will be obtained from the works of Paulo Freire and bell hooks, among others. Other Basic texts that learners can have access to will be used to support the main argument. This paper is conceived as a pedagogical prescription to the teaching of Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones, to undergraduate students. As a result, illustrations will be drawn from many sources in order to make the understanding of the two books easier. The Theory of Ethnic Conflict Most of the wars/conflicts that have been fought and are still being fought are caused by regional and ethnic differences. Caselli and Coleman provide insight into the Theory of Ethnic Conflict and sets out some of the things that cause ethnic conflict. They argue that the need to exercise political and economic dominance has sparked inter-national and intra-national wars/conflicts, citing examples to include the wars in the

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  141 Balkans, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, and Indonesia, and what appears to be a never-ending stalemate in the Middle East. The basic question that Caselli and Coleman hope to answer is what causes these many ethnic conflicts. The first response they produce to explain what brings ethnic conflicts was to assess the essence or ends of the conflicts. Caselli and Coleman noticed that since each society is endowed with “wealth creating assets,” people find some gain in forming “coalitions to wrest control of these assets from the rest of the population.”3 This is the triggering force of ethnic conflict. But they are quick to indicate that once a group takes control over an asset, it behoves on the group to protect it, to hold on to it, and exclude “others.” They found that most societies comprise heterogeneous groups of people in terms of ethnicity. Since no one can guess who is part of “us” and who is part of the “others” we are protecting this resource from, it becomes a lot easier to dwell on the ethnicity for such identification purposes. In their view, they found that the most obvious evidence one could find to assign one to a group of “us” or “ ­ others” is the color. Unlike language, religious differences among ­others that may not be immediately observed, one’s skin color, for example, easily betrays the person as being part of this race or ethnic group or the other. It is not surprising to me that most of the brutal warfare that have been waged on earth have been along ethnic lines, which directly relate with color. It looks as if the “black” and “white” struggle even in the United States has its root in this factor. The theory predicts the emergence of ethnic conflicts on the grounds of distance, relative size of the groups, the nature of the assets involved, etc. The theorists sum their predictions, thus In sum, if group A is the stronger group, we are more likely to ­observe exploitation of group B by group A if: (i) The ethnic ­distance between A and B is large; (ii) the country’s endowment of expropriable resources is neither too small nor too large; (iii) group A is small; (iv) group A has low per-capita income; (v) group B has high per-capita income; and (vi) the efficiency costs of exploitation are modest.4 The factor that greatly incites conflict then is distance though it is somehow related to size. From Caselli and Coleman’s point of view, a group is in the first place likely to attempt to exploit the other (an attempt which has the potential to spark off conflict) should that group be distant from the target group. As an example, the conflict between the Blacks and the Whites in the United States rests on the fact that the two groups are the most distant group in the United States. For instance, though there are other ethnic groups (like many groups from Europe), the greatest difference between the other groups mostly is not so obvious in their color but in areas such as names and language among others. For instance,

142  Moussa Traore it is quite easier for an Italian or a Jew to live in the United States and after one or two generations, they take American names, speak English fluently and it is now hard to tell the difference. This is not the case with the black community. They further explain this thus The black-white conflict in America is particularly striking because there would have been no shortage of alternative (or additional) minorities to discriminate and exploit: Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, and other migrant communities could have been equally attractive objects. Why haven’t they been targeted in the way blacks have? According to our theory, this is simply because continued exclusion of these white immigrants would have been too costly to enforce given the close physical proximity, or love, with the Anglo elite. Had the latter tried to perpetuate such discrimination, there would now be many fewer Americans with names like Coleman (an Irish name) and Caselli (Italian), as the holders of such names would have switched in mass to names like Smith. Hence, the “Anglo” majority backed out from a systematic attempt to disenfranchise the white immigrants—who have therefore been able to preserve their ancestral identity. The theorists distinguish between conflict and exploitation. The former being the case where group B instead of peacefully accepting the desires of group A to control the resources, fight back but the latter when they peacefully accept that group A controls. 5 Pigmentation, body size, language, religion are the grounds that bring conflict. I find their explication of conflict to be very much important to the understanding of the two texts under study. In the first place, they provide explanations for the themes expounded by Danticat. In the second place, the theory aligns with Danticat’s conception that conflicts are avoidable. At this stage, I turn to consider some relevant background information about the author. Background information of Author Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian by birth but she spent most of her childhood in the United States. Shortly after being born in Port-au-Prince in January 1969, her father made a choice to find work in the United States and left the family at Haiti. Shortly after, her mother joined her father at the United States leaving Danticat and her brother Eliab under the care of an uncle. When Danticat joined her parents in the United States at the age of twelve, she had to contend adjusting issues; settling with the new family and with the new community. The challenge that stared at her face the most was that of adjusting to the school environment: her inability to speak English (for she spoke Creole) in an academic setting where

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  143 English is the dominant language (and also the medium of instruction). She is said to have been laughed at by many of her colleague students. Danticat is believed to have acquired most basic skills from relatives and not through the typical way most children do, which is through school. For instance, she learnt how to read from her cousin, Marie ­M icheline. She also learnt how to narrate from the stories she heard from her aunt’s grandmother, Bel Air. With the nature of her upbringing, it is predictable that the type of writing she will bring forth will be that which speaks of her past, her present, and the probable future. It is said that as early as age six, Danticat wrote stories whose main character was a female. The complexity of her background then features in her subsequent writings too. It is not surprising, from the ongoing, that most of the writings of Danticat are frequented by the themes of migration, poverty, identity, immigration, oppression, discrimination, violence, and the pursuit of greener pastures. Situating Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones within a General Context Edwidge Danticat’s narration of scenes of Haitians willing to cross over 1,000 kilometers of open sea on makeshift rafts to Florida is greatly moving; their desperation and determination to escape hardship for an uncertain fate to a land that does not want them, although they are ­trying to escape tyranny, violence, and poverty, is enormous. Danticat’s inner struggle to come to terms with the tragic death of her Uncle, ­Joseph Danticat and her apprehension as to whether she was indeed American or in fact Haitian and her realization that she might not necessarily be fully a part of either society are at the core of that first novel. She is not American enough in America and certainly not Haitian enough back at Haiti. This is a typical identity crisis that many people in almost all parts of today’s world face as a result of permanent and incessant migration. The crisis for me stems from the need to associate with the group that controls the (major) assets and those who do not but want to benefit from them (others). This is one main reason behind many migrations; to find greener pastures (the life-sustaining assets in this case) which according to Caselli and Coleman is carefully guarded by those who control it. In Globalization and its Discontents, Saskia Sassen hammers on that new phenomenon that the world has to grapple with, a phenomenon that has certainly come to stay. In that seminal work, the author shows how migration has now become part of every human being’s life or plan/dream, and she also highlights the concrete repercussions of that phenomenon: the rapid migration of people and goods, and the consequences of that choice: refusal of entry in county dreamed of, perilous

144  Moussa Traore journeys, injustice in treatment of immigrant workers, outsourcing of business to the less developed nations by wealthy business owners for more profit, etc. It might be important to point out here that the migration of black ­diasporas, whether toward Africa or the United States—that applies mostly to the inhabitants of the Caribbean—has several faces: it is often voluntary, like that of African Americans aiming at resettling in Africa or revisiting their roots through a “pilgrimage” in slave castles in counties like Ghana or Senegal in West Africa. The other dimension of the Diasporan migration and the one which this paper is concerned with is the one which is fuelled by the search for greener pastures; the books under study delve into that in an exceptionally talented manner, when Haitians are shown in their difficulties and the inhumane treatment they are given when they try to enter the United States or when they ­journey to Dominica to improve their lot. This research is also e­ xceptional ­because of the way in which it combines many issues that evolve around migration/immigration: race issues are combined with language, in a skillful manner: being able to speak Haitian Creole or Dominican is an extremely determining factor that warrants life or death, as The Farming of Bones reveals. The identity crisis many immigrants, especially those that the Caribbean as well as African Americans, face since the time of slavery till now as portrayed by Danticat is eloquently echoed by W. E. B. Du Bois in his work, The Souls of Black Folks. In this work, he argues that double-­ consciousness is a peculiar sensation, a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of the other. He adds that double consciousness makes one ever feel one’s twoness, as an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, and as a result two warring ideals that inhabit in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. Brother, I’m Dying: Homelessness and Unhomeliness “Fre map mouri”6 —These words summarize the plight of Joseph ­Danticat (the author’s uncle) and perhaps that of her own homeland, Haiti. With this title, Edwidge Danticat focuses the reader’s attention toward the plight of her uncle and the rest of her family juxtaposed to the greater plight of her country Haiti, a country that is battling with dictatorship, political violence, and American occupation. The novel succeeds in weaving together the tales of Edwidge D ­ anticat’s own autobiography and her uncle’s, as well as father’s biography. ­Edwidge Danticat’s works center mostly on her country of origin, Haiti and her feelings toward it as well as the experiences of her countrymen and women, both home, Haiti and in the Diaspora. Brother, I’m Dying essentially narrates the sad story of a father “Mari” deteriorating in health while his brother is seeking refuge in a land that

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  145 father “Mari” himself, his children and entire family have come to call home, the United States which is also, coincidentally or incidentally the country that the author can and now calls “home.” Uncle Joseph is bitterly rejected and harshly treated even though he was eighty-one years and had previously been to the U.S. multiple times. This is where the notions of homelessness and also unhomeliness come into the discussion. Homelessness is simply the state of someone who finds himself/herself without any precise and material spot that the person can call “home” or “place of residence” on this earth. That situation affects most of the time refugees and asylum seekers in this era where war is rampant. Unhomeliness, on the other hand, is a notion that is used a lot in Postcolonial Studies and refers to a state in which one can find oneself, emotionally and psychologically. It is the situation of someone who lives in a place they can call home, since they are not physically persecuted, but psychologically, they are torn. They do not feel at ease, literally in their skin; they are caught up in the grip of a stifling identity crisis. This notion often approximates the situation of the Postcolonial citizen who fails to marry to the two cultures they have been exposed to: the foreign one and their native one. Uncle Joseph can be described here as the one who is homeless and his brother, the author’s father who lives in the United States with his family is the epitome of unhomeliness. He is living in a country that has welcomed him, where he can legally live and work, but his daily life is marked by signs of unhomeliness: he often loses his job, experiences racial discrimination, sticks to his Haiti native dishes with his family, and lacks the influence and power to have his brother allowed into the country where he resides with his family, “his country.” For instance, when he is ill, he sees Dr. Padman, as well as an herbalist: The herbalist saw us immediately even though we didn’t have an appointment. A large Jamaican woman with a knit rainbow head, she motioned my father to a chair next to a machine that looked like it was set up for an eye exam. Before our iridology scans, she made us sign disclaimers saying we knew she wasn’t a medical doctor and could not cure any illness. This, she explained, was a legal necessity even though she had healed many people-as my father’s pastor had told him- including some terminal cancer patients.7 Danticat captures homelessness and unhomeliness—the latter is mainly characterized by precarious living conditions—respectively in her Uncle Joseph and her Father in following terms: “Then as now, leaving often seemed like the only answer, especially if one was sick like my uncle or poor like my father, or desperate, like both.”8 Uncle Joseph dies in custody as a criminal, in chains, in the most inhumane and brutal manner; he is denied his herbal medication and is accused of faking. Another illustration of the two notions lies in the first chapter of the work, the

146  Moussa Traore narrator/ author’s dying yet proud father is forced to reflect on his life and choices he’s made. From leaving his home and family in Haiti and creating a solid foundation on which his family and the next generation of Danticats could look back on with satisfaction and admiration. The work touches on the deeply sensitive issue of immigration and discrimination in American society. One of Danticat’s tours de force in the work is that she magnificently draws parallels in the treatment of her countrymen and women who arrive and are branded as “undocumented.” She writes, extending her thoughts to Cubans, Kathrina, etc.: Still I suspect that my uncle was treated according to a biased ­immigration policy dating back from the early 1980s when H ­ aitians began arriving in Florida in large numbers by boat. In Florida, where Cuban refugees are, as long as they’re able to step foot on dry land, are immediately processed and released to their families, ­Haitian asylum seekers are however disproportionately detained then ­deported. While Hondurans and Nicaraguans have continued to receive protected status for nearly ten years since Hurricane Mitch struck their homelands, Haitians were deported to the flood zones weeks tropical storm Jeanne blanketed an entire city in water the way Hurricane Kathrina did parts of New Orleans. Was my uncle going to jail because he was Haitian? This is a question he probably asked himself. This is a question I still ask myself. Was he going to jail because he was black? If he were white, Cuban, anything other than Haitian, would he have been going to Krome?9 The pathetic treatment meted out to the narrator’s uncle is vividly couched in the following lines: On Ward D, where no lawyers or family members are allowed to visit, and where prisoners are restrained to prevent escapes, to p ­ rotect the staff, the guards and the prisoners from one another, his feet were probably shackled once more, just as, according to Krome records, they’d been during the ambulance ride. He was given a­ nother IV at 10:00 p.m., at which time it was noted by the nurse on duty that he was “resting quietly.” He was to be further observed and followed up, she added.10 The death of the narrator /author’s uncle is not seen as an event that requires any special attention. It is presented as one of those things that happen on a daily basis; the sickness and death of a Haitian seeking entry into the United States to visit his relatives is nothing to write home about, as the attitude of the U.S. immigration and customs officers shows. This is what the narrator goes through, and how she is treated when she inquires with anxiety about her sick uncle’s condition:

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  147 When a close friend of Maxo’s, whom Maxo had used his one ­allowable phone call from Krome to tell, telephoned to break the news to me, I called Ward D again to ask if indeed it was true that a Haitian man named Joseph Dantica had just died there. The man who answered curtly told me, “Call Krome.” And when I did ­telephone Krome-thinking I should have an official answer before calling my relatives-I was told by another stranger that I should try back in the morning.11 Krome here is in every sense a real symbol of the most dreaded area, a prison cum hospital where unwanted foreigners / travellers are left to fade into death and oblivion. One can read in all this the hypocrisy and double standards in U.S. relations with Haiti since the declaration of Haiti as an independent State in 1804. Surprisingly Fredrick Douglass, the abolitionist and speaker for black freedom later would go on to serve as U.S. minister to Haiti. As highlighted in Lincoln and the Negro, the U.S. completely ignored Haiti’s independent status for sixty-two years and only reluctantly recognized that country as a “strategic insult” to the Southern confederates. However, a fuller and more in-depth narrative by Leslie Alexander sheds more light on Haiti’s current state as well as her history and relations with other countries and the U.S. especially, as well as the chronological turn of events which have culminated in Haiti’s “present predicament of ‘continuing diplomatic isolation, debt, foreign occupation and political turmoil.”12 It would be necessary at this level to examine how the key notion explored in the previous chapters is handled in The Farming of Bones. The Farming of Bones: Background and Migration in the Novel There is a real dichotomy between what begins a love story between two persons in that novel, Sebastien Onius and his lover Amabel Desir, both from Haiti and living in the Dominican Republic, where they found themselves in search of greener pastures, and the human massacre that provides and represents the core of the work. The author’s intention in this novel seems to be one of memory and the important role it plays in our life. The past informs the present and the two can help us predict the future. Armed with such knowledge, human beings become a “real subjectivity” instead of puppets or clay in the hands of History. Edwidge Danticat visited the Massacre River in 1995 and was surprised by the calm and domestic routines taking place there. The people at the river were unaware of the brutal killings that had taken place there years ago. Realizing that the horrific occurrences of the 1937 massacre had been forgotten, Danticat was determined to memorialize the victims and their

148  Moussa Traore suffering, by telling their stories and spreading knowledge. In 1937, the President of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, commanded his army to kill all Haitians. The majority were killed with machetes as ordered by Trujillo. Thousands were killed in the process of attempting to return to Haiti. Trujillo’s supposed inspiration for the massacre started when the Dominicans complained of Haitian thefts. He reassured his people that he would stop this treachery. His real motive however was to segregate the two peoples. He wanted to separate the Dominicans from the Haitians to establish more control and provide a clear division between the two countries. With tens of thousands of Haitians dead after five days of killing the result was only that Trujillo’s power was weakened. Ultimately, Trujillo was assassinated in 1961. That combination of heavenly roman and demanding physical work in a foreign land is captured in these lines, on the first pages of the novel: His name is Sebastien Onius. He comes most nights to put an end to my nightmare, the one I have all the time, of my parents drowning. While my body is struggling against sleep, fighting itself to awaken, he whispers for me to “lie still while I take you back.” [. . . ] I grab his body, my head barely reaching the center of his chest. He is ­lavishly handsome by the dim light of my castor oil lamp, even though the cane stalks have ripped apart most of the skin on his shiny black face, leaving him with crisscrossed trails of farrowed scars. His arms are as wide as one of my bare thighs. They are steel, hardened by four years of sugar cane harvests.13 This is reminiscent of Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la Rosée, where Manuel leaves Haiti and travels to Cuba, to work on the sugar plantation, in harsh conditions. Like Sebatien, Manuel in Roumain’s novel is whipped by the plantation owners, his masters. Danticat uses the sugar cane plantations, the exploitation of the Haitian worker who is treated like an animal (chained and muffled) and the dream is also an important symbol here. Danticat paints the fate of the female sugar cane plantation worker in the following terms, where faithfully to the Haitian tradition of storytelling and dreams, she presents a Haitian woman in the Dominican sugar cane plantations; she is treated like a beast: One of Amabelle’s recurring dreams in the book is that of the sugar woman. The chains bind the sugar woman and she wears a silver muzzle. This muzzle was given to the sugar woman so that she would not eat the sugarcane. However, despite her confinements, she is dancing. Much like the workers, they come to the Dominican Republic to find work and a better life and stay, due to the work that they find in the mills that they cannot find at Haiti. Regardless of their hard work, the workers cannot taste the sweetness of the sugarcane; instead, they are bound by it. In

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  149 fact, they cannot escape it. Danticat even describes Sebastien with his sweat as thick as sugarcane juice and many of his defining scars a result of working in the cane fields, as I intimated above. The author relies a lot on symbolism to apply to a more “general truth,” a historical event which is worth reminiscing in order to avoid the mistakes of the past. A key symbol in The Farming of Bones is parsley, whose pronunciation determines who lives and who dies in the Dominican Republic. In one instance, parsley is referred to as the tool that helps to “cleanse” in general, and the military leader of the Dominican Republic was probably trying to use it to “purify” his country, an act that looks ridiculous, a ­ arsley real case of brutal discrimination and genocide.14 In this case, p is used as a determinate of life or death and the irony in that tragedy— which is sadly enough valid in today’s world’s conflicts—is that the church is at the center of the decimation of the Haitians. The supreme military emerges from a church, while his citizens and soldiers see to it that non-­Dominicans are slaughtered. Danticat writes: The young men moved away from the frangipani and started t­ owards us. They raised handfuls of parsley sprigs over their heads and mouthed, “perejil. perejil.” A few of the people on the benches walked away in fear as the young men came towards us. [. . . ] The young men surrounded us, isolating us from most of the crowd faithfully watching the church doors and waiting for the Generalissimo to come out. As they circled us, Yves pulled out his machete and held it like a metal sash across his chest. Two of the young men lunged at him and wrestled the machete out of his grasp. The other three ripped off Tibon’s shirt and poked a broom stick at his squletal arm. Tibon tried to step back, but the young men shoved him forward, towards the stick.15

Major Themes in the Novels The Revelation of “Us” and “Others” When a group takes control of life-sustaining assets, their need to p ­ rotect it from being taken calls for the identification of members of the group and those who are not part of the group. Caselli and Coleman identified language as one of the means to identify “Us” and “Others.” The ­Farming of Bones carefully explores this factor and concludes on the need to eschew differences that stem from variation in the use of language. The Farming of Bones Opens with the Following Passage from the Bible: “Jephthah called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to the Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,”

150  Moussa Traore the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” they said, “alright say ‘shibboleth,’” If he said “Sibboleth” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-thousand were killed at the time.”16 Such a choice is very appropriate for a novel. The narrator achieves several significant goals by using such a passage, at that specific place in the novel: first of all, the event mentioned is very poignant and it shows how trivialities have generated massacres in human civilization, from History till today. Those verses in the Book of Judges depict in more vivid ways how differences in languages, no matter how little they are, have been earmarked as the root of dissention between human beings. One of such examples is the case of the Tower of Babylon. This research does not foreground Theology, but the choice of this specific section of the Bible to open The Farming of Bones can be interpreted as an attempt by the writer to make the novel heavily multi-layered. I find the use of language here to again be strategic because, the writer informs readers even before they read the text that people may be considered different per the language they speak. One may find a group to be his/hers (“ours”) based on the language spoken by the group. Thus, we are not in any way surprised when the difference between Haitians and ­Dominicans at a point depended on language. Word of Senora Valencia’s invitation passed from mouth to mouth in the group. Shoulders were shrugged. Eyebrows were raised. Burlap sacks and straw hats were removed from heads for a better look at the house. Discussions began and ended in the same breath. What did she want with them anyway? Maybe they were all going to be poisoned. Many had heard rumours of groups of Haitians being killed in the night because they could not manage to trill their “r” and utter a throaty “j” to ask for parsley, to say perejil.17 I find the use of language in the text, as can be seen from the quote above, to determine who lives and who dies; who is part of our group and who is not. The Creole and French-speaking immigrants in the United States are also a subject in Brother I’m Dying. I believe language then plays a key role in the two texts. Again, language has been a major yardstick upon which people are massacred on the grounds that they represent the “others.” For i­nstance, about the The Rwandan Genocide Maria Van Haperen made the ­following comment precisely about the reflections and experiences of the UN General on the field: General Roméo Dallaire, who is ­probably the best-known witness and bystander to the genocide, said that although he was initially appalled by the murders, he had the impression that the Rwandan army and the Interahamwe were attacking political enemies of President Habyarimana.18 It was only in the course of several

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  151 days that it began to dawn on the Canadian General that crimes against humanity were being committed and that all the Tutsi were being targeted. He only realized this when he actually saw Interahamwe pulling people with Tutsi ID cards out of their cars at road blocks and murdering them on the spot.19 In the same vein, in Mein Kampf, Hitler writes: “Over the long term, he can preserve his existence within other people only if he succeeds in persuading them that he is not a people, but only a ‘religious community.’”20 Seeking Greener Pastures Both texts understudy present dichotomies. It is either an obvious indication of a call to migrate to seek greener pastures in the United States (as in Brother, I’m Dying) or in the Dominican Republic. One best way in which this dichotomy is laid out is the birthing of the twins. The opening of The Farming of Bones presents a nice symbol to explicate this dichotomy: Valencia’s birthing of two twins. The twins become the two sides of a coin; a dichotomy; two different faces but of similar origin. Rafael and Rosalinda (the two twins) although they have the same biological parents and are both human, they differ markedly. A difference that would make an argument that one represents Haiti and the other, the Dominican Republic, an argument which is hard to reject. For instance, as the novel unfolds, Rafi is described to be coconut-creamed colored21 whereas Rosalinda has a “deep bronze” color like “the colors of tan Brazil nut shells and black salsigy.”22 It is from this that further characterizations of the twins rest. Rosalinda takes after her military-man father and acts like Amabelle, the main character of the novel. In the end, Rosalinda becomes a Haitian whereas Rafi, even from the name he is given—Generalissimo, becomes a Dominican. The novel then develops mostly along the symbols that each of these two children embodies. Javier attempts to offer an explanation for why Rosalinda is the smallest. In his explanation, he believes that ­Rafael attempted to murder his sister in the womb. This explanation is also ­supported by the evidence that Rosalinda had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck at birth. So, when Trujillo, the Dominican d ­ ictator decides to murder the Haitians, it is also a confirmation, of a sort, to what is perceived as the attempt Rafael made even before birth. Thus, Trujillo will equally make efforts to kill the Haitians at ­H ispaniola. The picture here in created is a world of the survival of the fittest. Danticat’s The Farming of Bones however seeks to offer an insight into this survival and supremacy conception. She, in the end, changes Javier’s conception when Javier confesses that “sometimes you have two children born at the same time; one is stillborn but the other one alive and healthy because the dead one gave the other a life transfusion in the womb and in essence sacrificed itself.”23

152  Moussa Traore Although the quests for greener pastures may always call for the need to move, I find the loss in the family (Brother, I’m Dying) and the massacre of the working Haitians to be a call for the need to allow exploitation instead of conflict. Carefully, Danticat drives home the point that conflict may bring a lot of disasters, and it will not in any way suggest that you are the fittest, as fitness may be judged by one’s readiness to sacrifice assets for the survival of others.

Pedagogy for the Teaching of Brother I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones This section proposes the appropriate pedagogy for teaching these two novels. The focus of that pedagogy will be learner-centered, located within the context of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (by Paulo Freire) and the empowering of the learner by introducing new ways of teaching texts, or teaching against the grain, as bell hooks recommends in Teaching to Transgress. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed or Pedagogy of Hope (as the revised editions have been dubbed) is recommended here because of its main feature, which is “the eradication of the Banking System of Education” since the Banking System treats learners as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. bell hooks has been influenced by Paulo Freire and she applies the former’s Pedagogy to learners in general, and black learners in particular. bell hooks’ pedagogy is appropriate here because it will empower the students who are being taught these two texts, will help them to interpret the texts with wider lenses, linking the various themes in the texts to other general and relevant themes in Literature, Politics, Sociology, and Education among others. In this era where intolerance seems to be ascendant, exposing students to critical thinking as Paulo Freire and bell hooks recommend is the most beneficial path to follow. The following is therefore a sample of a course outline that was used for teaching these two books.

Course Outline Course Title: Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and The Farming of Bones. Course Description This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to geopolitical conflicts as presented in Literature. The course is designed to enable students develop interests in Caribbean or Black Diasporan or Haitian Literature. The central focus of the course rests on the need to embrace peace amidst the constant struggle for survival; the survival of the fittest. The foundation of the course rests on Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  153 and The Farming of Bones. Thus, this one semester course will focus on factors that cause geopolitical and ethnic divisions, what brings exploitations and conflict and how it can be solved as seen in the novels. The seminar method will be adopted to the teaching of the course since the method is learner-centered even though the instructor will lead the discussion in some parts—theoretical issues and background information of the author—during the first two weeks and occasionally, in the middle of the semester (for the background information). Mode of delivery This course will combine the seminar format which is based on r­ eader’s response. Every student will come to class with a written response based on the reading(s) of the day. Those responses must convey the student’s personal interpretation and reaction to the texts. Such responses can also involve linking the reading of the day to other texts or literary ­materials that the student has read before. Topics The following topics will be covered in the class: • • • • • • • • •

Pan-Africanism Theories on Conflict The Theory of Ethnic conflict Diaspora Identity Migration Language Policy Genocides Family dynamics in the Caribbean.

Other topics that emerge as important from the class discussions will be thoroughly covered, as all other topics. Mode of Evaluation -Reading Response: 20% -Class Attendance: 10% -Class Participation: 15% -Final Examination: 55% The final examination is a take-home examination and students will choose a topic of their choice, from one of the two books. The topics will be re-formulated if necessary by the course instructor, or directly

154  Moussa Traore accepted when they are found to be good and well-formulated research topic. Students are expected to do some research in order to enrich their paper; they will write them in such a way that they can be published in academic journals in the Caribbean and Black Diasporan Literature. The final paper should be between fifteen and twenty double-spaced pages and will be sent via email to the instructor. Other topics that emerged as important from the class discussions were thoroughly covered by the instructor and the students also contributed actively at that level. The following section provides summaries of the various books that were used for the weekly readings and assignments, which are tabled in the appendix. Summaries of Texts *The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du bois The Souls of Black Folk published in 1903 is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a considered as a seminal work in the history of sociology, as well as a cornerstone of African American literary history. It contains several essays on race and in the work, Du Bois drew from his own experience as an African American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology. It is worth pointing out that in The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois coined the term “double consciousness,” which is the idea that black people must have two fields of vision at all times which means that they must be conscious of how they view themselves, as well as being conscious of how the world views them. *Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston. The novel, published in 1937, is the story of Janie Crawford’s search for love which is told in the form of a frame. In the first pages, Janie returns to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, after nearly two years of absence. Her neighbors are curious to know where she has been and what has happened to her. Janie tells her story to her friend Pheoby Watson, and after the story is over, the novelist returns to Janie’s back steps. Thus, the story, which actually spans nearly forty years of Janie’s life, is “framed” by an evening visit between two friends. The story that Janie tells them is about love, how she sought love in four relationships: first from the grandmother who raised her. Next, from Logan Killicks, her first husband, a potato farmer. Her third relationship involved Joe Starks. Their union lasted nearly twenty years and brought her ­economic security and an enviable position as the mayor’s wife. Janie’s

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  155 final relationship was with migrant worker Tea Cake, who gave her the true love and happiness that she had always desired. Tea Cake ultimately dies when a hurricane devastated the land. Janie is then surrounded by memories of her beloved Tea Cake. She returns to her hometown, with her quest for sincere love having finally been fulfilled by Tea Cake. After an evening of retelling her past to her friend Pheoby, the story of Janie’s life is complete. Some of the salient features of this novel are: the search for true love, the existence of different types of love, the link between love and freedom, writing in Black English and the display of African American folklore. *The Big Sea by Langston Hughes The Big Sea, a novel written by Langston Hughes in 1993, is an autobiography that revolves around the life of the author, Langston Hughes, who grows up in America and faces the same challenges as those brought upon other black citizens of America due to the color of their skin. His mother was very poor and so he grew up moving around a lot. He quickly realized that he had a gift and a passion for poetry. Although Hughes initially starts college, he drops out to be a seaman but later r­ eceives a scholarship from Lincoln College. In college, he decides to write poetry books that will become published and earn him some money. He makes many friends at college but with the beginning of the Great Depression, Hughes realizes that he will need to earn some money and publish some books of poetry. The autobiography was written by the author to reflect upon his life and legacy and also to allow readers to reflect upon it. The book was also written to provide a first-hand snapshot as to how life was for a black citizen of the United States at the time and the many challenges that they faced to gain civil rights and to improve their lives. Thus, the novel can be followed through with fascination as a success story and chronicle of adventure, full of living individuals and ­colorful scenes. It can be remembered more thoughtfully as a personal re-­creation of “Negro” life from pre-war days, through war and postwar conditions and fevers, against backgrounds of contrast in both place and time. Though, the novel has a profound quality and lasting worth, it can be found that from first to last, through all these and other experiences and observations, the novel remains both sensitive and poised, candid and reticent, realistic and unembitter. *The Theory of Ethnic Conflict by Francesco Caselli and Wilbur Coleman In this paper published in 2006, the authors present a theory of ethnic conflict which critically reviews the ways in which coalitions formed along ethnic lines compete for the economy’s resources. The paper

156  Moussa Traore reveals the roles of ethnicity in enforcing coalition membership particularly in ethnically homogeneous societies where members of the losing coalition can defect to the winners at low cost, and thus ruling out conflict as an equilibrium outcome. The authors derive several implications of the model which are directly related to social, political, and economic indicators such as the incidence of conflict, the distance among ethnic groups, group sizes, income inequality, and expropriable resources. *So Spoke the Uncle by Jean Price-Mars So Spoke the Uncle was published in 1928, initially in French as Ainsi parla l’oncle, during the “peak” of the Harlem Renaissance in the United States. The book provides the author’s assessment of the folklore of the Haitian past and contemporary customs of the early 1900s based upon years of contemplative thought and also the accumulation of factual evidence. Jean Price-Mars’ notes, reactions to conferences, knowledge of new social scientific theories, and discussions with fellow intellectuals resulted in this provocative literary work. It provides clear evidence that Price-Mars was an erudite thinker who was able to advance an innovative idea in such compelling and thought-provoking manner. This seminal work delves into numerous areas like Sociology, Anthropology, History, Language and many others, on Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. It can also be read as Price—Mars’ attempt to strengthen the need for the interaction between Africa and the Black Diaspora. *The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James The Black Jacobins published in 1938 by C.L.R. James, focuses on Toussaint L’Ouverture as the revolutionary spearhead and organizational leader. L’Ouverture’s life and his leadership of the revolution are examined as well as the revolution itself. He is credited with uniting the revolutionary forces, as well as leading many of the most important battles. His influence, as well as that of the French Revolution, is the main propellant of the book. He spearheads the revolution nearly to the end when he is captured, and then some of his most powerful generals, Moise and Dessalines, complete the revolution. In the novel, Toussaint L’Ouverture comes to act almost as a tragic hero, and this is where the fine line between accurate history and historical literature is blurred, because although The Black Jacobins can be considered as the best account of the revolution that exists, it seems idealistic to a minor extent. It is the main source today that is cited when Haiti is referred to as the first black republic of the world. The novel has become a touch stone for thinking about the decolonization struggle in general. Thus, modeled somehow along Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, The Black

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  157 Jacobins as a novel is not academic history, but one written by a proletarian revolutionist using theory and history as a guide to revolutionary struggle. Throughout the novel, the author highlights the dialectical interaction between the revolutions in France and Haiti, particularly the interaction between the Parisian masses, the sansculottes [downtrodden], and the slaves. For C.L.R. James, that international solidarity is the secret of both revolutions’ success, and it is also necessary for human emancipation. *Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aimé Césaire Aimé Césaire’s, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, is a work of immense cultural significance and beauty. The text, first published in book form in 1947 in French as Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, marks the beginning of Césaire’s quest for and subsequent defining of negritude; the concept of Black consciousness he founded with Léopold Senghor and Léon Damas. The long poem became an anthem of Blacks around the world. With its emphasis on unusual juxtapositions of object and metaphor, manipulation of language into puns and neologisms and rhythm, Césaire considered his style a “beneficial madness” that could “break into the forbidden” and reach the powerful and overlooked aspects of black culture. *The African: A triple Heritage by Ali Mazrui The African: A triple Heritage published in 1986 by Ali Mazrui is a provocative study of the African continent which has over the years riled many readers and elicited praise from many others. In this seminal work, Mazrui’s analyses are Africa’s own native inheritance of man or natural identity, the Islamic culture and religion, and Western capitalism which he regards as “three heritages.” Also, as these elements interact with each other, their failures provide the author with his wide-ranging thesis. In as much as the author occasionally complains that early cartographers placed the European and Asian continents at the top of their maps, thus relegating Africa to a “subservient” position, he seems to be more petulant than perceptive. Thus, such quibbles aside, the text is a well-researched and smoothly written investigation into Africa’s turbulent past, problematic present, and uncertain future. Also, Mazrui’s analysis of the tools of exploitation from the slave trade to the role of nuclear development in the area’s future is well reasoned and concisely outlined. The author’s investigation of various political options is even handed and sensible, though some readers may balk at what they may discern as a socialist bent in his discussions on the varied issues and arguments in the texts.

158  Moussa Traore *Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat Brother, I’m Dying is an autobiographical narrative that begins in Haiti and eventually ends in the United States. It tells the story of the author who is also the main character in the novel from her childhood in Haiti to her adult life in the United States. At the age of four she was left to be raised by her uncle in Haiti while her parents moved to the United States on a work visa to pursue economic opportunities. It wasn’t until the age of twelve that she able to be reunited with her family. She falls in love, marries, and eventually has a child. Edwidge’s father becomes terminally ill and she decides to write her family’s life story so that it can be shared with relatives who are still living in Haiti. Thus, in this novel, Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. In 2004, his life threatened by an ­angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dies within days. *The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones is a historical fiction account of the 1937 Parsley Massacre, as seen through the eyes of Amabelle Desir. The novel tells the story of Amabelle Desir, separated from her lover, Sebastien Onius, as the massacre breaks out and her searches for news of his fate. The novel also centers around the Parsley Massacre of 1937, when the Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, organized a genocidal slaughter of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. Dominican resentment toward Haitians can be traced back to the 1800s, when Haitian forces took control of the Dominican Republic until 1844. Told in first-person narrative from Desir’s perspective, the novel has, as its central theme, the importance of remembering the past. This is due to Danticat’s shock when she visited the Dominican Republic and found that the events of the 1937 massacre had been almost forgotten. Thus, the book frequently shows Haitian workers making a point of remembering and retelling their experiences, for fear of the names and faces of their loved ones being lost forever. Widely ­acclaimed upon its release, it was especially praised for Danticat’s ability to make history come alive with her vivid and powerful writing. *Caribbean Discourse by Edouard Glissant Caribbean Discourse is an ambitious attempt to read the Caribbean and the experience of the Americas in general, to some extent. It is not as a response to a fixed, univocal meaning imposed by the past, but as

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  159 an infinitely varied and inexhaustible text. In its effort to plumb this deeper psychic truth of the Caribbean, Glissant’s work examines several important factors. Its reach extends from the trivial to the portentous, from wind shield stickers to the first document promising the abolition of slavery. Caribbean Discourse therefore follows in the wake of essays of similar scope and originality, which examine with equal attention ­diasporan /ric themes as Alejo Carpentier, Octavio Paz, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, Jean Price-Mars, and Wilson Harris. In this series of essays, lectures, anecdotes, and prose poems, which are often as ­scientific in conception as they are poetically digressive in ­execution, Glissant shifts the reader’s attention away from the conventional reduction of Caribbean history to a racial melodrama of revenge or remorse and encourages us to look toward a close scrutiny of the obscurities, the vicissitudes, the fissures that abound in Caribbean history from slavery to the present. This work is considered by many critics as the beginning of the fissure between continental Africa and the black diaspora, in terms of culture and literature. *Heremakhonon by Maryse Condé Heremakhonon, written by the Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condë and published in 1976, marked an important stage within the history of Francophone Caribbean women writers. Condé had published a couple of plays before, but Heremakhonon launched her character as a novelist who within the next three decades or so, would explore in extremely novel ways the intersections of colonialism, history, race, class and gender within her work. Heremakhonon, in lots of ways, is a conventional “return to Africa” story—a theme which has ­concerned writers and a­ rtists of the African Diaspora in important and ­interesting ways. ­Drawing upon her own experiences of spending time in Guinea, Condé’s novel complicates the well-known trope of locating an ­unproblematic homeland within the continental Africa. In several ways, her protagonist, Veronica Mercier, a Guadeloupean- Caribbean researcher-academic, who reaches an unnamed nation in West Africa via Paris, becomes an embodiment of Condé’s own admission that she was “badly prepared” to “encounter” Africa. Written in a first-person narrative, Veronica’s ­experiences as a teacher of philosophy in a local school forms the ­backbone of Condé’s novelistic narrative. While working as a teacher, Veronica becomes friends with Saliou, the director of the school and shortly afterwards, becomes the lover of Ibrahim Sory, the ­M inister of Defence and Interior. It is through these two relationships that ­Veronica begins to witness postcolonial Africa, or more specifically, the ­ideological-political character of the post-colonial African state. It is a perfect illustration of the example of the female Caribbean, looking for a cure to her identity crisis.

160  Moussa Traore *In Praise of Creoleness (1989) by Jean Benabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant This work was initially published in French as Eloge de la Créolité. The reader easily realizes that up to some point in History, one defining characteristic of Caribbeanness is that Caribbeans are possessed by a certain exteriority since their colonization. The French colonies were forced to view themselves through a western lens that was imposed upon them by colonization and so they came to know and define themselves through what can be called “the eyes of the other.” A result of this is the borrowing of the French language as the predominant form of expression in lieu of creole. What results is problematic because the French ­language is “unrelated to this land,” the Francophone Caribbean area, and so it was also unrelated to the people. The authors of this text clearly pose that they have spent much time studying Négritude, which similarly ­attempted to reclaim a voice, language, and literary expression for the French colonies. Authors such as Césaire, cited in this article, reached to Africa in an attempt to find the voice of the people of the African ­diaspora in the Caribbean. However, this essay claims that true ­Caribbean identity cannot be found on the axis of European values or on the axis of African heritage because both are transplanted, exterior illusions. The work emphatically poses that instead, Caribbeanness must be redefined and renamed, inclusive of both Europeanness and Africanness, and yet entirely different: Creoleness. Critical Response to the Teaching of the two Main Texts It might help to start by recalling that the course was designed to teach fourth year students reading English Language at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. The purpose was to introduce the students to various literatures by writers of Caribbean descent in order to help them have a view of the Caribbean world and also, to help them develop a critical mind in dealing with various literatures around the world. At the end of the course, various responses were put forth by various students. At the end of the course, students were able to draw varied relations between the Caribbean experience and the Ghanaian society especially when it comes to the issues of migration or living in the diaspora. Some students readily shared their experiences of losing touch with relatives due to the quest for greener pastures or better living opportunities ­outside Ghanaian. 1 During the teaching of Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, some s­ tudents who had travelled outside Ghana expressed their resentments at the treatment of Joseph Danticat in the United States and even r­ elated it to their personal experience as regards to their stay abroad,

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  161 especially in the United States and the United Kingdom where some of them had spent holidays, doing summer jobs. Some of the students were of the view that due to the interesting and thematically thought-provoking nature of the texts, the course should have an extension to cover the other (the next) semester. All the students found the course to be suitable for one academic year instead of one semester. Their reason was that the themes were very crucial, exciting, highly instructive and very “topical” in nature. They also suggested that other texts by the author be added to the course, for the subsequent years. Many of them were of the view that all the works by Edwidge Danticat need to be studied in the ­Caribbean Literature course. They were suggesting a regular ­shifting or reshuffling of texts. They suggested that other ­Caribbean authors could be considered with time, for the same course. When the instructor asked them which author they had in mind, their ­answer was that the instructor was the in the best position to choose which books should be taught, since they (the students) had not much knowledge of other Caribbean authors or their works. 2 Others felt inspired by the nature of Danticat’s texts especially her ability to use a language she was not born with (the English ­language) to discuss universally critical issues of migration and ­racial segregation. They felt that one need not to be well familiarized with a particular language before they can adopt it to present issues of universal concern. Thus, her use of a second language (English in Danticat’s case) in presenting her novels was a source of inspiration to them. 3 In the discussion of Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, some students reacted bitterly to the extent to which languages are used as a tool to bring down certain groups of people especially in identifying certain groups viewed as superior from the ones that are considered to be the minority or inferior. Most of them shared their experience in relation to the situation where persons have been looked down upon for not having fluency in the English language. Some even brought in the treatment of “been-tos” (Ghanaians who have stayed abroad, precisely in the Western world) who are preferentially treated due to their accent which serves as a mark of their Western experience, something which is envied by the overage Ghanaian.

Conclusion This paper aimed at scrutinizing Brother, I’m Dying and In the ­Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat, through the lenses of Caselli and Coleman’s Theory of Social Conflict, and the internal dynamics that lie within the concept of the Black Diaspora, like the voluntary and forced migration of people, the latter being relevant in this case. The other

162  Moussa Traore major task that this research set out for itself is the appropriate pedagogical approach for teaching the two novels under study. Materials like Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy of Hope, and other revolutionary teaching inclinations which are propounded by bell hooks as in Teaching to Transgress have been identified as the best means through which these two books can be thoroughly studied in a one semester course. A sample of a course outline featuring themes and reflections over the manner in which language is artistically manipulated in the texts has been provided toward the end of the paper in order to show how the two books can be effectively and efficiently taught.

Notes 1 Neta C. Crawford, “Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars: Lethality and the Need for Transparency,” (November 2018). Watson Institute of International and Public Affair. Brown University. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/ files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Human%20Costs%2C%20Nov%208%202018 %20CoW.pdf 2 UNHCR, “UNHCR: Total number of Syrian refugees exceeds four million for first time,” (09 July 2015) www.unhcr.org/news/press/2015/7/559d67d46/ unhcr-total-number-syrian-refugees-exceeds-four-million-first-time.html 3 See for example, Francesco Caselli and Wilbur Coleman. “Power S­ truggles and the Natural Resource Curse”. American Economic Review, 96(3): 499–522. 4 Caselli and Coleman, “Power Struggles and the Natural Resource Curse,” 14. 5 Ibid. 6 Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying, 41. 7 Ibid., 6. 8 Ibid., 54. 9 Ibid., 222. 10 Ibid., 238. 11 Ibid., 241–242. 12 Leslie Alexander, “A Pact with the Devil? The United States and the Fate of ­Modern Haiti,” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, 4(5), Feb. 2011, http://origins.osu.edu/article/pact-devil-united-states-and-fate-modern-haiti 13 Danticat, The Farming of Bones, 10. 14 Ibid., 203. 15 Ibid., 102. 16 The New American Standard Version, Judges 12: 4–6. 17 Danticat, The Farming of Bones, 18. 18 Maria Van Haperen, “The Rwandan Genocide, 1994,” www.niod.nl/sites/ niod.nl/files/Rwandan%20genocide.pdf 19 For further details, see Barbara Boender and Wichert ten Have, The ­Holocaust and Other Genocides. An Introduction. 2012. Amsterdam: ­A msterdam UP, 2012. 2 0 For further information, see Adolf Hitler, Hitler. Mein Kampf. Germany: Eher Verlag, 1925. 21 Danticat, The Farming of Bones, 9. 22 Ibid., 11. 23 Ibid., 19.

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  163

Bibliography Alexander, Leslie. “A Pact with the Devil? The United States and the Fate of Modern Haiti”. Origins, Current Events in Historical perspectives, 4(5). Athens: The Ohio UP, 2011. Bernabé, Jean et al. In Praise of Creoleness. Translated by Mohamed Bouyeri. Paris: Gallimard, 2010. Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I’m Dying. New York: Random House, 2007. ———. Krik? Krak! New York: Soho Press, 1995. ———. The Farming of Bones. New York: Soho Press, 1998. Caselli, Francesco and Coleman Wilbur. “Power Struggles and the Natural ­Resource Curse”. American Economic Review, 96(3): 499–522. Césaire, Aimé. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, 1939. Translated by Clayton Eshleman. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2013. Condé, Maryse. Heremakhonon. Translated by Richard Philcox. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1976. Dubois, William Edward D. Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, IL: A. C. McClurg & Co. Chicago, 1903. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Edited by Ana Maria Araújo Freire. New York: Continuum, 1994. ———. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1968. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Munich: Eher Verlag, 1925. Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea: An Autobiography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. Hurston, N. Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. ­Lippincott, 1937. James, Cyril Lionel R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1939. Mazrui, Ali. The Africans: A Triple Heritage. London: Little Brown, 1986. Quarles, A. Benjamin. Lincoln and the Negro. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. Price-Mars, Jean. So Spoke the Uncle. Edited by Magdaline W. Shannon. ­Washington, DC: Passeggiata Press, 1928. Roumain, Jacques. Masters of the Dew (trans. from French). Haiti: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947. Ten Have, Wichert and Boender Barbara, eds. The Holocaust and Other ­Genocides. An Introduction. 2012. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2012.

Appendix

Weekly Reading, Activities and Assignments Week One -General Overview of Black Diasporan Literature from the US Readings: Excerpts from the following texts The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. Du bois Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston. The Big Sea by Langston Hughes The Theory of Ethnic Conflict by Francesco Caselli and Wilbur Coleman Week Two Introduction to Literature from the Black Diaspora in the Caribbean Readings: Excerpts from the following texts: So Spoke the Uncle by Jean Price-Mars The Black Jacobins by C.L. R. James Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aimé Césaire Week Three Black Caribbean Diaspora (Continuation) Excerpts from Caribbean Discourse by Edouard Glissant Heremakhonon by Maryse Condé. Week Four The Créolité Movement Excerpts from in Praise of Creoleness by Patrick Chamoieau et al.

Experiences from a Class in Ghana  165 Weeks Five An overview of African cultures, societies and civilizations from Premodern to the Postmodern era in The African: A triple Heritage by Ali Mazrui Week Six Brother, I’m Dying Overview of major Haitian writers and their works: Dany Laferrière, Frankétienne and René Depestre. The translated version of their works were used, when they were available. Those that were in French were explained to the students by the instructor, who was multilingual, ­fortunately. Discussion of Edwidge Danticat and a brief discussion of her main writings like Krik, Krak, and others were done. Week Seven Brother, I’m Dying Thematic discussion and Refection over the Language in Brother I’m Dying. • • • • • •

Family life and family ties in Haiti Traditional Religion and Christianity Social inequality: the rich and the poor Political instability / Dictatorship Imperialist American Invasion Massive migration to the US for safety and material comfort & its inherent difficulties (the search for the Eldorado)

Week Eight Brother, I’m Dying (continuation) • • • • •

Living on both sides of the divide: part of the family in Haiti and part in the US Cosmopolitanism in the US Inhuman and unjust treatment of asylum seekers from Haiti in the US: A Critical examination of Uncle Joseph’s tribulations and ­traumatic death. Difference between the ways of seeing life and death in Haiti and in the US. The issue of language: why did Danticat choose to write in English? What is the importance/ place of Creole in Brother I’m Dying?

*Assessment on Brother, I’m Dying

166  Moussa Traore Week Nine The Farming of Bones • • • •

• • •

• • • •

Thematic Discussion and Analysis of the Language in the Novel The French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean: Haiti and The Dominican Republic. The global exploitation of the resources in those lands: the ­metaphors and ironies behind sugar cane, rhum, and tobacco. Migration from one island to another in search of better living ­conditions and also for agricultural skills acquisition (reference was being made to Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée /Masters of the Dew) Romance between immigrants in a foreign land: Is love a bond which makes one feel at home? The multifaceted feature of Language: how it can unite and divide The absurd nature of life in the novel: Human atrocities which are committed in the name of trivialities (references was made to the extermination of the Jews in Germany during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire in Africa). Natural resources and the fight for control and domination The Biblical allusions and their role in The Farming of Bones. How dictatorship thrives on the division among people: the case of the Haitian and Dominicans. How crucial human values are wasted in times of war: Scholars are humiliated, lose their sanity and become non-entities: the case of the Professor in The Farming of Bones.

*Assessment on The Farming of Bones Week Ten Final discussion on the two novels; explanation of nebulous points or aspects in the understandings of texts and in the format and requirements of the final examination.

9 Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! Through Global Learning Classrooms Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! is a collection of stories that, as a whole, captures the emotional and psychological labor of Haitian women at home and across the Haitian diaspora, particularly in the United States. The collection is one of Danticat’s earlier works and the stories reveal a particular naiveté about the phantasmagorical potential of narrative to capture the nuance of Haitian women’s experience. Although the collection does not officially constitute a story cycle, there are character and plot threads woven through many of the tales, further confirming the generational connectedness of the Haitian women’s lived experiences. This essay offers a pedagogical approach to teaching Edwidge ­Danticat’s Krik? Krak! through connected global classrooms and ­interactive online practices. It describes a team-taught unit designed by Dr. Anita Baksh from LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York (CUNY),1 in collaboration with Dr. Schuyler Esprit of Dominica State College and Create Caribbean Research Institute. This global classroom exercise featured students from the United States (New York City) and the Caribbean (Dominica) engaging in virtual discussion via Skype and blogging to discuss stories from Krik? Krak!, specifically “Children of the Sea” and “Nineteen Thirty-Seven.” The collections’ stories are mostly set in the town of Ville Rose. The town bears witness to birth and death, migration and loss, work and play as the various women who leave or are left behind must confront their critical role in shaping their society, even as they are treated as ­second-class citizens by the members of their community and the oppressive systems that shape their circumstances. For instance, the contrast in the stories “Night Women” and “New York Day Women” highlight the shame and anxiety associated with certain kinds of work for Haitian women, even as they are expected to carry the burden of raising families and generations. The narrator in “Night Women” reflects on the impression she gives her son about her life as a sex worker. As she invites different men into her home and her bed while he sleeps, she creates a fantasy narrative of the visitors as “angels” of his dreams, on the chance that he may awake while they are still there. Indeed, these “angels” who visit her at night

168  Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit ensure that he has food on the table in the daytime. Conversely, the immigrant narrator in “New York Day Women” follows her mother who works as a nanny and a babysitter for a white child in New York City. She does this work in the middle of the day when she believes her daughter will not find out about her movement through the city, and most especially the type of labor she performs as a nanny for a white family. The two stories selected for the Global Classroom exercise have ­similar threads of shame and emotional anxiety, but these stories more closely reflect the anxieties that come as a consequence of trauma and oppression. In the story “Children of the Sea,” two young lovers draft l­etters to each other, with the understanding that the other will never hear these thoughts but may somehow feel them. The young man is ­making a ­journey to the United States on a boat, while the young lady, feeling his impending death, writes him letters of the possibility of a future that she will have despite the war that continues to plague Haiti. Similarly, the young girl must come to terms with her lover’s disappearance and imagine her life without him and makes peace with her strict father who worked to protect her from this heartbreak in war time. “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” takes a fantastical approach to the effects of the 1937 bloody murder of thousands of Haitians at the Massacre River bordering Dominican Republic at the command of Dominican military leader, General Trujillo. The story blends themes of superstition, mysticism, family ties, and women’s sacrifice as it recounts the narrator’s visits to her imprisoned mother who is accused of “flying” or being a witch in the Haitian community. The symbol of the crying Madonna is used to reveal the ways in which the supernatural is used for both harm and protection in the discourse of war, when Haitians are forced to distrust members of their own communities, especially their women. While our team-taught unit focused on themes of migration and war, the selected stories allowed for broader discussions on topics central to the concerns of this collection, including gender, nationalism, “ ­ cultural and communal identity,” religious difference, and “the violence of ­hegemony and imperialism in relationship with society, family, and community.” Moreover, students were urged to reflect on connections between the particular and the universal by considering how Danticat’s fiction contributed to their understanding of migration and war in other local and global contexts.

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) This unit was part of a pilot program implemented at ­LaGuardia ­Community College that aimed to incorporate global learning ­opportunities into the college curricula. The initiative was based on the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) paradigm ­developed at the State University of New York (SUNY). It allowed faculty

Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!  169 to integrate international perspectives into teaching beyond readings of global texts. Through online interactions, it facilitated students’ global awareness and cross-cultural communication. These connections are particularly pertinent for institutions (like community colleges) where global learning opportunities such as study abroad, satellite ­campuses, and joint-degree programs are scarce, non-existent, or too costly. ­According to the Institute for International Education, less than 10% of U.S. college students study abroad. 2 Moreover, a significant percentage of those students come from white and wealthy backgrounds.3 COIL provides an inexpensive alternative to these intercultural exchanges that require physical mobility by “[fostering] meaningful exchanges ­between teachers and students with their peers abroad through the use of ­I nternet-based tools that link university classes in geographically ­distant locations.”4 Within this educational model, instructors from two or more cultures compose a shared syllabus or unit, “emphasizing ­experiential and collaborative student learning.”5 Collaborations can be tweaked to the format of the courses involved. Classes can be offered exclusively online or through a mix of online interactions and traditional face-to-face meetings at each institution. For our joint-unit on Krik Krak, we held traditional classroom ­meetings at our individual institutions, arranged one cross-campus ­virtual session through SKYPE, and made use of a shared blog space to facilitate student exchanges. In the following sections, we highlight our respective institutions and courses, outline the process of setting up the global classroom, designing assignments, facilitating virtual discussion, and reflect on things we might have done differently.

Institutional Profiles and Course Descriptions Located in the Long Island City area of New York City, ­LaGuardia ­Community College prides itself on being one of the most diverse ­institutions of higher education in one of the most diverse places in the world. More than 60% of its students are immigrants who originate from 148 countries. It offers over fifty associate degree (A.A.) programs and four certificate programs. Like most community colleges, many of LaGuardia’s students are nontraditional;6 they are often first generation, come from low-income families, and often need remediation. At LaGuardia it is not uncommon for students to work full-time and to have family responsibilities (as parents or as financial contributors to families within the United States and abroad) while going to school. The open enrollment policies of community colleges give educational access and vocational training to a wide range of students from various backgrounds in terms of age, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language practices, educational and work experiences, religious affiliation, and more.

170  Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit While this diversity no doubt enhances students’ opportunities for cross-cultural interactions within classroom spaces, opportunities for exchanges across national borders are limited because of institutional access (these opportunities are rarely offered, even though they are increasing), and because of students’ inability to afford them and/or to accommodate them into their busy school, work, and family lives. Thus, globally networked classrooms provide important opportunities for community college students to acquire the knowledge and practice needed to navigate future educational and professional environments. At LaGuardia, the international unit was implemented into Dr. Baksh’s World Literature in English capstone course, a requirement of all students majoring in Writing and Literature and International Studies. The course meets the college’s general education requirement for Global Learning. This particular section of the course focused on Caribbean literature and students read and analyzed literary works by writers of various ethnic, class, and national origins. Situating these texts in their historical and cultural contexts provided students with a broad overview of colonialism and the ways in which its legacy has shaped political, social, and economic circumstances in various parts of the region. It also helped students gain the analytical skills needed to close read the Danticat stories. Thus, when the shared-unit occurred in the last few weeks of the semester, students were already somewhat familiar with Dominica and Haiti. Dominica State College is the national college of the Commonwealth of Dominica and is a primarily two-year institution with a number of programs offering Bachelor’s degrees. Students complete a general ­education curriculum with foundational knowledge courses in their ­specific majors. Some majors in the humanities and social sciences ­require a capstone research course or project, or an internship where they gain skills and competencies related to their academic training. The expectation is that at least half of the college’s graduates will transfer into the workforce before transferring to four-year colleges overseas and a percentage of graduates only receive their degrees to take to the ­workforce without the intention to further their education in the short or medium term. The collaborative learning model is already a distinct feature of the ­ ominica Research and Service Learning Internship Program offered to D State College students through Create Caribbean Research Institute. Create Caribbean was designed, in part, to support the College’s ­research needs for faculty and students, creating programs and designing projects that will transfer research skills needed for further study and for employment that also adds engagement with soft skills to refine students civic and professional engagements. Students are expected to participate in a colloquium, contribute to various digital humanities projects and other research projects of the institute, and build a portfolio throughout their one- or two-year residency in the program. The internship

Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!  171 colloquium was used to participate in the collaborative classroom since students were already organized as a cohort and had prior blogging ­experience through the Create Caribbean Interns’ Blog, also hosted on the ­Wordpress platform. For the most part, students of the internship program at Create Caribbean worked collaboratively with each other to design, research, and present on topics relevant to the ­Caribbean and its diaspora. The COIL project was the first opportunity to extend that collaboration beyond the College context and the national space of Dominica. ­A lthough a previous study abroad and college tour trip to New York City had allowed the students to share research projects with Medgar Evers College students, the COIL project allowed for more substantive engagement on Caribbean primary sources, rather than just sharing the experience of research and project development. Using the work of ­Edwidge Danticat as a point of dialogue with students in New York encouraged the students in Dominica to think more deeply about the daily experience of people of color in a context drastically different from their own, whether economically, politically, or socially.

Method Since the linked courses (World Literature in English and Research and Service Learning Colloquium) centered on different topics and had various learning objectives, we decided to implement a shared unit within each of our existing syllabi. Over a three-week period, students in New York City and those in Dominica engaged in virtual discussion about Danticat’s text via one introductory classroom SKYPE session and several blog posts and responses. The one synchronous meeting of the two classes allowed us to establish a rapport among students and enable cross-cultural verbal interactions. Although students in both nations spoke English fluently, in Dominica an Anglophone Creole-English is spoken (along with a French-based Creole) and in New York American Standard English is the dominant language in academic spaces. During this meeting, instructors and students from both campuses introduced themselves, instructors outlined project goals and upcoming activities, and they engaged in a discussion of the first story, “Children of the Sea.” After introductions, students shared their impressions of and concerns about the text. Then, we engaged in a focused-discussion in which students verbally responded to think-questions that were given to both sets of students in advance to prepare for our SKYPE meeting. The session was scheduled far in advance to accommodate students’ limited schedules and the various times of the two courses. Students were assigned one international partner. For each short story, students wrote a 300–500-word post answering assigned questions. ­A fter posting, they responded to their partner’s posts in at least 150

172  Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit words. Clear deadlines were set for the completion of each task, including separate deadlines for uploading posts and for responding. For each story, students reflected on a series of questions. In their responses to “Children of the Sea,” students were asked to consider the style and form of the story and its relationship to character: How does the form of the story allow us to learn about each character’s identity and sense of self? What does each character’s letter teach us about the other character? Students also reflected on the issue of migration: How does the story help you understand the “cost” of migration. What is the cost of migration to the home nation and new nation? For this question, students were encouraged to relate the text to migration in their local and national contexts. In relation to “Nineteen Thirty-Seven,” students responded to the following: How does the narrative perspective of the story allow you to understand more clearly the impact of war? Making references to the text discuss how war affects our local and global society. After the completion of the posting and responding period, students completed a 300 word reflection on the overall project, describing their experience responding to student work from a different country and environment. The prompt for this low-stakes assignment was open ended: Were your reactions to the text much different from the students you responded to? What did you find most interesting or different your ­overseas peers’ responses to the stories? Through our selection of stories, formulation of questions, and careful planning of sequenced tasks, we aimed to encourage students to gain a larger perspective on local and global issues and events. For instance, since both New York City and Dominica have Haitian migrants, we thought this topic might be a point of reference for students in both nations. Another goal was to help students better understand ­migration, immigration, and war in other contexts including the global Syrian ­refugee crisis and students’ own family migration histories. In future iterations, we may ask students to conduct research on these topics to enhance their verbal and written analysis. Our global classroom virtual experience was set up using Wordpress. A wide range of tools can be utilized for COIL projects including email, Skype, Facebook, and Google chat/hangout. These options can be used on their own or a combination of them can be used to fit course needs. They are appealing because they have no cost, are user-friendly, and most students and instructors have prior experience using them. Instructors who have integrated COIL into curricula “mentioned the need to be flexible when a tool doesn’t work and to be open to suggestions from students about alternative solutions.”7 For our project we employed a basic Wordpress platform with multiple user access so that each ­student was able to participate using an individual login to the site. Create ­Caribbean already has its own web server where its sites and digital research projects are hosted. It was therefore accessible and affordable for the instructors

Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!  173 to create a subdomain to the Create Caribbean site for the purpose of this short-term collaboration. Instructors received Administrator access while student participants were assigned Contributor access. Wordpress is an ideal platform for this exercise for a number of ­reasons. First, the administrative panel, or dashboard, is incredibly ­user-friendly with easy-to-identify instructions and icons to compose and publish writing on the web. Second, the ability to create ­individual login for all users with different levels of administrative access was ­important to the project and took relatively little effort to set up. The benefit was to have students simply be in control of their own blog posts but not have access to edit or delete any other content on the site. This is an ­important control for any multi-user site, especially in the context where many student participants are expected to have very limited technological fluency, which may lead to unexpected and unintentional changes to the site’s content. Additionally, most Wordpress themes and plugins include a m ­ obilefriendly design, which would allow users on tablets and mobile phones (through the app or a Web browser) to have a similar or almost identical user experience as users on a computer. For low-income students, this is a critical concern of accessibility. In Dominica, for example, a report from the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority or ECTEL, noted that the mobile penetration was at 107% in 2015, while fixed broadband penetration was 20.9% of the population for the same year.8 This demonstrates that access to the Internet for many students comes only through their data plans on mobile devices. Although computer labs are available for all students, access to transportation is another factor that limits ­students’ access to desktop options for navigating Wordpress.

Faculty Reflection and Recommendations In preparation for the module, the team instructors met in person to discuss project logistics, shared goals, to choose a common text, and set deadlines for planning. After the face-to-face session, we held weekly SKYPE sessions to carefully design all assignment prompts and a timeline for student learning activities. Throughout the pre-planning phase and the implementation of the unit, faculty consistently communicated via email and used google.doc as a space to compose and revise shared curricula. There are a number of lessons we learned during the process that required us to make changes and helped us think through modifications for future implementation.

Time and Deadlines We originally allotted two weeks for the unit, but based on our assessment of student learning and verbal feedback from students we extended

174  Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit it to three weeks. Students who were first time bloggers needed more time to become familiar with WordPress, with the experience of blogging, and with that of writing for a global audience. We recommend that if a blog component is implemented in COIL projects that students practice this skill before engaging in online collaboration, so that all students have an opportunity to develop these abilities beforehand. Doing this will help students engage more confidently in and think more deeply about cross-cultural interactions instead of them trying to acquire multiple skills at the same time. We chose to conduct a shortened module to accommodate the various differences within our courses and our varied class and semester schedules. In the future, we would implement the project over a four-week period, the minimum duration recommended by SUNY COIL Center.9 Having more time would also allow students to learn more about their international partners and the international location. For instance, students can create videos introducing themselves and their neighborhoods. These introductions would allow students to have alternative perspectives of the international place than those they encounter in media, tourist materials, and cultural productions. It would also help students build a stronger relationship with their partners that would encourage deeper investment in their analysis of the texts, the blogging experience, and the project overall. Given students’ complicated lives, they appreciated the flexibility that blogging provided and having ample time in between tasks. However, the two-week schedule strictly required that all students complete each task on time which proved impossible. In the future, we would dedicate more time in the semester to the COIL unit and to each task and assignment. Students were enthusiastic about each step of the initiative and wanted more engagement with their international peers. In future, we would also include more SKYPE sessions to maintain excitement about the project, strengthen connections between the two classrooms, and give students more global experience with verbal communication. Moreover, flexibility should be factored into the schedule of the shared-unit to address concerns that may arise including technological troubles and students’ individual learning needs. We also recommend scheduling the unit mid-semester rather than the end of the semester as we did. This allows students and faculty ample time for adjustments and reflection on the entire process.

Students’ Investment For each course, even if the courses reflect different disciplines and/or learning objectives, we recommend that the COIL project be an integral part of each student’s overall course grade; the actual percentage of that grade may vary between the two COIL courses. In other words, student participation should not be voluntary at one institution but required by

Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!  175 the other. When students’ involvement and written artifacts are graded differently in each course or graded in one but not the other, students’ investment and level of engagement will also vary. Having all students accountable for completing each task will alleviate students’ frustrations about partners not responding to their posts in a timely fashion or at all. Another way to alleviate the problem of some students not engaging is to have students also respond to a classmate’s posts. This addition also produces multiple perspectives.

Modification to Meet Individual Course Needs For the World Literature course, students were allowed to draw upon blog posts for their final research papers. Since posts emphasized close reading skills, allowed to students to reflect on their own experiences, and relate the literature to local and global events, the paper offered an opportunity to refine ideas from the posts (based on feedback ­received on responses from international partners) and to extend their ­interpretations. News articles and a chapter from Danticat’s nonfiction text, ­Creating Dangerously, were provided to help students further contextualize the short stories within historical and cultural contexts; these materials were posted on Blackboard for easy accessibility. Creating Dangerously enhanced student’s understanding of the author’s position as an i­mmigrant writer as well as her purpose for and process of w ­ riting. The chosen news articles focused on images of Haiti and Haitians in U.S. media outlets and their general lack of coverage of Haitian crises such as the expulsion of Dominicans of Haitian descent from the D ­ ominican Republic in recent years10 and the devastating impact of natural disasters such as Hurricane Matthew in 2016.11

Students’ Reflections Overall this was an excellent initiative to which students responded positively. They were excited about connecting with students from and learning about the educational system of another country. The international exchanges urged students to pose questions about and to evaluate their assumptions about the text, the themes discussed, and the educational and cultural experiences and environments of their peers. For instance, in his reflection, one student wrote: “being able to work with someone who has had an entirely different experience in life than my own was great. I could see how my experiences shaped my writing and how their experiences might have shaped theirs.” Students from the United States were impressed by their peers in Dominica. They were surprised by the high quality of their writing, their vocabulary, and the depth of their critical engagement. Writing for a global audience of peers encouraged U.S.-based students to compose more careful and well-thought out

176  Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit reflections and responses. It also challenged their assumptions that the American educational system was far superior to systems in other parts of the world, especially in developing nations. Students in Dominica appreciated the experience for a number of ­reasons. First, the students were enrolled in a literature course and many had little prior exposure to Contemporary Caribbean writing. As a r­ esult, they were fascinated by the stories and the issues presented within them. Their exchanges with the U.S. students highlighted for them how the issues of migration and war were very much part of the lived experience of people their own age. Students in Dominica ­expressed being very naïve about the impacts of war on people’s lives and livelihoods and reflected on their own lives as protected and comfortable in Dominica. Their discussions of the stories with their U.S. peers were fruitful and students requested even more experiences of that type. One of the ­challenges was using a group of students that was not a traditional class group. Because the format and deadlines of the Research and Service Learning Colloquium were more fluid, they admitted that it was ­difficult to maintain interest and to honor deadlines. However, they were so engaged with the literary richness of the stories and the quality of ­responses of their U.S. peers that they requested another opportunity for a multicultural exchange in a formal, more structured classroom context. The stories and the online engagement also encouraged students to see themselves as global citizens whose experiences are different from and similar to those in other countries. In her post-reflection, one student stated: It helped me grow as a global citizen because, [sic] I have not communicated with a person who was not from the U.S. in a very long time, and doing so for this blog made me see how similar views two people can have even if they live in different countries, following different cultural and social norms. The questions I had to answer for my posts were most intriguing to me, as I genuinely felt sadness when I read the book, and the responses made me reflect on my feelings towards situations such as migration and war and what I can possibly do to help. In her response, this student points to the ways in which both interacting with a student outside of the United States and the themes of Danticat’s stories allowed her to gain a sense of global citizenship. By examining the experiences and struggles of Danticat’s fictional characters and discussing them with her partner online, this student (and others) became more aware of the contemporary realities of migration and war and gained a sense of empathy for people in these circumstances.

Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!  177 Lastly, another student’s response suggests that the peer exchange and the online platform made her excited about reading and writing about Danticat’s texts: I was more engaged in the text and my analysis because I was not working with a professor but with a student… [I] felt confident in exploring ideas in relation to the questions we were given… [T]he intimacy of posting blogs like I would post on social media … added to a better experience analyzing a text. In a classroom there is a stern and more professional atmosphere where there’s a pressure to sound a certain way. I would definitely like doing this again. As this excerpt suggests, by encouraging students to examine texts in a mode that transcends the formalities and hierarchal structure of a traditional classroom setting, the interactive blog component increased students’ motivation to critically engage with Danticat’s stories and to complete the project’s assignments. It also tapped into students’ ­familiarity of social media by allowing them to transfer those skills to an educational setting.

Conclusion In this essay, we have illustrated a creative pedagogical approach to ­teaching Danticat’s work using interactive international online ­collaboration. The project helps instructors to transform their t­ eaching by incorporating technology into their curricula and by encouraging ­ongoing self-reflection and revision of pedagogy and assignments through interfacing with their international faculty partner and through student feedback from both countries. Through global exchanges, students from both groups were introduced to new perspectives that prompted further analysis of the text, were encouraged to formulate new questions, and increased their awareness of global events. Both Danticat’s fiction and COIL (along with other programs that facilitate such international collaborations) provide productive opportunities for students to consider cultures and contexts that share similarities to and differences from their own and to engage ethically with global issues such war, migration, gender, trauma, and oppression. As governments and factions in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom seek to tighten national borders through immigration policy and travel restrictions, the need for educational opportunities that foster students’ global awareness and connections have become increasingly important.

Notes 1 The pilot project was implemented at LaGuardia through the efforts of Dr. Olga Aksakalova with support from Howard Wach, who was Dean for Leadership Development and Global Studies at that time. It was not funded by or directly associated with SUNY Center for COIL.

178  Anita Baksh and Schuyler Esprit 2 “New IIE Generation Study Abroad Scholarships,” Institute of International Education, 19 May 2015, www.iie.org/en/Why-IIE/Announcements/ 2015-05-19-Generation-Study-Abroad-Scholarships. Accessed 23 Feb. 2018. 3 Jon Rubin and Sarah Guth, “Collaborative International Online Learning.” in Globally Networked Teaching in the Humanities Theories and Practices, ed. Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Sunka Simon (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 15. 4 Ibid., 18 5 Ibid. 6 For more on community colleges and access, see Vanessa Smith Morest’s “From Access to Opportunity: The Evolving Social Roles of Community College.” 7 Jon Rubin and Sarah Guth, “Collaborative International Online Learning.” in Globally Networked Teaching in the Humanities Theories and Practices, ed. Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Sunka Simon (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 20. 8 Annual Electronic Communications Sector Review. Eastern Caribbean ­Telecommunications Authority. No. 15, 2014–2015 (Castries: St. Lucia, 2016: 33), 2016. 9 Jon Rubin and Sarah Guth, “Collaborative International Online Learning.” in Globally Networked Teaching in the Humanities Theories and Practices, ed. Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Sunka Simon (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 18. 10 For more on the Dominican Republic’s contemporary expulsion of Dominicans of Haitian descent and its historical background, see Jonathan Katz’s NYTimes article “In Exile.” The online version of this article also includes photos and a video by Patrick Witty that show the makeshift settlements these migrants have established near border towns in Haiti. 11 For more on effects of Hurricane Matthew on Haiti and on the United States and the uneven coverage in U.S. media, see Andrew Buncombe’s article, “Hurricane Matthew: In Haiti the Death Toll Stands at 877 but the U.S. Media Does Not Seem to Care.”

Bibliography Buncombe, Andrew. “Hurricane Matthew: In Haiti the Death Toll Stands at 877 but the U.S. Media Does Not Seem to Care.” The Independent, 7 Oct. 2016. www.independent.co.uk/voices/hurricane-matthew-in-haiti-the-deathtoll-stands-at-842-but-the-us-media-does-not-seem-to-care-a7351236.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017. Danticat, Edwidge. Create Dangerously the Immigrant Artist at Work. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. ———. Krik? Krak! New York: Soho Press, 2015. Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority. Annual Electronic ­Communications Sector Review. No. 15, 2014–2015. Castries: St. Lucia, 2016. Institute for International Education. “New IIE Generation Study Abroad ­Scholarships.” 19 May 2015. www.iie.org/en/Why-IIE/Announcements/201505-19-Generation-Study-Abroad-Scholarships. Accessed 23 Feb. 2018. Katz, Jonathan M. “In Exile.” The New York Times, 17 Jan. 2016. www.­nytimes. com/2016/01/17/magazine/haitians-in-exile-in-the-dominican-­republic.html?_ r=0. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.

Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!  179 LaGuardia Community College. “About Us.” www.laguardia.edu/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017. Morest, Vanessa Smith. “From Access to Opportunity: The Evolving Social Roles of Community College.” The American Sociologist 44, no. 4 (Dec. 2013): 319–328. Rubin, Jon and Sarah Guth. “Collaborative International Online Learning.” In Globally Networked Teaching in the Humanities Theories and Practices, edited by Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Sunka Simon, 15–27. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015.

10 A Comprehensive Resource Guide to Reading and Teaching Brother, I’m Dying Background, History, and Context: Part A Celucien L. Joseph Introduction: A General Overview of Brother, I’m Dying The goal of this chapter and the subsequent one is to provide to ­instructors and students a resource guide to read and teach Edwidge Danticat’s award-winning Memoir, Brother, I’m Dying. I intend for both ­chapters to be used as pedagogical tools and reading strategies, ­especially for i­nstructors who have elected to teach this book in their classroom. I ­suggest multiple approaches to reading, assessing, and teaching the Memoir, and do not give any preference to any reading strategy or t­ echnique proposed in my analysis. My primary objective is to supply the information and knowledge and the complementary material I believe an instructor might need to make the book interesting and worth discussing in the classroom, resulting in student enrichment and intellectual growth. At the end of my brief analysis of each major theme in this a­ nalysis, I shall close each section by offering some recommended readings, whose central objective is to provide to the reader, and particularly both ­instructor and students, the historical contexts and trajectories, and the necessary background information needed to the subject matter—to enhance pedagogical technique and empower students. Because of the linguist context of the publication of this book, the recommended texts are written in English, and they are both by Haitian-born authors and Haitianists. Foremost, I read the Memoir as a credible historical document about the Danticat family and interpret the events and people discussed in the book as authentic. Because of the complex nature of the plot and ­carefully crafted literacy techniques and reading strategies, the author employs as one would usually find in a historical novel, I attempt to read the narrative within this framework—without casting any doubt on the historicity of the text itself. The Memoir is a work of art, of s­ ubstantial literary clarity and precision, and it is also the zone wherein reality

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  181 meets fiction, and the sphere wherein historical imagination encounters literary imagination. Brother, I’m Dying (BID)1 is an elegant, well-written, and multi-­layered story chronicling the events and life trajectories of the author, and her family in her country of birth, Haiti, and her host and “diasporic” land, the United States. Almost written in a chronological order (some of its chapters), the narrative highlights the historical events and political situations in Haiti, and the international and immigration issues that shape the Haitian American relations. It establishes the context in which the United States has transformed the human condition in Haiti; this impact is very strong in the life of the Danticat family—including the author’s life and her siblings, and especially that of her (Uncle) J­ oseph Nosius Dantica and her father Andre “Mira” Dantica. The book is an intricate story between two worlds, two nations, two geographical locations, two people, and two ways of life. Evidently, BID belongs to the literary genres correctly named “ethnic literature” and “diasporic literature.” Danticat attempts to historicize and periodize each major account in the well-researched Memoir by situating them in their historical timeline and sequence. Although the reader has the opportunity to learn about Danticat’s childhood and the events that have shaped her life as an immigrant, Brother, I’m Dying is not an autobiography; nonetheless, it does include autobiographical information about the author. On the other hand, there are instances in the Memoir in which the reader experiences the pleasure of reading from the pen of Danticat and the delight of listening to a good tale from the lips of her female characters and heroic figures such as Granme Melina (the mother of Tante Denise who likes to tell folktales to the children in the neighborhood), Tante Denise (Edwidge’s maternal aunt and the wife to Joseph), Tante Zi (Edwidge’s paternal aunt and the sister of Mira and Joseph), and Marie Micheline. The latter was a role model for the young Edwidge, and the adoptive daughter of Uncle Joseph. Other important characters in the book ­include Maxo Dantica, the son of Denise and Joseph. He immigrated to the United States to study because of political unrest; eventually, he returned to Haiti. Finally, we encounter Faidherbe (“Fedo”) Boyer, the husband of Edwidge and father of Mira, their first daughter. Joseph Dantica, an elderly Baptist minister and community activist, whom Danticat affectionately calls “Uncle Joseph,” plays a significant part in the Memoir. The latter and his wife Tante Denise raised the young Edwidge and her brother Bob while their parents were living in the United States in search for a better life. As residents of New York, Edwidge’s parents also gave birth to two other siblings Karl and Kelly Danticat. Bennett (2008, 273) in an important review of the book ­correctly distinguishes Uncle Joseph as “a man of tremendous honor and stature, a beacon to those floundering in the dark of self-doubt and aimlessness. His words, like those of the other characters involved, are

182  Celucien L. Joseph filled with knowledge and lessons that life rarely offers us, even in our formal schooling.” Uncle Joseph suffers enormously from various health-related issues. He also experiences political persecutions in his home country. As a result, he seeks political asylum at the American Embassy in Port-­au-Prince in hope that he would be able to escape the political turmoil in Haiti and find peace in the United States. Unfortunately, at his arrival to the Miami International Airport, he is mistreated as an undocumented immigrant, placed in the Krome Detention Center in Miami, and ­ultimately dies in the Krome. Danticat’s underlying goal in writing BID is to pay a tribute to her Uncle Joseph and her father Mira and correspondingly to expose the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants and the violations of their human rights by the authorities of the U.S. Immigration system, known today as the “ICE.” Ultimately, she pens the book to challenge a system that is bankrupt, inhumane, racist, and partial to certain immigrant people. Hence, this particular aspect of the book makes BID a diasporic text.

Engaging Haiti’s National History Major Historical Events There are many major historical forces—both internal and external forces—that have radically transformed the human condition in Haiti and its diaspora, including the American military occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), the ascension and fall of the Duvalier Regime (Francois Duvalier/“Papa Doc”:1949–1971; Jean Claude Duvalier/“Baby Doc”: 1971–1986), American economic and cultural imperialism in Haiti, the expulsion and return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the arrival of the MINUSTAH (Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti) in Haiti, the American Immigration Laws toward Haitian refugees, Haiti’s infrastructures, and Haitian political violence and unrest. Danticat discusses in detail all these events and associates them with historical dates in Haitian history. The noted events in the Memoir are not necessarily connected to the chronological order of the Memoir. In Excursus I, I produce the non-chronological order of the events discussed in BID; in the second chapter, I also offer the chronology, a different excursus that reconstructs the dates and events in their chronological sequence. Below, I briefly discuss the historical figures, mainly politicians, discussed in the Memoir, and also make references to some major events which Danticat references in the narrative. Key Political Figures The first political leader Danticat introduces to the reader is Boisrond Canal. He was a Haitan politician who was born in June 12, 1832, in the city of Les Cayes. He was affiliated with the Liberal Party (“Parti

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  183 Liberal”) whose leader was Boyer Bazelais. During Canal’s presidency, the two prominent or popular political parties in Haitian politics were “Le Parti national” (The National Party) and “Le Parti liberal” (The Liberal Party). The motto of the Parti liberal states “Le pouvoir aux plus capables”/Power to the Most Capable whereas the Parti national’s belief is communicated through this phrase: “Le plus gran bien au plus gran nombre”/The greatest good to the greatest number or the majority/. While the Liberal Party prioritizes industrial labor and development, the National Party emphasizes agricultural work and development. As President of the Republic of Haiti, Canal succeeded President Michel Domingue (June 1874–April 1876) in July 1876 and was forced from the presidential power in July 1879. He served as (an interim) President of the Republic in three different occasions and was succeeded by Lysius Salomon (October 1879–August 1888). During his presidency, he fought corruption in both Haiti’s civil and political societies, but did not transform the colonial social structures of the country. He promoted freedom of public and expression and was a man of law and order. In many ways, Canal and Paul Eugene Magloire shared many political visions in their emphasis on agricultural development and passion for law and order. Magloire was a former military colonel who succeeded Dumarsais Estime (August 1946–May 1950) as President of Haiti in December 1950 and left power in December 1956. He was born in Quartier Morin, Northern Haiti, and was a member of the “Junte de Gouvernement,” meaning that an administration c­ onsisted of three military men: Paul E. Magloire, Franck Lavaud, and Antoine Levelt, after the fall of President Elie Lescot (May 1941–­January 1946). This military executive committee (January 1946–August 1946) was ­responsible to plan the future presidential election after Elie L ­ escot was forced out of power; the expulsion of Lescot was due to the political protest of student-activists in the historic march of January 7, 1946. ­Magloire was the first military-elected president of Haiti since the ­A merican military occupation of 1915. Moreover, Magloire’s election was historic in the sense that it was the first time in the history of Haiti’s political elections that Haitian males, twenty-one years old and older, participated in the general election. He was overwhelmingly elected by the Haitian males through universal ­suffrage or direct election. Magloire was a progressive president who promoted Haitian industrialization, tourism, and improved the country’s infrastructures and life conditions. President Magloire opposed communism, which made him gain a friend from the United States. Unfortunately, he was forced into exile by the opposing power: Dr. Francois Duvalier (September 22, 1957–April 21, 1971). Before Duvalier ascended to power, Pierre Eustache Daniel Fignole became an important political voice in Haitian politics. He served as the Head of State of Haiti, from May 26, 1957 to June 14, 1957. He was a grassroots activist and one of the most influential political leaders before President Duvalier assumed.

184  Celucien L. Joseph During his short-lived presidency, he called for a democratic Haiti and promoted national unity and sovereignty. Fignole campaigned among the popular class and factory workers in the urban areas in Port-au-Prince and mobilized them toward solidarity. Like Duvalier, Fignole was affiliated with the Noiriste political ideology, which called for the full participation of black-skinned Haitians in the political power; as a result, like Duvalier, he challenged the hegemony of the mulatto elite class in the political sphere. Danticat informs us that her uncle Joseph Danticat was a fierce follower of Fignole’s political ­vision and assisted him during his campaign. Fignole’s administration was very promising and assured the Haitian people that Haiti was going to a new direction and alternative future contributing to the improvement of the human condition in the country. Duvalier would throw everything out of balance. According to historian Laurent Dubois (2012, 313): Duvalier steadily eliminated, neutralized, and co-opted all of the ­independent institutions in Haitian society. Duvalier offered a ­brutally successfully response to the decades of political crisis that had followed the U.S. occupation, tapping into a long tradition of authoritarian rule in Haiti and carrying it to new heights of ­cynicism and effectiveness. Francois Duvalier who elected as President in September 22, 1957 and left power in April 12, 1971. Professionally, he was a medical doctor whom the Haitian peasants affectionately called “Papa Doc.” In 1964, he declared himself as President for life and changed the constitutional law that granted him the power to appoint his successor. When he became President, he promised national unity, cooperation, and his efforts to ­ rogressively, his work together with his opponents for national progress. P administration became totalitarian, authoritarian, and ­violent. He fortified his administration and opposed anyone or any force that ­challenged his authority and governance. For example, he expulsed from the country catholic priests who were politically consciousness and denounced Duvalier’s totalitarian regime. He ordered the murder of thousands of Haitian professionals and intellectuals who challenged his government. He executed journalists, shut off the country’s media, and restricted the ­ olontaires de la Securite freedom of the press. He created the VSN or V Nationalite to safeguard his power and threaten any force of opposition. Duvalier’s undercover squad, the Tonton Macoute, literally murdered thousands of Haitians who opposed his despotic administration. It was during the Duvalier regime, Haiti began to experience a mass exile to the United States, France, and Canada—an important era we discussed in the introduction of the book. On the other hand, during his presidency, the country’s economy and living conditions improved

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  185 tremendously and its infrastructures and social problems also strengthened. The country’s literary rate also improved. He created the Code du Travail, Codes of Law, that regulates labor, working condition, wages, and the mutual responsibilities of employees and employers. In the ­Memoir, Danticat voices her own criticisms toward this totalitarian ­regime. His son, Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”) became his successor in 1971. Following his father’s legacy, President Jean-Claude Duvalier tortured his opponents and delegated much authority to the presidential advisors. The political condition in Haiti became burdensome, which consequently led to another mass exodus from the country. He became unpopular and in 1986, and eventually, he was ­overthrown by a popular uprising, which Jean-Bertrand Aristide was instrumental. His political party, Conseil National D’Action Jean-Claudiste ­(CONAJEC) ideologically propagated the doctrine of Jean-­Claudism. As President, he worked efficiently to revolutionize the country’s ­economy and transform the problem of decentralization in Haiti. He ­introduced ­educational reform including the incorporation of the C ­ reole language in Haiti’s educational and governmental ­institutions. Abbott (2011, 326) makes the following observation as Haiti was ­politically transitioning: The New Haiti was cleansed literally and figuratively. Names were changed. Avenue Jean-Claude Duvalier became Avenue Jean-Paul II. Duvalierville reverted to its pre-Duvalier name of Cabaret. François Duvalier International Airport became Port-au-Prince ­I nternational Airport. The gruesome Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Simone (a ­grotesque memorial to Simone Duvalier) was misnamed Cite Soleil—Sun City. The millions of little paper Duvalierist flags that crisscrossed streets and buildings like black-and-red cobwebs were torn down and shredded, and soon millions of liberated ­Haiti’s redand-blue flags replaced them. As fast as prisoners and ­seamstresses could stitch them, new flags were raised over. When “Baby Doc” was forced out of power in 1986, Leslie Manigat (August 16, 1930–June 27, 2014), a prominent Haitian historian and professor who founded the political party the National Progressive Democratic Party (Abbott 2011, 350), assumed the presidential power in January 1988 with the support of a controlled military force. Manigat served as President for only a few months, from February to June 1988; unfortunately, in September 1988, he was overthrown by the Haitian military under the leadership of Colonel Matthieu Prosper Avril (born in December 12, 1937), a former advisor to Jean-Claude Duvalier. Avril’s administration lasted until March 1990. As Abbot explains (2011, 354), “Avril had known that Manigat, whose political survival depended on weakening the army, had to be overthrown.” This

186  Celucien L. Joseph was a critical moment in Haitian politics, as it paves the way for the ascension of Jean-Bertrand Aristide (born July, 15 1953) to the presidential power. After the fall of the hereditary Duvalier regime in February 1986, Jean Bertrand Aristide became the first democratically elected liberationist theologian-president of the Caribbean nation of Haiti (and perhaps in the Americas) in the free elections of December 16, 1990, with an overwhelming majority of the Haitian population. Aristide’s prophetic political vision and revolutionary theology of liberation had contributed enormously to a promising democratic future and social transformation in Haiti. Participatory democracy, justice, and social equality for the poor marked Aristide’s presidential campaign rhetoric and strategy. His early presidency was also marked by active social interaction with the poor and political activism on behalf of the masses. With the tremendous support of the ecclesiastical grassroots movement known as Ti Legliz (little church) and Haiti’s underclass majority, Aristide was able to foster and articulate an alternative vision of Haitian politics and civil society that was post-dictatorial, post-macoutism (a reference to Duvalier’s military regimes and Haitian totalitarianism), anti-imperialist, and anti-oppression. Aristide was deeply influenced by the ideas and promises of liberation theology. The political ambiguity that has marked his two presidencies, 1991– 1996 and 2001–2004, is quite appalling. Aristide overwhelmingly won the popular votes in the 1990 presidential election in Haiti. He came to power in February 7, 1991; briefly, after seven months of governance, he was overthrown by a military coup on September 26, 1991. He was restored to power in 1994–1996, by the U.S. government and the International community. His second presidential administration lasted from 2001 to 2004. In both presidential elections, Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the popular vote, about 70% in 2001. For the second time, Aristide was ousted in 2004 in a coup d’état, and eventually was forced to exile in South Africa. Many critics have characterized Aristide’s political leadership and actions during his second administration as an era of intense popular violence, gangsterization, and chimèrization. Danticat’s narrative is favorable toward Aristide’s presidency. Topics for Discussion • • •

How was the United States complicated in Haitian politics during the era of the Duvalier Regime, 1950s to 1970s? How did the American military occupation of Haiti, from 1915 to 1920, preconditioned the political climate to the rise of the Duvalier Regime? Discuss the political interference of the United States during the first and second exile and return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  187 Recommended Readings General Background about Haiti • • • • • • • • •

Abbot, Elizabeth. Haiti: A Shattered Nation. Overlook Duckworth, 2011. Dash, J. Michael. Culture and Customs of Haiti. Greenwood Press, 2001. Dash, J. Michael and Charles Arthur. Libete: A Haitian Anthology. Ian Randle Publishers, 1999. Dubois, Laurent. Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. Metropolitan Books, 2012. Dupuy, Alex. Haiti in the New World Order. The Limits of the Democratic Revolution. Westview Press, 1997. Farmers, Paul. The Uses of Haiti. Common Courage Press, 1994. Fatton, Robert. Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery. Lynne ­R ienner Publishers, 2014. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the ­Production of History. Beacon Press, 1995. Wilenz, Amy. Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti. Simon and Schuster, 2013.

The American Occupation of Haiti (1915–1934) and Imperialism in Haiti • • • • • •

Pamphile, Leon D. Clash of Cultures: America’s Educational ­Strategies in Occupied Haiti, 1915–1934. UP of America, 2008. Pamphile, Leon D. Contrary Destinies: A Century of America’s Occupation, Deoccupation, and Reoccupation of Haiti. UP of Florida, 2017. Schmidt, Hans. The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934. Rutgers UP, 1995. Plummer, Brenda Gayle. Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment. The U of Georgia P, 1992. Braziel, Jana Evans. Duvalier’s Ghosts: Race, Diaspora, and U.S. Imperialism in Haitian Literatures. UP of Florida, 2010. Renda, Mary A. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940. The U of North Carolina P, 2001.

The Duvalier Regime (1949–1971; 1971–1986) • • •

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Haiti State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. Monthly Review Press, 1990. Smith, Matthew J. Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957. The U of North Carolina P, 2009. Wilenz, Amy. The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. Simon and Schuster, 1989.

188  Celucien L. Joseph The Jean-Bertrand Aristide Administration • • • • •

Deibert, Michael. Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti. Seven Stories Press, 2005. Dupuy, Alex. The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007. Fatton, Robert. Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002. Hallward, Peter. Damming the Flood. Haiti and the Politics of Containment. Verso, 2007. Sprague, Jeb. Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti. Monthly Review Press, 2012.

The Human Condition in Haiti The Memoir belongs to what we may call a protest literature to the hegemony of the United States and correspondingly to the Western ­European powers in the world; similarly, it is also a devastating critique against how the developed countries (i.e. France, Canada, England, the United States) have mistreated Haiti and dehumanized the Haitian people. BID denounces American imperialism and military interventions and ­economic capitalism in the developing countries like Haiti. Almost at the end of the book when Uncle Joseph breathes his last breath in the strange and foreign land called America, Danticat’s (2007, 251) father responds disappointingly: “He shouldn’t be here,” my father said, tearful and breathlessly ­agitated, shortly before drifting off to sleep that night. “if our ­country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here.” Like my uncle, Leone had spent her entire life watching the strong man of authority in action, be it the American marines who’d been occupying the country when she was born or the brutal local army they’d trained and left behind to prop up, then topple, the puppet governments of their choice. And when the governments fell, United Nations soldiers, so-called peacekeepers, would ultimately have to step in, and even at the cost of innocent lives attempt to restore ­order. (Danticat 2007, 271) The crime of the UN soldiers in Haiti has heightened a culture of ­violence and the desecration of human life in the country. In the same length, from 1915 to 1934, the United States invaded Haiti through its military forces; this historical event has brought cultural shame upon the Haitian people, and politically destabilized and robbed the country of

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  189 its sovereignty and autonomy. The Haitian people are a resilient group who never stop fighting political violence, existential evils, foreign interventions, and cultural oppression. They resist both internal and external forces of oppression that come to entangle their lives; they believe in the power of justice, the significance of national peace and unity, and the necessity for their country and the Haitian people to flourish and prosper. Danticat voices her outrageous concerns about America’s exportation of goods to Haiti, which has crippled the Haitian market and agricultural sector. Also, America’s economic imperialism in Haiti has affected Haiti’s factory workers resulting in more starvation in the country, economic independence, and the loss of wages and employment in Haiti. Consequently, she could write: Papa’s share of the profit was about five pennies per shirt. He quit ­after six months once he’d saved and borrowed enough money to buy his own sewing machine. He then began working for himself, selling directly to the vendors. That is, until the 1960s, when used clothes from the United States, which were called “Kennedys” ­because they were sent to Haiti during the Kennedy administration, became readily available. (Danticat 2007, 49) Correspondingly, the Memoir is a terrific assessment and severe ­critique of Haiti’s civil society and political societies; it chronicles the history of suffering of the Haitian people and the complex history of ­political turbulence and instability characterized by a culture of ­violence, ­dehumanization, social alienation, death, and annihilation. In his ­continuous attempts to conscientize his parishioners, Uncle Joseph sometimes criticizes the disastrous political climate and the culture of death in Haiti in his weekly preaching, “Sometimes he’d his ­parishioners say that CIMO (Le Corps d’Intervention et de Maintien de l’Ordre) ­officers were not really Haitian or even human at all. They were machines c­ reated by the Americans who trained them to kill and destroy” (Danticat 2007, 199). The human condition in Haiti is characterized by a hard life, distress, starvation, hunger, unemployment, shortage of water and the lack of basic essentials of life; hence, the desire to leave the country for a distant and foreign land—even at the cost of living family members and loved ones behind—becomes a collective goal of the Haitian people In many other ways, however, very little had changed. The crippled beggars were still lined up on the steps of the national cathedral and the used-bookseller’s scattered stands across from it. The water women still carried water by the bucket on their heads. The colorfully painted lottery stands were still selling hundreds of tickets to hopeful dreamers. The visa applicants still gathered in droves at the gates of the American consulate. (Danticat 2007, 141)

190  Celucien L. Joseph My uncle’s street was now crammed with oddly shaped unfinished concrete homes. The alleys were tutted and filled with trash. Yet, when he showed me his list of causalities, written in handwriting so tiny he had to help me decipher them, all I could see was Jonas, Glady’s, Samuel and the hundreds of men and women who’d died, their mutilated bodies eternally rotting under the boiling sun. (Danticat 2007, 141) Moreover, as an internal critique about the infrastructures of her native land and Haiti’s deplorable human living conditions, Danticat describes the lack of a sustainable health care and sanitary system in Haiti’s public hospitals and clinics. Haitian patients, suffering from infectious diseases like AIDS and Tuberculosis, are left abandoned and untreated by medical professionals because of (1) the shortage of doctors and nurses in the country, (2) the shortage of medicines to alleviate and cure pain, and (3) patients’ lack of financial support to pay for treatment. The country’s health facilities are ill-equipped and inadequately supplied: The small windowless waiting room in the public hospital’s radiography department was filled with many more patients than it could hold comfortably. More were already interned in the hospital and were lying on gurneys in the narrow hallway. Others were sitting on the few available chairs or on the chipped current floor, their fractured limbs wrapped in homemade bandages and slings. Others tried to cough discreetly even as they held their chests and hid the bright red sports they’d spat into their handkerchiefs, a sure sign of tuberculosis. (Danticat 2007, 98–99) Danticat, writing as a cultural critic of the country’s infrastructures, is emotionally affected when some of her childhood friends suddenly die because of the rampant of Tuberculosis in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince: One of Liline’s cousins, who was named Melina after Grandme ­Melina, had gotten full-blown tuberculosis at sixteen. She had ­visited Liline now and then, and I’d watched as she’d regularly stop whatever she was doing to double over and cough. She eventually sent to the sanatorium and died a few weeks after her seventeenth birthday. (Danticat 2007, 99–100) Danticat’s Haiti is a land characterized by a narrative of human trauma and despair. She proceeds by highlighting the pain of death and the pervasiveness of human suffering in the country of her birth: Perhaps recalling the horrors and tuberculosis—it was once as deadly as AIDS during the virus’s early years—the specter of

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  191 morality it posed, and the fact that in Bel Air the word “tibekile,” or TB ­carrier, had often been hurled as an insult, when he was quarantined at Coney Island Hospital, my father asked my brother Karl to tell the doctors that a lot of Haitians test positive on the skin test even though they don’t actually have active tuberculosis. (Danticat 2007, 100–101) Human suffering in Haiti also includes the lack of access to food, shelter, water, and the essentials of life, which have also impacted Danticat’s family. The young Edwidge experiences starvation and poverty; as she narrates the story: One Sunday morning when she had no money at all, my mother dropped us on my uncle’s lap after church so we could have a proper Sunday meal with him and Tante Denise. The courageous and ­optimistic mother declares, “One day this will stop,” my mother told him. Then she ran home, crying. (Danticat 2007, 55) In particular, the coveted virtues and persistence of her mother have given her family hope and support and have shaped Danticat’s childhood and her experience in the United States. Danticat writes about ­political violence and related-gang and military crimes that have not only ­destroyed many lives from the country itself, but also dehumanized the lives of the people she personally knew in her neighborhood in Bel Air. Below, she reports what has occurred in Haiti during the second return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after a long period in exile: These so-called chimeres, these young men, some of whom were ­dying at home from their bullet wounds, and others who were even now crammed into a nine-by-nine-foot holding cell inside the a­ nti-gang building, would not have survived that era either. Inside the building, the noise was deafening, the cries of complaints from the overcrowded holding cell, the police officers marching in, some of them still ­wearing balaclavas over their faces even while inside…Sometimes he’d [My uncle] hear his parishioners say that the CIMO officers were not really Haitian or even human at all. They were machines created by the Americans who trained them to kill and destroy. (Danticat 2007, 199) In another instance in the Memoir, she describes the hatred and animosity among the Haitian people, especially toward her Baptist minister, uncle Joseph. After Joseph was tragically died in an American prison in his attempt to escape the political violence in Bel Air—for example, his church was burned, and many church members were killed by gang members—the Danticat family took his body back to Haiti for his

192  Celucien L. Joseph funeral and burial; disgracefully, the corpse of Joseph Danticat was not welcome in his own homeland: While calling some of my uncle’s friends in Port-au-Prince to make funeral arrangements, he was told not to bring the body back to Haiti. News of my uncle’s detention and death had already spread in Bel Air and the gangs had rejoiced, all the while vowing to do to my uncle in death what they’d been unable to in life, behead him. “They don’t want him back in Haiti,” Man Jou shouted loudly over the phone. “Neither alive nor dead.” (Danticat 2007, 244) Suddenly, uncle Joseph has become a man of no country because there was no place available to rest his dead and decayed body. Consequently, BID is not only a tribute to Danticat’s Uncle Joseph. It is also a work of reconstruction of the family’s experience in both worlds: Haiti and the United States. Chiefly, the book is a tribute to the land of Haiti and its people since their lives and experiences are intrinsically interconnected. What makes this Memoir an important text to teach in American classrooms? What are some ways and techniques of reading BID? How should instructors approach BID? What pedagogical approaches and teaching methods should they employ to get students interested in this important text? Topics for Discussion •

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Compare the Healthcare crisis in Haiti, as discussed in the section above, to the problem of adequate medical care and assistance among the poor and economically underrepresented populations in the United States. Discuss the various ways the local city and county or even the state can work together to improve the current healthcare situation; as a group, make some suggestions or recommendations to fix the healthcare crisis. Make a case for or against a fully government funded healthcare system for your state or the United States as a whole.

Some Suggested Pedagogical Approaches to Reading and Teaching BID There are different ways to teach a text and to lead students to appreciate it and correspondingly to become collaborative and engaged partners in classroom discussions about the text. In the case of Danticat’s Memoir, I would like to suggest seven major pedagogical approaches and methods to reading and teaching it, which I hope will enhance students’ understanding of its overall structure, message, and key literary techniques.

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  193 1 Focus on the major historical events and periods underlying the plot and orienting the unfolding narratives of the Memoir. 2 Highlight key political figures, events, and moments in Haiti’s ­national history, as well as Haiti’s complex relationships and interactions with the International Community (i.e. United Nations, the United States, Canada, and France) as chronicled in the Memoir. 3 Focus on the literariness and fictional aspects of the Memoir. 4 Employ various literary approaches (i.e. biographical criticism, ­psychological criticism, reader response criticism) to teaching and reading the Memoir. 5 Discuss the relationship between reality and fiction in the Memoir. 6 Teach the Memoir from a thematic approach. 7 Concentrate on the bilingual and linguistic aspect of the Memoir. This chapter focuses on six of the suggested approaches with the e­ xception of number six that will be discussed in the sequel of this ­chapter. Although the Memoir constitutes all the fundamental elements one would find in a Memoir, the plot resembles a beautifully crafted fictive work accompanied by various literary devices and techniques one usually finds in a novel. The plot of this Memoir can be broken into the five stages of a literary work: the exposition, rising action, climax, ­falling action, and the denouement. First, the “exposition” of the Memoir is associated with the opening chapter of the book, “Have you Enjoyed Your life?” It provides the general overview of the sequential events in the Memoir. It provides to the reader the essential background and historical context of the story and sheds light on the relationships and interactions between the ­characters, especially the most important personalities in BID: Danticat herself, ­Uncle Joseph, and her father Mira—and the pertaining events: her knowledge of her new pregnancy, her father’s illness, her childhood at uncle Joseph’s family, and her separation from her biological ­family. The opening sentence of the Memoir is designed as a literary alert and strategy to draw the reader to the story; it also establishes the basic ­pattern and sequence for the exposition of the plot: “I found out I was ­pregnant the same day my father’s rapid weight loss and chronic ­shortness of breath were positively diagnosed as end-stage pulmonary fibrosis” (­ Danticat 2007, 3). Second, the “rising action” of the Memoir quickly begins in the ­second chapter. The title of the chapter, “Brother, I’m Dying,” a saying from Joseph’s lips to his brother Mira, is indicative of the perils of his impending death and the mistreatment and humiliation he will encounter at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Miami International Airport. The rising action is also associated with the discrimination and ultimately the death he will experience at the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida. Also, this chapter details the life of uncle Joseph and his eventual diagnosis with radical laryngectomy. However, there are two

194  Celucien L. Joseph twin and inseparable events that lead to the rising action in the story; the first is articulated in three powerful sentences after uncle Joseph visited the Pulmonary Doctor in New York: The next morning, the doctor explained through another translator that the tumor was cancerous. He needed a radical laryngectomy. His voice box would eventually have to be removed. Yes, he would most certainly lose his voice. (Danticat 2007, 40) The second event is communicated during an emotional conversation between Joseph and his brother Mira in New York, after the diagnosis: “Hello,” my father said, his voice creaking anxiously. No good news could even come at this hour of the night, he told himself. My uncle pressed his lips as close as he could to the mouthpiece these three words: “Fre, map mouri.” Brother, I’m dying. (Danticat 2007, 41) Third, the “climax” of the Memoir relates to the turning point of the narrative resulting in the detaining of uncle Joseph by the U.S. Immigration agents in Miami and his experience in the Krome Center in Miami, which are discussed in high literary terms and techniques in three well-crafted and descriptive chapters: “No Greater Shame,” “Alien 27041999,” and “Afflictions.” Two important statements summarize the thrust of the climax of this story: We only called to notify you that they’re here, he said. “They’re not being released. They’re going to Krome.” The shame of being a prisoner loomed large. A stigma most couldn’t shake. To have been shackled, handcuffed, may said, rubbing that spot on their wrists where the soft manacles were placed on them soon after they made it to the American shore, “I have known no greater shame in my life.” (Danticat 2007, 211, 213) On Saturday morning, as my father struggled for breath and dreamed of Columbia, I had to tell him that his brother was at Krome, a place that he, like all Haitians, knew meant nothing less than humiliation and suffering and more often than not a long ­period of detention before deportation…“Uncle is in his own Egypt this morning, in his land of afflictions,” my father said, when we talked just before nine a.m. the next day. (Danticat 2007, 225, 231) Correspondingly, one can argue that the climax of the story results in the death of Danticat’s father. As one interlocutor advises her to do, “Soon after we left the room, a friend of my father’s from church told me, ‘Why don’t you let him go? Tell him it’s okay to go.’ I couldn’t, I told her, because I didn’t want him to die” (Danticat 2007, 257). Danticat recounts this

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  195 incident after she returns to Miami with Mira, her daughter. Three days later, she receives a call from Bod to announce that his father has died. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” I asked. “He’s gone,” he replied. I think now that my father waited for me to leave. That he did not want me to hold Mira with one hand and his corpse with the other” (Danticat 2007, 263). Fourth, the “falling action” of the Memoir leads to the shameful and eventual death of Joseph at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Danticat titles this watershed moment and the chapter itself, “Let the Stars Fall.” The metaphor of death is poetically articulated: The fact that my uncle had asked the stars tot fall…had groomed us to accept, that each time a star fell out of the sky, it meant someone had died. I wasn’t’ looking at the sky when my uncle died at Jackson Memorial Hospital, but maybe somewhere a star did fall down for him. (Danticat 2007, 241) Finally, the “denouement” of the story is that which brings both hope and redemption to the Danticat family and to the future family Edwidge and her husband Fedo will start at the eventual birth of their daughter, Mira. Danticat correctly calls the chapter “Transition.” There are two important statements in this chapter that indicates the concept of hope and redemption in the Memoir: “What have you decided to call her?” asked Collen. “Mira,” I said. “For my father.” Look, Papa, I’d say. You’ve waited for her. You’ve lived long enough to see her. Today is not just her day, but all of ours. And we’re not the only ones who will cradle and protect her. She will also hold and comfort us. She too will be our repozwa, our sacred place to rest. (Danticat 2007, 255) While the climax of the Memoir is marked by two deaths and the ending of two lives, the denouement of the story is actualized in the birth of Mira, and in the imagination/foreshadowing of the future reunion of the two brothers, Joseph and Mira. The denouement is an imaginative tale of reunion, and the hope of the eschatological life: In any case, every now and then I try to imagine them on a walk through the mountains of Beausejour. It’s dawn, a zazling morning over the green hills. The sun is slowly rising, burning through the fog. They’re peacefully making their way down the zigzag trail that joins the villages to the rest of the world below. And in may imagining, whenever they lose track of one another, one or the other calls out in a voice that echoes throughout the hills, “Kote w ye fre m?” Brother, where are you? And the other one quckly answers, “Mwen la. Right here, brother. I’m right.” (Danticat 2007, 269)

196  Celucien L. Joseph

BID: Is It a Memoir or Historical Fiction? Besides the historiography of the text, like Toni Morrison’s Jazz, BID is a type of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work that integrates many fields of study, categories of knowledge, and the various sources of the human experience and pain (McKay and Earle, 2009, 1–18). While I am not treating BID as a work of fiction, it appears to me like ­Morrison in the Song of Solomon, Danticat has incorporated multiplicity of cultural allusions and differences, and a mixture of literary forms that invite the reader to ponder upon the questions of human suffering, race, heritage, identity, diaspora, the Other, forms of injustice and evil, through the contrasts she beautifully and tragically depicts in the story (McKay and Earle, 2009, 4). Nonetheless, the ultimate issue the Memoir has called us to reflect upon is the human condition in both countries: Haiti and the United States, Danticat seeks to re-create a different and more promising future. The Memoir is divided into two equal parts; Part one, which the ­author entitles, “He is My Brother,” contains ten chapters, and Part two of the Memoir, which Danticat names “For Adversity,” contains ­fourteen chapters. According to Ian Bennett (2008, 272), the title of the text “reveals an idea of death and gloom, the narrative quickly ­dispels this notion.” The book is also an account of human suffering and ­determination, betrayal and faith, despair and optimism. The Memoir could be construed as a witness to the determination, strength, and persistence of the main character over his weakness and hardships. In a powerful and descriptive prose, Danticat describes the human experience in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora, and the human search for justice, wholeness, and shalom. A writer calls the book, “[It] is at the same time an ­exotic enriching journey, and a document of survival over hardship which transcends all cultural boundaries” (MacLeod 2009). The same author remarks that BID is a way for Danticat to cope with the deaths of her Father and her Uncle. It also functions “as a way to communicate the history of individuals in Haiti and challenge the history of the masses” (MacLeod 2009). Brother, I’m Dying is often characterized as a memoir, that is, a work that chronicles historical facts and intended to present a reliable account of what has occurred in the past. A memoir is a special category of ­literary genre, and different than an autobiography, both in content and form. For example, the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica make the following remark about the nature of the memoir: Memoir, history or record composed from personal observation and experience. Closely related to, and often confused with, autobiography, a memoir usually differs chiefly in the degree of emphasis placed on external events; whereas writers of autobiography are

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  197 concerned primarily with themselves as subject matter, writers of memoir are usually persons who have played roles in, or have been close observers of, historical events and whose main purpose is to describe or interpret the events. 2 According to Annette Gendler (2018), a memoir “is not an accumulation of anecdotes, however entertaining they may be, but rather an inquiry into what those stories mean to the narrator. A memoir does not comprise a whole life; rather, it examines a particular phase in a life.” Danticat herself confesses the historical authenticity of her work as she explains the various processes and stages she undergoes in writing it: I write these things now, some as I witnessed them and today ­remember them, others from official documents, as well as the ­borrowed recollections of family members. But the gist of them was told to me over the years, in part by my uncle Joseph, in part by my father. Some were told offhand, quickly. Others, in greater detail. What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-­creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time. I am writing this only because they can’t. (Danticat 2007, 26–27) Like Elie Wiesel (2006, xv) in his powerful book Night, Danticat is ­compelled to write the history and story of her family, her country, Haiti, and her people, the Haitians. Like Elie in the noted book, she presents herself to us as a survivor of a political trauma and one who is bearing witness about the past; she writes about the life of the next generation yet to be born: For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. While I do not doubt the authenticity and credibility of the historical events chronicled in this Memoir, some part of the book including the carefully crafted chapter titles, however, read like a historical fiction. Although Danticat attempts to present this text as a truthful historical account, in certain instances in the book, both the literary structure and form, and the literary aesthetics and techniques of the Memoir bear ­tremendous resemblance to a historical fictive narrative. Consider below the masterfully crated literary devices (i.e. metaphors, symbolism, figures

198  Celucien L. Joseph of speech) and techniques in forms of folktales: “The Angel of Death and Father God,” “The Rapunzel-Like Snake,” and “The Daughter Whose Father Dies Tragically.” Each one, in its distinctive way, shapes the plot of the story and alters the general message of each narratival episode. Certainly, great fiction writers such as Edwidge Danticat can purposefully appeal to the force, integrity, and precision of language and words to convey the authorial intent. In other words, historical facts could be told in a purely aesthetical manner with the intent to grasp and maintain the reader’s attention. However, the plot and sequential events of Brother, I’m Dying would have been arranged differently if the book were written by a trained historian. By any means, this feature of the book should be regarded as a weakness; rather, this Memoir is representative in a distinctive way it brings history and literature in close conversation, and presents reality and fiction, truth and tales in one complex historical narrative and dimensions. The major themes in the text includes family unity, the problem of pain and evil, death, religion, faith, hope, redemption, exile, migration, connection, immigration, alienation, separation, displacement, community activism, and human rights. The chapters of the book are structured and even named distinctively with the goal to get the reader ready to experience the unknown, to spark empathy and sympathy, and to be part of the human predicament described in the text, with both mental and psychological force. Consider the names of the selected chapters of the book: “Have you Enjoyed your life?,” “Brother, I’m Dying,” “We’re All Dying,” “Good-bye,” “The Angel of Death and Father God,” “Brother, I leave You with a Heavy Heart,” “Beating the Darkness,” “Hell,” “Limbo,” “Afflictions,” and “Let the Stars Fall.” In BID, Danticat employs different art forms and expressions to discuss the predicament of the Haitian people. She beautifully narrates the Memoir of her biological and close family, and friends and acquaintances through concrete historical events, legendary folktales, Haitian proverbs, pity saying, and even in poetic language. Overall, she wants to capture the human condition in Haiti in imaginative words and vivid expressions that introduce to the reader and her Anglophone audience the complexity of human existence and interactions in her native land and in the United States.

The Literariness and Fictional Aspects of the Memoir In the previous analysis, I have indicated that BID as a ­memoir ­incorporates both historical data and facts, and the memory of the past associated with very specific historical events in Haiti, on a ­complementary ­note, the Memoir. Its the literary aesthetic and patterns converges “the ­combination of joy and discernment” (Kennedy and Bauerlein, 2002, vi) and “provides a chance for leisure and reflection”

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  199 (Kennedy and Bauerlein, 2002, vii). This literary phenomenon is evident in the text and in the various occasions Danticat intentionally incorporates in the plot figurative language, literary techniques and devices, literary concepts, etc.—as evident in any good memoir or novel. The Letter-Writing Process The letter-writing process as a theme in the Memoir not only becomes a method of communication between the young Edwidge in Haiti and her parents in the United States, but is also ideologically explained in the Memoir to showcase the reader’s early affinity for language and ­writing. This is an ideologically driven element in the book. Somewhat, it has achieved its intended goal by the author: the process of self-­discovery and becoming, and recreation within two different locations: Haiti and the United States. Sociologist Peter L Berger remarks that “Looked at sociologically, the self is the self no longer a solid, given entity…. It is rather a process, continuously created and re-created in each social ­situation that one enters, held together by the slender thread of memory” ­(Palumbo-Liu, 135). This sociological process is embodied both in Danticat’s corresponding letters and in her life in the United States as an immigrant. There are various ways Danticat explains the procedure. The first reference of the young Edwidge Danticat writing a letter to her indicates the long-distance connection between immigrant parents and children of immigrants. Letter-writing becomes the vehicle to learn about the other party who is left for the host land and the one who stays behind, especially in the case of Haitian families. Letter-writing will fill in the void the young Danticat longs for in parents. This process is also connected with freedom of expression and freedom of writing. As she conveys in the following paragraph: Since they didn’t have a telephone at home—few Haitian families did then—and access to the call centers was costly, we had no choice but to write letters. Every other month, my father would mail a ­half-page, three-paragraph missive addressed to my uncle. S­ cribbled in his minuscule scrawl, sometimes on plain white paper, other times on lined, hole-punched notebook pages still showing bits of fringe from the spiral binding, my father’s letters were composed in stilted French, with the first paragraph offering news of his and my ­mother’s health, second detailing how to spend the money they had wired for food, lodging, and school expenses for Bob and myself, the third section concluding abruptly after reassuring us that we’d be hearing from him again before long. (Danticat 2007, 21–22) She explains further about the process: The letter-writing process had been such an agonizing chore for my father, one that he’d hurried through while assembling our survival

200  Celucien L. Joseph money, that this specific epistolary formula, which he f­ ollowed ­unconsciously, had offered him a comforting way of d ­ isciplining his emotions. “I was no writer,” he later told me. “What I wanted to tell you and your brother was too big for any piece of paper and small envelope.” (Danticat 2007, 22) Danticat explains that the public reading of her parents’ letter has aided to enhance her reading and comprehension skills: Usually my uncle would read the letters out loud, pausing now and then to ask my help with my father’s penmanship, a kindness, I thought, a way to include me a step further. It soon became obvious, however, that my father’s handwriting was a clear to me as my own, so I eventually acquired the job of deciphering his letters. Along with this task came a few minutes of preparation for the reading and thus a few intimate moments with my father’s letters, not only the words and phrases, which did not vary greatly from month to month, but the vowels and syllables, their tilts and slants, which did. (Danticat 2007, 22–23) Next, she gives attention to the linguistic symbols and details in writing as communication: Because he wrote so little, I would try to guess his thoughts and moods from the dotting of his i’s and the crossing of his t’s, from whether there were actual periods at the ends of his sentences or just faint dots where the tip of his pen had simply landed. Did commas split his streamlined phrases, or were they staccato, like someone speaking too rapidly, out of breath? (Danticat 2007, 23) Moreover, she describes the development of her reading skills through the process of reading and interpreting those letters: For the family readings, I recited my father’s letters in a monotone, honoring what I interpreted as secret between us, that the impersonal style of his letters was due as much as to his lack of faith in words and their ability to accurately reproduce his emotions as to his caution with Bob’s and my feelings, avoiding too-happy news that might add to the anguish of separation, too-sad news that might worry us, and any hint of judgment or disapproval for my aunt and uncle, which they could have interpreted as suggestions that they were mistreating us. The dispassionate letters were his way of avoiding a minefield, one he could have set off from a distance without being able to comfort the victims. (Danticat 2007, 23) She goes to differentiate her father’s correspondence to her response through the letter-writing:

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  201 Given all this anxiety, I’m amazed my father wrote at all. The ­regularity, the consistency of his correspondence now feels like an act of valor. In contrast, my replies, though less routine were both painstakingly upbeat and suppliant. In my letters, I bragged about my good grades and requested, as a reward for them an American doll at Christmas, a typewriter or sewing machine for my birthday, a par of “real” gold earrings for Easter. (Danticat 2007, 24) Danticat construes composition as a (mental) process and an (intellectual) exercise she learned from her uncle, which she improved on over a long period of time: Since my uncle read and corrected all my letters for faulty ­grammar and spelling, I wrote for his eyes more than my father’s hoping that even after the vigorous editing, my father would still decode the longing of my childish cursive slopes and arches, which were so much like his own. (Danticat 2007, 24) Through the coaching she receives from her uncle, she was able to learn about the composing and editing process as fundamental marks of ­writing. Further, Danticat explains about the failure of language and words to communicate exactly her thought process; yet writing as a technology and medium is what she had available to her to communicate with her distant immigrant father. The words that both my father and I wanted to exchange we never did. These letters were not approved, in his case by him, in my case by my uncle. No matter what the reason, we have always been equally paralyzed by the fear of breaking each other’s heart. This is why I could never ask the question Bob did. I also could never tell my father that I’d learned from the doctor that he was dying. even when they mattered less, there were things he and I were too afraid to say. (Danticat 2007, 24) When Danticat (2007, 118–119) immigrates to the United States, she informs the reader that the first gift she receives from her father was the typewriter, a Smith-Corona Corsair portable manual, which she associates with the art and craft of writing, both as a process and an event. The typewriter would help her improve her writing skills but also “to write back to my father” (Danticat 2007, 119). Of course, she is also indicating the role her parents, her father in particular, has played in her life in becoming a professional writer; as she acknowledges, “This typewriter and his desire, very early on, to see me properly assemble my words” (Danticat 2007, 119). The letter-writing process for Danticat (2007, 119) bears the pedagogical aspect.

202  Celucien L. Joseph Looking down at the perfect being key, lined up like big ivory teeth, I couldn’t help but feel that I’d received the typewriter too late. What would I do with a typewriter all to myself? Then in a flash it occurred to me that I could write to my uncle, hundreds and hundreds of letters to impress him with my new skills, my new knowledge, my new life. In particular, as her father has advised her, “This will help you ­measure your words, tapping the keys with his fingers for emphasis, to line them up neatly” (Danticat 2007, 119). With the typewriter readily at her ­disposal, Danticat would improve her writing craft and establish a ­relationship between writing as communication and writing as memory: In the end, after becoming better acquainted with the machine, I pecked out only one letter to Uncle Joseph. It was brief, telling him that Bob and I were all right, were getting along fine with our parents and brothers and were thinking of him and Tante Denise, Nick and Liline, Tante Zi and Tante Tina, Marie Micheline and Ruth, and everyone else. My letter was really a list of names, an inventory of the people whose faces popped into my head every day and whose voices echoed in my ear every night. (Danticat 2007, 119–120) Through BID, Danticat articulates the power of writing to record ­ uman memory, and the relationship that exists between human imagh ination and the world of text. Language facilitates the access to remember what could otherwise be forgotten in our imagination. She prioritizes the written word against the spoken word; in the same line ­ anticat puts great emphasis on the world of the literate of thought, D and the sphere of the non-literate, which she presents as two different ways of being in the world and in defining the relationship between reality and fiction. Topics for Discussion • • • •

Discuss the development of Danticat’s interest for writing and language. Was the letter-writing process a successful endeavor for the young Edwidge Danticat? How has the problem of communication and physical presence ­affected her relationship with her biological parents who live in New York? How has the predicament of effective communication and ­physical proximity affected Danticat’s parents? Did the family eventually solve the mental uneasiness in regard to this matter?

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  203

Reality vs Fiction, Truth vs Folktales Therefore, the reader can construe BID as a book of story about stories, and different stories. Through BID, Danticat masterfully invents other stories to complement the central narrative of the Memoir. D ­ anticat ­recounts three major folktales which have nothing to do with any ­particular historical event or the concept of reality. Her primary goal is to invite and stimulate the reader’s imagination and allow them to travel through the maze of these “invented stories” and the inspired folktales through which she purposes to draw moral lessons and to teach about the importance of acquiring wisdom and understanding in life and ­cultivating moral virtues. A second goal is to engage with the reader’s imagination by exploring the world of fiction and the sphere of folktales in Afro-­Haitian tradition. In this part of the essay, I want to focus on the three folktales followed by brief commentaries; my suggestion for the instructor is to approach this part of the Memoir as a work of fiction, and not as a document of historical facts. Danticat herself acknowledges: I’ve since discovered that children who spend their childhood without their parents love to hear stories like this, which they can embellish and expand as they wish. These types of anecdotes momentarily put our minds at ease, assuring us that we were indeed loved by the parent who left. (Danticat 2007, 54–55) Not only adults have the intellectual capability to invent stories and folktales, but young adolescents and children are also great imaginaries/storytellers. Likewise, young children want to live in the world of illusion and fiction and are able to create and make friends with other children who exist in the fantasy world. Consider the following examples: She (Marie Micheline) occasionally took time to ask us to her room or to sit down next to us at a meal and whisper in our ear a story that proved how much our absent parents loved us. Mine was the story of the butter cookies, which she told me over and over again. I don’t know what the details of Liline’s story were, but it had something to do with her father leaving her with us. “He loved you so much, she would say out loud at the end of the story, “he left you with us.” (Danticat 2007, 76–77) The First Folktale: The “Rapunzel-Like Snake” The first folktale is told by Grandme Melina, the mother of Tante ­ enise. In BID, she is the master of Haitian folktales. As customary D in Haiti, the children in the neighborhood or in the community would gather around her rocking chair to listen to her next tale. The story is

204  Celucien L. Joseph about a singing mother, the shut-in daughter, and a snake that tries to kill the daughter: A beautiful young girl whose mother, fearful that she might be ­abducted by passerby, locked her inside a small but pretty little house by the side of the road while the mother worked in the fields until dusk. Every evening after a hard day’s work, the mother would stand outside the little house and sing a simple song, which would signal to the daughter to open the door and let her mother come inside. After observing this for many weeks, a huge, deadly serpent waited until the mother was at work in the fields and then, hoping to trick the girl into coming out, slithered to her doorstep and tried to imitate her mother’s song. But the serpent hissed too loudly, so the daughter could clearly tell that it was not her mother. She did not open the door, and the serpent went away and waited for another day. When the girl’s mother came home later that day from the fields, the mother sang the song and the girl joyfully opened the door to the little house, letting her mother in. The next day, after the mother left for her work in the fields, the serpent returned to the girl’s doorstep and once again tried to sing the mother’s song. This time the serpent hissed too softly, so the daughter knew not to open the door. So the serpent went away, to wait for another day. One day, it occurred to the serpent that he could simply kill the mother and force the girl to come outside. And so he killed her, leaving the girl all alone in the world. Still the girl never left her little house, preferring instead to die fresh and pure alone inside rather than risk facing the snake outside. (Danticat 2007, 69–70) Discussion Questions • • •

If your group were assigned to prolong this short story, what (literary) elements would you add? How would the expansion change the original intent of the story? What does the snake represent in the story? What virtue (s) does the young girl symbolize in the story?

The Second Folktale: “The Angel of Death and Father God” The second folktale is told by Tante Denise, Uncle Joseph’s wife. Upon Edwidge Danticat’s return to Haiti for a visit, Tante Denis recounts a legend about God and the Angel of Death. Interestingly, this story is passed on from one generation to the next. Danticat (2007, 142) inform us that “It was one of Grandme Melina’s stories.” The objective of the

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  205 story, according to Granme Melina, is “to keep death away” (Danticat 2007, 143); nonetheless, Danticat concludes that she communicates this story to Danticat and other children in the neighborhood because she desires sudden death (Danticat 2007, 143). She thus recounts the folktale: “One day,” began Tante Denise… “Father God and the Angel of Death were strolling together in a neighborhood like Bel Air, in a very crowded city like Port-au-Prince,” she continued. During their walk, the Angel Death would stop in front of many houses and say, “A man died here last month. I took him.” Then as they continued down the street, the Angel of Death added, “I removed a grandmother from this house yesterday. “I make people and you take them,” said Father God. “That’s why they like more than they like you.” “You think so?” asked the Angel of Death. “I certainly do,” said Father God. “If you’re so sure,” said the Angel of Death, “why don’t we both stop here on Rue Tirremasse and ask the same woman for a drink of water and see what happens?” So, Father God rapped on the nearest door and when the lady of the house opened it said, “Madame, can I trouble you for some water?” “Non,” the woman answered, irate. “I don’t have any ­water to spare.” “Please, said Father God. “I’m parched.” “Sorry, said the woman, “but I can’t spare any water. The public tap has been dry for days and I have to buy water by the bucket from the water woman, who’s doubted the price. So, I only have enough water for myself and my family.” “I’m sure you’d give me some water if you knew who I was,” said Father God. “I don’t care who you are,” said the woman. “The only one I’d give my water to right now is the Angel of Death.” “But I’m God,” insisted Father God. “Why would you give your water to the Angel of Death and not to me?” “Because, the woman said, “the Angel of Death doesn’t play favorites. He takes us all, lame and stout, young and old, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful. You, however, give some people peace and put some of us in war zones like Bel Air. You make some powerful and other defenseless. You make some healthy and let some get sick. You give some all the water they need while some of us have very little.” Bowing his head in shame, Father God walked away from the woman, who, when the Angel of Death came to her door, gave him all the water she had in the house. “And because of this,” Tante Denise concluded, unaware, it seemed, of even my body, as heavy and limp now as hers, on her lap, “the Angel of Death did not visit this particular woman again for a very long time.” (Danticat 2007, 143–144)

206  Celucien L. Joseph Discussion Questions • • •

What is the meaning of human life in light of the inevitability of death in this story? Why has God given so much power to the Angel of Death? Is God using the Angel Death as a means to judge the world? What does death symbolize in this folktale? What is the seemingly tension between human death and human existence/life?

The Third Folktale: The Daughter Whose Father Dies Tragically Finally, the third legend in BID is beautifully told by Granme Melina. It is as follows: Granme Melina once told a story about a daughter whose father had died. The daughter loved her father so much that her heart was shattered into a hundred pieces. When it came time to plan for the jubilant country wake, which was once held the night before all funerals, the daughter wanted no part of it and ordered it not be held. “Daughter,” said one of the wise old women in the daughter’s village, “let the people rejoice at your father’s wake tonight before they cry at his funeral tomorrow.” “There will be no rejoicing,” answered the daughter. “Why should I ever rejoice again when my father is dead?” “Daughter,” insisted the old woman, “let the wake be held. Your father is now in the land beneath the waters. It is not our way to let our grief silence us.” Knowing that the old woman had the gift that the ancestors granted to only a chosen few, of being able to journey between the living and the dead, the daughter said to the old woman, “I will allow the wake to be held only if you go to the land beneath the waters and bring my father back.” The old woman walked to the nearest river and slipped into the waters. A few hours later, she reemerged and walked straight to the daughter’s house. “Where’s my father?” asked the daughter. “Daughter,” said the old woman, “I am back from beneath the waters, deep into the bowels of the earth. There were some wide and narrow roads. I took them. There were many hills and mountains, and I climbed them. There were hamlets and villages, towns and cities, and I passed through them too. And finally, I reached the land of the ancestors, the city of the dead.” “Did you see my father?” asked the daughter impatiently. “I saw so many people there I couldn’t even tell you,” answered the old woman. “I saw my mother and father, my uncle and grandmother, my aunt who was trampled by a horse and my sister who died

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  207 of tuberculosis in childhood. All my loved ones who’ve died were there.” “Did you my father?” shouted the daughter. “Daughter,” ­answered the old woman, “I looked and I looked amongst all those people until I found you father.” “Where is he?” asked the daughter. “‘I’ve come to take you back to the land of the living,’ I told your father. ‘Your daughter’s heart has broken into a hundred pieces and she cannot live without you.’” “What did he say to that?” asked the daughter. “‘I’m so touched that my daughter wants me to come back,’ he said, ‘but my home is now here, in the land of the ancestors. Tell my daughter for me that when one is alive, one is alive, but when one is dead, one is dead.’” The old woman then pulled from her pocket a set of false teeth that the father had religiously worn in his mouth when he was still among the living and had taken with him into the land of the dead. “Your father sent you this,” said the old woman, “so that you might believe that I saw him and accept what he says.” The daughter took the false teeth in her hands and looked at them with great sadness, but also with a new sense of courage. “As my father wishes, so it shall be,” she said. “We will have the wake to honor him, to rejoice and celebrate his life before his body is put in the ground. We will eat. We will sing. We will dance and tell stories. But most importantly, we will speak of my father. For it is not our way to let our grief silence us.” A few months father died, my parents’ house caught fire. The fire started at three a.m., in the same room where my father had lain in bed for nearly a year, in the corner where we once kept his emergency supply of several oxygen tanks. Given the nature of the fire—crackling in the walls, sparks in the ancient wiring, electricity—the fire marshal predicted that the entire house, which lost part of its roof and a few walls, could have been totally razed in fifteen minutes. Enough time, thankfully, for my mother, my brother Karl and his family, who’d moved in with my mother, to all quickly escape. But not enough time for my father, in the state he was in, to have gathered himself up and made his way out. He might not have even heard the hiss of spreading flames over the loud hum of his oxygen compressor or seen the smoke beyond the ghostly faces that haunted his final nights. (Danticat 2007, 265–268) Topics for Discussion Consequently, the instructor can designate three different class meetings by focusing on each individual story. I also advise the instructor to

208  Celucien L. Joseph consider dividing the class in groups of four or five, placing four to five students per group. Each group will be assigned a story as the instructor provides directions, specific instructions, and guiding questions to the students to generate both individual engagement and collective participation. The instructor should also encourage students to come up with their own questions about these three folktales as a way to promote intellectual curiosity and for the students to own the text and be the masters of their own learning.

Metaphors and Symbolism/figures of speech In this part of the chapter, I want to highlight six major categories articulated as literary devices in the Memoir. They include metaphors, symbolism, and figures of speech; I class them according to their relevant and corresponding categories: memory, childhood, death, family, friendship, moral lessons, proverbs, etc. Throughout these selected examples, it will become evident to instructors and students that Danticat uses languages with vivid descriptions, accuracy, and penetrating (linguistic) insights. (Childhood) Memory •

•

“Until that moment, aside from the butter cookies and restrained words of his letters, my father had mostly been a feeling to me, powerful yet vague, without a real face, a real body, like the one looming over the pecan-hued little boy who was looking up at Nick, Bob and me” (Danticat 2007, 88). “Back then, all I could think to do was imagine a wall around him, a roaming fortress that would follow him everywhere he went and shield him from derision” (Danticat 2007, 64).

Death • •

“Death is a journey we embark on from the moment we are born” (Danticat 2007, 73). “If we weep at a death, it’s because we do not understand death” (Danticat 2007, 73).

Family • •

“God didn’t make us with one eye,” he said. “You don’t want to parent an only child” (Danticat 2007, 166). “I’d often seen parents warn their children not to stare at the disabled or point at the infirm. ‘You mustn’t gawk or your eyes will seal

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  209

•

shut. If you point, your fingers will fall off,’ my own mother might have told me once or twice before she left” (Danticat 2007, 64). “Papa, even though men cannot give birth, you just gave birth tonight. To me” (Danticat 2007, 86).

Friendship •

“He was speaking as though he was already saving our lives by giving us that most helpful order” (Danticat 2007, 113).

Religion and Science •

“Science is God’s way of shielding miracles” (Danticat 2007, 131).

Moral Lessons and Haitian Proverbs • • • • • • •

“See what you get when you lie down with pigs” (Danticat 2007, 79). “When you bathe other people’s children, it says, you should wash one side and leave the other side dirty” (Danticat 2007, 120). “The silence of bodies muted by fear, uncoiling themselves from protective poses, gently dusting off their shoulders and backsides, afraid to breath too loud” (Danticat 2007, 176). “A man whose eyes you can’t look into is not a man you can ever trust” (Danticat 2007, 84). “He had traded his voice for a cure. But now he couldn’t even properly say good-bye” (Danticat 2007, 75). “Every morning when you take your pills, you’re closer to New York” (Danticat 2007, 101). “Outside, the night sky was full of stars, the kind of stars that he rarely took time to look up at and examine in the city, the way he had nearly every night when he was a boy” (Danticat 2007, 86).

Topics for Discussion The instructor should encourage students to think through the noted symbols, metaphors, and figures of speech in the text. As previously suggested, the instructor should consider dividing the class in groups of four and five, placing four to five students per group. Each group will be assigned to researching and finding the meaning of two to three metaphors, and to come up with proverbs and metaphors in the American culture that are parallel to those of the Haitian culture. The instructor should provide to the students some guiding questions to stimulate their curiosity and facilitate the group learning process. Finally, the instructor can also encourage each group to come up with its own proverbs and pity sayings to share with the class when each group presents its finding.

210  Celucien L. Joseph

Black Literary Multilingual Aesthetics and the Memoir’s Linguistic Hybridity The use of “KreyEnglish”: Kreyol and English The incorporation of Kreyol/Creole, the mother tongue of the Haitian people, into the literature written by Haitian writers in the borrowed and foreign languages of French, Spanish, and English, is and has become a common trend in Haitian literary tradition. Haitian novelists such as Jacques Roumain in Masters of the Dew (Gouverneurs de la rosée), Jacques Stephen Alexis in General Sun, My Brother (Compere General Soleil), and Frankétienne in various texts have aesthetically brought both the Creole and French languages in conversation to create a specific literary genre and aesthetics that did not exist prior to the 20th-century in Haitian literature. We find a parallel tradition in African American literature in which African American writers and poets such as Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes (i.e. “The Weary Blues”), Richard Wright (i.e. “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” Native Son), Toni Morrison (i.e. The Bluest Eye), and Alice Walker (i.e. The Color Purple) integrate the Black dialect or the Black vernacular into the American (Standard) English. Danticat has cultivated this literary habit almost in all of her short stories and novels. She incorporates Kreyol, the language of her homeland, into English, the language of her host land. We may call this process, which is prevalent in the writings of Black Atlantic creative writers, “black literary multilingual aesthetics.” By incorporating the oral culture of the Haitian people, expressed through the Creole language, through the written word, Danticat, in the words of Walter J. Ong (2002, 49), attempts “to use concepts in situational, operational frames of reference that minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the living human lifeworld.” The living human lifeworld is associated with the Haitian experience, both in the country of Haiti and in the geography of the Haitian Diaspora. Through the black literary bilingual aesthetics, as we named the phenomenon above, Danticat embodies the immigrants’ interaction with multiple languages and cultural identities. In BID, in the reading process, the careful reader comes across Kreyol words, expressions, and phrases that represent the authorial intent and literary aesthetics. Danticat is probably the first Haitian novelist writing in the English language to have created a psycholinguistic bond and intellectual intimacy between English and Kreyol. I would like to suggest the concept of “KreyEnglish” to identity this idiosyncratically (Danticat’s) bilingual literary aesthetics and the spectacle of language mixing and blending—linking the psychology of Kreyol speakers with the psychology of the English speakers concurrently. Toward this goal, Danticat is able to bridge the linguistic gap in the immigrant’s bicultural and bilingual experience,

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  211 and harmoniously establishes the rapport that exists between language and culture, both native and foreign. In Tables 10.1–10.3, it is best to categorize the creole words according to their pertinent relations that are used in the Memoir. Generally, these creole expressions can be categorized in five broad categories: religion, immigration, sickness, alienation, Haitian proverbs, family, peace, death, violence, prison, and freedom. Topics for Discussion • • • •

Discuss the potential psychological effects the mixing and blending of two different languages in a text may have on the reader. Discuss Danticat’s potential reasons to use the Kreyol and English languages concurrently in conversations between the characters in BID. What are the advantages and advantages of bilingualism and biculturalism, as both topics relate to an individual’s identity and integration in a new culture or a multicausal society? How does the phenomenon of multilingualism and multiculturalism promote inclusivity and tolerance in the sphere of education and culture?

Recommended Readings • •

Accilien, Cecile, and Jowel C. Laguerre. Haitian Creole Phrasebook: Essential Expressions for Communicating in Haiti. McGraw Hill, 2011. Hirschman, Jack and Paul Laraque. Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry. Curbstone Press, 2001.

Table 10.1  T he Bilingual Aspect of BID Death/Fear

Sickness/Illness

“Kite zetwal yo tonbe”: Let the stars fall (240) “Li mouri”: he/she’s dead (73)

“On ti jan malad”: “Tante “Le m ale”: “When Denise is a bit sick” (128) I’m gone” (262) “Tibektile”: “TB carrier” “Bat teneb”: “beating (101) the darkness” (172)

“Madam mwen mour”: “My wife is dead” (147). “Ti moun…Kite zetwal yo tonbe”: “Children…Let the stars fall” (240) “M pa kapab”: “I can’t” (264) “Fre, m’ap mouri”: “Brother, I’m dying” (41) “Manman, eskize m”: “I’m sorry” (60) “Dikesyon”: “the Principal’s office” (186

“Pa pi mal”: “Not so good” or “Not so bad” (8) “Goj”: “Throat” (41) “Kou kav” : “Cave neck” (63)

Alienation/Darkness

212  Celucien L. Joseph Table 10.2  T he Bilingual Aspect of BID Peace/Kindness

Responses and Requests

“I sent you tablet”: “That she “Li pa vle”: “She doesn’t remembered to send me some want to” (128) peanut confections” (207) “Sa blan an di”: what did the white man say? (46) “He’s a bebe”: “He can’t speak” (175). “Tande”: “Listen” (185). “Vini”: “Come” (187). “Dlo, dlo, dlo pou vann”: “I have water for sale!” (89) “Merci”: “Thank you” (203) “Any granmoun here?” “Are there any adults here” (89) Bon dye”: “My God” (228)

• • •

Prison/Krome “M nan prizon”: I’m in prison (229) “M pa kapab”: I can’t (235) “Neg nan prizon”: “I am in prison” (229) “M pa kapab”: “I can’t” (235) “He was an evek”: He was a bishop, or elder pastor” (217)

Valdman, Albert. English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary. Iuniverse Inc., 2017. Valdman, Albert and Pierre-Henri Philippe. Ann Pale Kreyol: An Introductory Course in Haitian Creole. Indiana Univ Creole Inst, 2001. Vedrine, Emmanuel W. Dictionary of Haitian Creole Verbs with Phrases and Idioms. Soup To Nuts Publishers, 1992.

Reading, Writing, and Teaching BID across the Curriculum BID contains ample resources and disciplinary specific data for instructors of various academic disciplines. Since this is an interdisciplinary text, another possible way to teach this book is to find how the narrative touches various disciplines such as Sociology, English, History, Health sciences, etc. What I am suggesting here is what educators have called “across the curriculum instruction.” What does this notion convey? Topics for Discussion The instructor may recommend students to research on a topic relating to their major or academic track plan. Toward this goal, students will find the writing and research process more interesting, personal, and relatable to their subject of interest, as suggested in Table 10.4. One of the objectives of instructors is to play the role of facilitators to students and to stimulate them to think and write critically from an interdisciplinary

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part A  213 Table 10.3  T  he Bilingual Aspect of BID Immigration

Hope

“Lot bot dlo”: “May you be “the other a repozwa”: side of the “A place where waters” children can rest” (254) (146) “She too will be our repozwa”: “She will also be “our sacred place to rest” (255)

“Mwen la” : “I’m right here” (269)

Greetings

Haitian Proverbs/ Pity Sayings

Family

“Eskize m”: I’m sorry (60)

“Fo w mache pou “Fre m”: “My we”: If you live brother” (90) long enough you’ll see everything (229) “Mesi fre m”: “Vini”: Come (85) “Pitit moun se “Thank you lave yon bo, kite for looking yon bo. When after my you bathe other children” (90) people’s children, it says, you should wash one side and leave the other side dirty” (120). “Ki jan nou “O bon dye”: “My “Fre mwen”: ye?”: “How’s God” (183). “Brother” everyone” (171). (196) “Sa blan an di?”: “mode soufle”: “What did “Those who the white man are most able to say?” (46) obliterate you” (204) “Ki jan w santi “Fo w mache pou w”: “How do we”: “If you live you feel?” (13) long enough you’ll see everything” (229) “Nou la”: “Not “You shameless bad” (13) bouzen”: “You whore” (82) “Byen”: “Fine” “Fe vit, fe vit”: (104) “Hurry up, hurry up” (103) “Pa pi mal”: Not “Po lanve”: “Skins bad (218) turned inside out” (246) “Na we”: “See “Nou se moun mon”: you later” (108) “We are from the countryside” (35)

and intersectional perspective. In the same line of thought, when an instructor encourages students to write across the curriculum, students will develop intellectual curiosity to explore academic disciplines beyond their focused area. Nonetheless, the instructor must be the one to model the across curriculum teaching pedagogy and thinking strategy to students (Table 10.5).

214  Celucien L. Joseph Table 10.4  A  cademic Disciplines/Majors Academic Disciplines/Majors

References in BID

History

pp. 27–42; pp. 49–57; pp. 127–137; pp. 138–144; pp. 231–236; pp. 237–243 pp. 3–26; pp. 27–42; pp. 62–75; pp. 95–99; pp. 231–236; pp. 237–243; pp. 244–251 pp. 23–24, 61–64, 66–67, 68–70, 72–73, 75, 78–79, 84, 86–88, 95,106, 108, 101–102, 110–113, 119–120, 122–123, 129–130, 140, 142; pp. 142–144, pp. 165–166, 176 pp. 87–111; pp. 206–214; pp. 214–224; pp. 225–230 pp. 206–214; pp. 214–224; pp. 225–230 pp. 206–214; pp. 214–224; pp. 225–230 pp. 3–26;112–123 pp. 145–155; pp. 170–180; pp. 181–192 pp. 145–155; pp. 193–206 pp. 31–40; pp. 142–144; pp. 158–169; pp. 181–192; pp. 252–269 pp. 8, 13, 56, 60, 63, 66, 73, 82, 85, 89, 90, 100; pp. 103–106, 108, 111, 114, 116, 120, 128, 130, 132, 146–147, 164–155, 157, 171–172, 175–176, 183, 185–186, 195–196, 204, 207, 218, 228–229, 235, 240, 245–246, 254–255, 262, 264

Nursing/Health-Related Majors English Language and Literature International Relations Government/Political Science Criminal Justice/Law Psychology Sociology Communications Religion/Theology Foreign Languages/Linguistic

Recommended Readings • •

• • •

Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Longman, 2007. Horning, Alice S. “Reading across the curriculum as the key to student success.” 14 May 2007. Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language, Learning and Academic Writing https://wac.colostate. edu/docs/atd/articles/horning2007.pdf McLeod, Susan H., and Margot Soven, ed. Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs. Sage Publications, 1992. Peterson, Shelley S. Writing Across the Curriculum: All Teachers Teach Writing. Portage and Main Press, 2005. Smith, Michael B., and Rebecca S Nowacek, ed. Citizenship Across the Curriculum. Indiana UP, 2010.

The non-chronological charts are presented below in the sequential order in which the events occur in the Memoir with their corresponding dates or years. As already mentioned, in the following chapter, I reconstruct and offer a chronology of the events narrated in BID.

Table 10.5  N  on-Chronological Events According to BID Period/Year

Historical Events Mentioned in BID

July 2004

Edwidge flew to New York to accompany his sick father to Brooklyn’s Coney Island Hospital Edwidge and Fedo got married and moved to Miami, Fl The Removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power by the joint political effort of France, Canada, and the United States (24) Maxo, Uncle Joseph’s son left Haiti to attend college in New York Maxo returned to Haiti Uncle Joseph and his wife Tante Denise met The couple moved to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti French colonists began the control of the island of Saint-Domingue and “imported black Africans to labor on coffee and sugar plantations as slaves” (29) The black Africans slaves declared their independence from France, and they founded the nation of Haiti The United States invaded Haiti through a military occupation (1915–1934) (29) Maxo is born Uncle Joseph’s hero, Daniel Fignole, a Haitian politician, got involved in community activism and grassroots mobilization President Paul Magloire made it to the cover Time magazine Magloire stepped down from power because of a national strike Daniel Figlole was sworn into office as the successor of Magloire Jean Claude Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) succeeded Fignole as President through a military coup Uncle Joseph, while preaching in his parishioner, began to experience vocal problem Mira, Edwidge’s Father, quit school to learn how to be a tailor. He was nineteen years old Edwidge’s parents met in Bel Air Edwidge was born Uncle Joseph is diagnosed with radical laryngectomy Tante Denise’s mother, Granme Melina, about hundred years old, moved in to Uncle Joseph’s house, where Edwidge and her brother Bob also lived Canal Boisrond served as President of Haiti; Granme Melina was born between one of those years Francois Duvalier dies, and his son Jean-Claude succeeds him Marie Micheline becomes pregnant Edwidge’s parents came for a visit in Haiti from New York Edwidge and Bob undertake medical physical and other health-related examinations, as required by the American consulate Uncle Joseph travels to New York for a medical checkup Jean-Claude Duvalier leaves Haiti for France Leslie Manigat is sworn into office as the new President General Prosper Avril attempts a failed coup An article published in Newsday covers the military shoot-out in Bel Air and the death of Marie Micheline to gunshot General Prosper Avril resigns Presidential elections happen Jean-Bertrand Aristide is sworn as President winning 67% of the vote Aristide is outsted by a military coup and is sent to Washington via Venezuela Aristide returns to Haiti Tante Denise dies from a massive stroke

August 2002 February 2004 1970s 1995 May 1946 1947 1697 January 1, 1804 July 1915 1948 1950s February 22, 1954 1956 May 25, 1957 June 11, 1957 November 1977 1954 1962 1969 1978 1978 July 1876–July 1879 1971 1974 October 1976 1980 Summer 1993 February 7, 1986 February 7, 1988 April 1989 April 17, 1989 1990 December 1990 February 7, 1991 September 30, 1991 Fall 1994 February 2003

(Continued)

216  Celucien L. Joseph Period/Year

Historical Events Mentioned in BID

1996 2000 2003 August 2004

Aristide leaves office Aristide is reelected for a second term His opponents demand his resignation Uncle Joseph visits New York because of political unrest and violence in Haiti The UN sends the Brasil-led MINUSTAH to Haiti Maxo returns to Haiti Uncle Joseph witnesses gunshots and political violence in Bel Air Uncle Joseph receives a voice box that allows him to talk Uncle Joseph files application to become a U.S. resident An Immigration number is issued to Uncle Joseph Uncle Joseph’s childhood memory about the U.S. occupation of Haiti. He was only ten years when the American military invaders come into the country

February 2004 1995 October 24, 2004 Summer 1993 1984 February 14, 1984 1933

Notes 1 Subsequently and in the remaining part of the essay, I will use the abbreviated title BID. 2 “Memoir,” www.britannica.com/topic/memoir-historical-genre

Bibliography Abbott, Elizabeth. Haiti: A Shattered Nation. New York: Overlook D ­ uckworth, 2011. Bennett, Ian Bethel. “Review of Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I am Dying.” ­Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, 2008, Art. 10, 1–4. Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I’m Dying. New York: Vintage, 2007. Dubois, Laurent. Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012. Earle, Kathryn and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison. New York: The Modern Language, 1997. Gendler, Annette. “What is a Memoir?” What is Memoir? The Washington Post, 20 Mar. 2013. Accessed 19 Dec. 2018. www.washingtonindependentreviewof books.com/index.php/features/what-is-memoir Kennedy, X.J., Danna Gioia, and Mark Bauerlein. Handbook of Literary Terms: Literature, Language, Theory. New York: Pearson, 2002. MacLeod, Denise. “Book Reviews: Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat.” Transnational Literature, vol. 2, no. 1, Nov. 2009. http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/ transnational/home.htm “Memoir,” www.britannica.com/topic/memoir-historical-genre Palumbo-Liu, David. “Assumed Identities.” In Background Readings for Teachers of American Literature. Edited by Venetria K. Patton. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014. pp. 130–142. Ong, Walter J. Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge, 2002. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

11 A Comprehensive Resource Guide to Reading and Teaching Brother, I’m Dying Criticisms, Thematic Analysis, and An Eight-Week Teaching Model: Part B Celucien L. Joseph In the previous companion chapter, I have suggested various approaches to reading and teaching Brother, I’m Dying (BID). I offered some background information and historical context to aid both instructors and students to appreciate the message of Edwidge Danticat’s powerful memoir. Because my personal interpretation of the Memoir consists of the assessment of its literariness and textual aesthetics, I read BID on two different levels. First, I embrace the historical value and credibility of the Memoir and therefore treat it as a work of history; second, because of the Memoir’s incorporation of high level of literary aesthetics and devices, I employ various literary strategies to capture the hidden motivations behind those symbols, metaphors, figures of speech, folktales, proverbs, etc. Instructors can introduce various literary theories and criticisms to students that could help them to study carefully the unfolding events and characters in BID; the most pertinent literary ­approaches may include formalist criticism, reader-response criticism, biographical criticism, psychological/psychoanalytical criticism, gender criticism, postcolonial criticism, sociological criticism, Marxist critical theory, etc. I suggest that instructors should strongly encourage students to employ these perspectives in their research paper, even in assigning various topics for group discussion. Written almost in the literary pattern of a historical novel, some of the themes and characters in BID evolve and seemingly acquire ­fictive ­characteristics and qualities. Fear intensifies as the characters in the Memoir face serious challenges of prolonged suffering. Pain takes ­another dimension as the character such as Joseph and Mira approach closer to death. Existence becomes shorter as life deteriorates, and as a character experiences various dimensions of death, what Danticat

218  Celucien L. Joseph correctly phrases “living dyingly,” he quickly realizes the truth about mortality. In the Memoir, both Joseph and Mira live dyingly or in a state of death. In the previous chapter, I have also recommended instructors to ­approach or teach the Memoir from an academic-field focus approach or cross-disciplinary perspective, which has the potential to enhance student learning and establish a closer relationship between student’s respective discipline (or academic major/pathway) with the research and writing process they will explore. In this current chapter, I will comment on some of the most central themes in the Memoir, which I hope will be beneficial to instructors and students. The focus of this chapter will be on seven major themes: (1) the importance and meaning of family, (2) the representation of women, (3) the meaning of the United States, (4) the immigrant experience in the United States, (5) the role of function of religion BID, (6) the predicament of fear and death, and (7) the theme of hope and redemption. Not only the instructor can assign these major themes to students to conduct personal research paper or adventure in group writing, he or she can teach the Memoir from a thematic perspective. Finally, I conclude the chapter by offering two excurses (Sample Class Activities and An Eight-Week Teaching Model to BID), and The Chronological Order of the Events in BID that the instructor can use to complement his or her pedagogy and enhance student learning; I hope they will find them beneficial (Table 11.1).

The Importance and Meaning of Family An important feature in BID is the bond and memory the Danticat family members share together. The interactions between the siblings and parents in the Danticat family had a tremendous impact on Edwidge Danticat’s childhood, identity formation, and her understanding of her place in the world. She was four years old when her parents left for the United States; Danticat would spend the next eight years of her life without the physical presence and intimacy with her biological p ­ arents, which is crucial to the developmental process in a child’s life. Her younger brother Bob would undergo a similar experience of distance and solitude. Danticat’s parents left her and her brother Bob in Haiti for eight years to seek a better life and find work in the United States. It was until Danticat turned twelve years old, she and her brother were able to reunite with their parents in New York. In the introductory part of this book, we editors provide a detailed account of the transition and migration of Haitian immigrants in the United States and how they eventually made this country their native land. There are two major timeframes that nurture family life in the ­Memoir: (1) the eight years Danticat spent in Haiti away from her parents, but was raised by her uncle Joseph and Tante Denise, and (2) her

Table 11.1  T  he Chronological Order of the Events in BID Period/Year

Historical Events Mentioned in BID

1697

French colonists began the control of the island of SaintDomingue and “imported black Africans to labor on coffee and sugar plantations as slaves” (29) January 1, 1804 The black Africans slaves declared their independence from France, and they founded the nation of Haiti July 1876–July 1879 Canal Boisrond served as President of Haiti; Granme Melina was born between one of those years July 1915 The United States invaded Haiti through a military occupation (1915–1934) 1933 Uncle Joseph’s childhood memory about the U.S. occupation of Haiti. He was only ten years when the American military invaders come in the country May 1946 Uncle Joseph and his wife Tante Denise met 1947 The couple moved to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti 1948 Maxo is born in Haiti 1950s Uncle Joseph’s hero, Daniel Fignole, a Haitian politician, got involved in community activism and grassroots mobilization 1954 Mira, Edwidge’s Father, quit school to learn how to be a tailor. He was nineteen years old February 22, 1954 President Paul Magloire made it to the cover Time magazine 1956 Magloire stepped down from power because of a national strike May 25, 1957 Daniel Figlole was sworn into office as the successor of Magloire June 11, 1957 Jean Claude Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) succeeded Fignole as President through a military coup 1962 Edwidge’s parents met in Bel Air 1969 Edwidge is born in Haiti 1970s Maxo, Uncle Joseph’s son left Haiti to attend college in New York 1971 François Duvalier dies, and his son Jean-Claude succeeds him 1974 Marie Micheline becomes pregnant November 1977 Uncle Joseph, while preaching in his parishioner, begins to experience vocal problem 1978 Tante Denise’s mother, Granme Melina, about hundred years old, moves in to Uncle Joseph’s house, where Edwidge and her brother Bob also live 1978 Uncle Joseph is diagnosed with radical laryngectomy October 1976 Edwidge’s parents come for a visit to Haiti from New York 1980 Edwidge and Bob undertake medical physical and other healthrelated examinations, as required by the American consulate 1984 Uncle Joseph files application to become a U.S. resident February 14, 1984 An Immigration number is issued to Uncle Joseph February 7, 1986 Jean-Claude Duvalier leaves Haiti for France February 7, 1988 Leslie Manigat is sworn in office as the new President April 1989 General Prosper Avril attempts a failed coup April 17, 1989 An article published in Newsday covers the military shoot-out in Bel Air and the death of Marie Micheline to gunshot 1990 General Prosper Avril resigns from presidential power December 1990 Presidential elections happen in Haiti February 7. 1991 Jean-Bertrand Aristide is sworn as President of Haiti after winning 67% of the popular vote (Continued)

220  Celucien L. Joseph Period/Year

Historical Events Mentioned in BID

September 30, 1991 Aristide is ousted by a military coup and is sent to Washington via Venezuela Summer 1993 Uncle Joseph travels to New York for a medical checkup Summer 1993 Uncle Joseph receives a voice box that allows him to talk Fall 1994 Aristide returns to Haiti from exile 1995 Maxo returns to Haiti from the United States 1996 Aristide leaves presidential office 2000 Aristide is reelected as President of Haiti for a second term August 2002 Edwidge and Fedo get married and move to Miami, Fl 2003 Aristide’s opponents demand his resignation from power February 2003 Tante Denise dies from a massive stroke February 2004 The Removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power by the joint political effort of France, Canada, and the United States February 2004 The United Nations sends the Brasil-led MINUSTAH military group to Haiti July 2004 Edwidge travels to New York to accompany his sick father to Brooklyn’s Coney Island Hospital August 2004 Uncle Joseph visits New York because of political unrest and violence in Haiti October 24, 2004 Uncle Joseph witnesses gunshots and political violence in Bel Air Uncle Joseph flies to the United in search for political asylum Uncle Joseph is taking to the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida Uncle Joseph dies at the Miami Hospital Edwidge Danticat’s daughter is born

transition from Haiti to New York, to be reconnected with her family, in which she will also reconnect with her two younger brothers: Karl and Kell. The first family connection and disconnection are discussed in the first part of the book; in the second part of the Memoir in which the members of the Danticat family will achieve physical intimacy/ proximity and collective wholeness, we learn more about the dynamics ­between Edwidge, her parents, and her younger brothers Bob, Karl, and Kelly Danticat. Yet, it is good to inform the American audience that in the Haitian cultural t­ radition, the concept of family means both close and distant family members; even those who are not part of the distant ­family are also called family in Haiti due to the communal aspect, interpersonal relationship, and mutual reciprocity of the Haitian culture. ­ aitian traditional culture and humanist tradition, the idea of In the H Ubuntu is a ­central element in building blocks and bridges in society. Foremost, the family connection begins with the marital union ­between Danticat’s mother and father, in the year 1969; they both were twenty-seven years old and moved to the slum in Bel Air to create their new family. For Danticat, her family beginning commences in this love story of courtship and historically, how her father and mother met in a

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  221 shoe store in Port-au Prince, where her father worked. Danticat explains the process: He helped her try on a few women’s shoes, one of which fit. She thanked him and left the store. My father has no recollection of the first meeting at the grocery store. He simply remembers her ­walking into the shoe store, too shy to even look up from her dusty old ­sandals. He wanted to keep her in the store as long as possible, so he gave her shoes to try on that he knew wouldn’t fit her. Finally, when, frustrated, she walked out of the store, he followed her home. They were married three years later. (2007, 52) That enduring and dynamic mutual love and affection will keep the ­Danticat family inseparable throughout tough years of hardships ­including the phenomenon of migration, exile, alienation, and death. The Danticat family experienced a series of traumatic events together such as political unrest and violence in Haiti, the persecution of Uncle Joseph, the life in exile, family illnesses, and the problem of communication in respect to the geographical distance and locations between Haiti and the United States. Another major event that shaped the ­Danticat family is the death of Uncle Joseph and the birth of Danticat’s first daughter, Mira, who is named after her father’s nickname. After Mira (the Father) has learned that he was diagnosed with pulmonary disease, he gathered his four children, looked toward Edwidge and Bob, and pronounced this memorable line that communicates his sense of guilty and remorse because of the geographical distance that has separated him and his children Edwidge and Bob: “Edwidge and Bob, your mother and I left you behind for eight years in Haiti. Kelly and Karl, you grew up here, in a country your mother and I didn’t know ­every well when we had you” (Danticat 2007, 21). Danticat (2007, 54) herself experienced the pain of separation and the uneasiness of migration. Her inability to construct effective and enduring memory of her father before she left for a distant country (the United States) has left an enduring mental scar in her life: “I have no memory of my father’s ­departure, or of anything that preceded it.” In this historical context, the art of memory and remembrance has failed both individuals: ­Danticat and her father Mira. As she reflects on the letter-writing process, she laments miserably: For the family readings, I recited my father’s letters in a monotone, honoring what In interpreted as a secret between us, that the impersonal style of his letters was due as much to his lack of faith in words and their ability to accurately reproduce his emotions as to his caution with Bob’s and my feelings, avoiding too-happy news that might add to the anguish of separation, too-sad news that might

222  Celucien L. Joseph worry us, and any hint of judgement or disapproval for my aunt and uncle, which they could have interpreted as suggestions that they were mistreating us. (Danticat 2007, 23) The letters from her father were memorable tools of comfort and consolation for the young Edwidge and her brother Bob. Theoretically, the letters symbolized the physical presence and psychological wholeness of her father communicated through the representative familiar language. She was able to construct an alternative family life what we may call the “literary family.” Literature has filled the void in the young Edwidge, the physical presence she was long for was found in the world of text, the sphere of letter-writing process. Nonetheless, the anguish of the pen is indicative in this sentence: “The dispassionate letters were his way of avoiding a minefield, one he could have set off from ad distance without being able to comfort the victims” (Danticat 2007, 23). She continues by accentuating the destructive mental effects of separation on immigrants’ children, those who have been separated and divided from their loved ones and their family because of the search of the peace of mind and a piece of bread in the United States: I’ve since discovered that children who spend their childhood w ­ ithout their parents love to hear stories like this, which they can embellish and expand as they wish. These types of anecdotes ­momentarily put our minds at ease, assuring us that we were indeed loved by the parent who left. (Danticat 2007, 54–55) Furthermore, Danticat painfully discusses the mental impact of ­separation and psychological drift migration and exile have produced on individuals. She (Danticat 2007, 88) observes, Until that moment, aside from the butter cookies and restrained words of his letters, my father had mostly been a feeling for me, powerful yet vague, without a real face, a real body, like the one looing over the pecan-hued little boy who was looking up at Nick, Bob and me. The power of fiction, expressing through the process of story-telling and folktales, which the young Edwidge has benefited from her cousin Madeline, Tante (Auntie) Denise, and Granme (Grandmother) Melina, has provided to her a new world of imagination and the ability to create, deconstruct, and build anew. Moreover, the most painful moment for the young Edwidge and her brother Bob occurred when it was time for her mother to join her f­ ather in the United States. Language is inadequate to articulate a ­glowing ­depiction of the psychological bearing of family separation on the

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  223 children of immigrants. Let’s consider the intellectual energy and the mental efforts Danticat (2007, 56–57) has put in to describe this unforgettable moment: When it was time for my mother to board the plane, I wrapped my arms around her stockinged legs to keep her feet from moving. She leaned down and unbaled my fists as Uncle Joseph tugged at the back of my dress, grabbing both my hands, peeling me off of her. “Kalm,” he said. “Calm yourself.” And for a moment his voice, deep, firm, did pacify me. After all, it seemed that he and Tante Denise would now be in charge of us. They would be our parents. But what if our mother went away and never came back? Just like our father. Panicked, I leaped out of Uncle Joseph’s arms and ran right to my mother, pressing my face against her legs. I pushed him back as he tried to grab me again. Having run from Tante Densise, Bob was also on the floor pounding his tiny fists against the cold tiles, bawling. His face was covered with some phlegm he had spit up. Answering a final boarding call, my mother hurried away, her tear-soaked face buried in her hands. She couldn’t bear to look back. Danticat and Bob shared a similar experience when her father, who has just come to Haiti to visit them, was ready to return to New York to continue life without their physical presence, At the airport, I thought I might cry, throw another tantrum as I did the first time mother left, but I didn’t, and neither did Bob. We were much older now and were more accustomed to being without them than being with them. At least, I remember thinking, we had seen them again. (Danticat 2007, 96) Unfortunately, she and her brother have become accustomed to this life as if they were already orphans. The ambivalence in the Danticat family is that both parents and the children experienced both being and becoming, absence and presence, migration and exile, and pain and joy. Their life was an unending adventure consisting of a network of processes and developments. It is good to remark here in BID, it seems that the life of the women characters has been radically formed and by a series of trauma; yet these women did not allow these challenges to detour their destiny nor have they accepted disappointments as defeat. Topics for Discussion •

What are the forces that change the dynamics in the Danticat ­Family? How have those forces of influence contributed to the

224  Celucien L. Joseph

• •

character development and identity formation of the young Edwidge and her brother Bob? Similarly, to what degree those external forces alter or improve the relationship between Edwidge, her siblings, and their parents? Discuss possible effects of immigration and the life in exile on the immigrant family? With the classmates in your group, make some suggestions and recommendations on how to improve the American Immigration System and the treatment of immigrant (both documented and ­undocumented) families in the United States.

The Representation of Women As previously stated in the former chapter, the women (i.e. Marie ­M icheline, Danticat’s mother, Danticat’s daughter Mira, Tante ­Denise, Tante Zi, Granme Lorvana) play a central role in the Memoir. First of all, women are depicted as strong, independent, humorous, and ­collaborative with the men. Danticat (2007, 254) describes her own mother as “fiercely independent, proud, and alone.” Women are also portrayed as sacred places of rest or restful places, not just for other women, but for all humanity. When Edwidge Danticat gave birth to her daughter Mira, her women companions wish her and her baby: “May you be a repozwa, a place where children can rest.” Women in BID ­provide life energy and shelter in which one can find refuge and solace. Not only the Memoir provides a positive representation of Haitian women, they are the “poto mitan” (the “center pole”) of the Haitian society and at home. They are individuals who hope and resist oppression; correspondingly, they are trustworthy and committed heroines who display courage, friendship, and hospitality (Danticat 2007, 55). They serve as othermothers to other children in the community and their work in the marketplaces and in the (farming) fields help to sustain their family and keep life balanced. On the other hand, some women in the Memoir experience physical, mental, and verbal abuse from men, such is the case of Marie Micheline whose husband has physically mistreated her. As she (Danticat 2007, 256) complaints about this life of abuse to her adoptive father Joseph, “He beat me. He beat me on my legs, with a broom, with fire stones when I tried to escape.” Women experience fear and death including Danticat who does not want to die nor does she want to witness any member of her family living dyingly and eventually die. By contrast, other women such as Tante Denise who likes to tell folktales paradoxically about death to the children in the neighborhood simply because she is inviting death to her home. Danticat’s (2007, 253) mother was not afraid of death; on the other hand, she “tried very hard not to wish death upon herself” when she was in a four-hour of active and intensive labor—giving birth to baby Edwidge Danticat.

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  225 Other women in the Memoir play other roles and functions. These women are wisdom teachers, family historians, cultural critics, ­sociologists, etc. They are the true womanists to borrow a concept from black feminist-womanist intellectual Alice Walker. Grandme ­Lorvana, the ­historian-archivist in the Memoir, informs the children about the ­Haitian freedom fighters who resisted the American occupation. They suffered a patriotic and sacrificial death to safeguard the rights and ­freedom of the Haitian people. Tante Zi likes to tell jokes to the ­children. ­Danticat ­portraits all of her female characters as heroines who had ­exerted a tremendous influence on her in her upbringing. They teach the children about civics and citizenship, patriotism, morality, virtues, ethical choices, and family values. The women in the Memoir play the important role of “othermothering” and are a source of inspiration to girls and younger women; such were the case for the fiction female character Madeleine and her eight sisters who inspired the young Edwidge. These women also experienced exile, separation, and solitude and such were the case of Edwidge and her mother who left her in Haiti at a young age for the United States. Topics for Discussion • • •

How has the Patriarchal society in Haiti altered women’s life in ­society and at home, as inferred in the Memoir? Discuss the challenges the women characters face and how they have been able to overcome those challenges. Discuss various roles and functions of women in the Haitian society, according to what you have learned from BID.

Recommended readings • • • • •

•

Bell, Beverly. Walking on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance. Cornell UP, 2001. Chancy, J.A. Myriam. Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile. Temple UP, 1997. Chancy, J.A. Myriam. From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2013. Chancy, J. A. Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Rutgers UP, 1997. Mohammed, Patricia, ed. Rethinking Caribbean “Difference”: ­Historicizing Slavery/The Impact of the Global Environment/­ Illusions of Development/Gendered Testimonies. Feminist Review, Issue 59 Aug 17, 1998. Roumain, Guerda. “Before Black Was Beautiful: The Representation of Women on the Haitian National Novel.” The French Review, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Oct., 1997), pp. 55–65.

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Schoaff, Jennifer L. Borders of Visibility: Haitian Migrant Women and the Dominican Nation-State. U of Alabama P, 2017. Vieux-Chauvet, Marie. Love, Anger, and Madness: A Haitian ­Triptych. Modern Library, 2010. Vieux-Chauvet, Marie. Dance on the Volcano. Archipelago, 2017.

The Meaning of the United States The United States as the “Land of afflictions” In the Memoir, the United States is the country that invades the s­ overeign nation and the Republic of Haiti in 1915, a historical event that marks the Haitian memory and psyche. The American military occupation in Haiti created a new cadre of Haitian rebels, radicals, revolutionaries, and intellectuals, who were reacting to the American oppression, ­A merican hegemony, and economic imperialism in the Caribbean country. There are many instances in the Memoir; Danticat refers to this tragic event and she connects the predicament of the Haitian people associating with American political hegemony and the International Community/ the United Nations inflicting pain upon the Haitian masses. Uncle ­Joseph’s childhood memory was tragically haunted by the brutality of the ­A merican military occupation (Danticat 2007, 243). The United States is also presented as the land of paradoxes, and ­ambivalence typifies the human existence in the Land of the Free, ­especially for the immigrant and the black and brown populations whose expectations of the American dream, ideologically speaking, carry ­different meanings. There is a mystery to be discovered about the United States that can only be known as the immigrant becomes assimilated in the American culture and is identified categorically with the American ­society. Nonetheless, prior to his or her arrival, the immigrant has nurtured a series of expectations about the United States and American exceptionalism respectively that are unrealistic and untenable. Immigrants from the developing countries construe the United States as the Land of Canaan, the Land of hope and freedom, the paradise of the developed world, and America as the land of unlimited opportunities and accesses to the world’s wealth. The United States bears many figurative meanings, possibilities, and potentialities, and over time, and “has acquired many involve notions of novelty, new beginnings, and utopian promises” (Gruez 2014, 308). Moreover, in BID, these expectations have become a series of shock to Danticat and her parents, her uncle Joseph, and her cousin Maxo. For example, for many immigrants from the developing countries, the United States has become a “land of afflictions,” as Mira has quickly discerned after living in New York for more than two decades. For many individuals and families immigrated to the United States, the country

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  227 has suddenly become a land of surprises. Hence, there are two versions of the United States that are portrayed in the Memoir. Danticat reports the challenges of human predicament and suffering both in her native land of Haiti and the host land of the United States. In the same line of thought, she documents the excruciating history of human oppression in Haiti in the same way she reports the painstakingly humiliating experience Joseph underwent in the labyrinth of the American Immigration Center and to be detained in the Krome in Miami. Her uncle Joseph, who bears the same name of the “suffering boy” named Joseph in the Bible, parallels some of his experiences in the United States, the land of affliction, to those of Joseph in Egypt, the land of slavery. Egypt was the land that enslaved the biblical Israelites or the Hebrews. According to Danticat’s (2007, 231) father, “Uncle is in his own Egypt this morning, in his land of afflictions.” Although the United States represents an indecisive Region in continental America for the author, she symbolizes hope and the opportunity to start a new life for (Haitian) immigrants. In an ambiguous way, for Mira and his brother Joseph, the United States carries different meanings. At the Krome Center in Miami, Uncle Joseph was forced to surrender himself to the power of the American Empire. The Krome Center in ­M iami means a life of solitude, terrific isolation, and humiliation, as well as the place that all Haitians know mean “nothing less than humiliation and suffering and more often than not a long period of detention before deportation” (Danticat 2007, 225). It is the zone that devalues human dignity and dehumanizes those who come to the United States in search for a better life and future for their children and loved ones. For example, we are told that Maxo, the author’s cousin and her Father’s nephew, “was reluctant to bury his father here in the United States, where in the end he had been so brutally rejected” (Danticat 2007, 244). The United States is the country where the eighty-one-year-old Haitian Baptist ­minister Joseph Dantica, while being detained at Krome, was treated like a criminal, denied medical care, legal representation, temporary asylum, and was told by an Immigration office “if he tried to escape, he would be shot” (Danticat 2007, 221). In a comparative way, the cities of Miami and New York (Brooklyn) are representative of the complexity of human life and the immigrant experience in the United States in the same way the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince (Bel Air), and the city of Leogane are representative of the complexity of human existence in Haiti. The Meaning and Characterization of New York When Danticat’s father returns to Haiti for a visit, his family members and friends gathered around him to learn about the life and meaning of New York. One of the interlocutors states “I hear it can be just as

228  Celucien L. Joseph dangerous in New York. As dangerous as it can be with the macoutes here” (Danticat 2007, 92). He confessedly confirms Bosi’s statement, “New York, like today’s Haiti, is a place where only the brave survives” (Danticat 2007, 93). Moreover, New York is also depicted as the place that snatches away the native language and culture of immigrants. As it is stated, “In New York,” Marie Micheline said, “you must write me every week so you can keep up your French” (Danticat 2007, 97). New York is the city that changes people: Tante Denise said, “you’ll have to be good and help your mother” (Danticat 2007, 97). New York is the zone that provides access to materialism and nice things: In New York, Nick said, “be sure to buy me a nice watch.” In New York, Liline said, “be sure to find me a gold necklace” (Danticat 2007, 97). Certainly, after being severely mistreated and dehumanized at the Immigration-Krome Center in Miami, uncle Joseph “had no intention of staying in either New York or Miami for the rest of his life” (Danticat 2007, 215). Evidently, Uncle Joseph breathed his life breath in the United States where he died like a dog and shackled like a slave in the Detention Center in Miami. As can be deduced from our analysis, the constructed meaning of the United States is connected to the complex life and experience of immigrants in the United States. For those who weren’t born in the United States and do not belong to the country’s dominant class and race, the Land of Brave still remains a strange land to them; for others, the United States is a xenophobic and unhospitable place that redefine the structure of life and what it means to be truly human and relational. Topics for Discussion • •

•

In what ways have American foreign policies and political hegemony in the world affected the life of the people in the developing nations? Discuss the various reasons people from other countries, both individuals and families from developing and developed countries, come to the United States. Are some people or races treated differently or unfairly? Discuss some of the reasons and ideologies regulating the preferential treatment of a particular group in comparison to another group of immigrants. Discuss the idea of America and American ideals, as perceived by individuals who want to immigrate to the United States.

The Immigrant Experience in the United States: A Life of Pain and Separation BID is a diasporic text that informs the reader about the hybrid and displaced lives of the immigrant community. Non-American residents in the United States have also shared this complex American life. In

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  229 fact, immigrants have become hybrid and fragmented souls because the United States is inherently a country of a split and divided conscience, what W.E. B. Du Bois famously called in The Souls of Black Folk (1901) “double-consciousness.” BID chronicles what it means for an individual who left his or her homeland to become a resident in a foreign and distant land. The ­process of migration makes the transition for the new immigrant uneasy to ­navigate and assimilate in the new culture. One of the central themes in the Memoir pertains to the fragility, complexity, and disjointed life of immigrants in the United States. Essentially, Danticat’s aesthetic is characterized by hybridity and a life between two worlds, “emerging from a dynamic synthesis of cultures that the nation has invested energy and law in keeping oppositional” (Shannon 2016, 3). There are many reasons Haitians left their country to come to the United States. Danticat discusses how American economic imperialism and military intervention, and political violence and unrest in Haiti have been some of the driven forces that have brought Haitians to the United States. In BID, Danticat expounds on these various historical complexities and trajectories that transform the human condition of immigrant individuals and families. She endeavors to respond to the pivotal ­question what it means to live away from one’s homeland. Not only ­Danticat (2007, 109) is interested in answering this question for her reader, because of her experience as an immigrant in the United States, she is acquainted with intensive and intricate process of immigrating to the United States. BID is a story of immigrants, and it includes ­Danticat’s parents and her siblings, Uncle Joseph and his son Maxo; correspondingly, it is also the story of other immigrants such as Edwidge Danticat, her husband Fedo, and their Haitian American daughter Mira who was born to her immigrant parents. Consequently, Danticat ambiguously discusses what it means to live in exile, in separation from one’s ­homeland and family to lose rights and freedom as immigrants, and in isolation from one’s acquaintances. J. Michael Dash (2010, 28) rightly notes that Danticat not only embodies a bicultural experience, but her “world is one of loss, trauma, and displacement.” For Danticat, life is about transitions, and limitless journeys and ­possibilities. BID is a book about migration, journeys, and reports how the immigrant experiences hurdles in the various phases in the ­assimilation process in the United States. It is also a text about how the ­immigrant can overcome various forces in the transitional and integrating process. The painful experience of migration and family separation had drastically affected Danticat’s memory and childhood, as well as her upbringing in the United States. When her father returns to Haiti to visit Edwidge and her brother Bob, she lamentably declares to them, “Edwidge and Bob, your mother and I left you behind for eight years in Haiti. Kelly and Karl, you grew up here, in a country your mother and

230  Celucien L. Joseph I didn’t know every well when we had you” (Danticat 2007, 21).1 When Edwidge finally immigrated to the United States, she reflects on the hardships her father experiences in New York as an immigrant, “I had calculated that from 1981 to 2004, working an average ten hours every day, including holidays but not Sundays, he’d spent nearly twenty years driving the streets of Brooklyn” (Danticat 2007, 45). She also laments on the humiliation, racism, and verbal threats her father endures from American citizens: Once in a while, throughout my teens, I’d find myself ridding in the front seat as my father picked up fares. Others he was taking me somewhere but picked up the fare anyway. One afternoon, an old man called my father a stupid idiot because my father had mistaken one street for another. Another time my father picked up a woman who, when he asked her to repeat her address, shouted at the top of her voice, “No one who drives a cab speaks English anymore.” (Danticat 2007, 122) The defeated father, whose dignity and manhood have been attacked and challenged, shamefully responded to the young Edwidge who was wondering if her father would vindicate his humanity and dignity, “What would be the use?” he would say, “I need their money more than they need my service” (Danticat 2007, 122). According to BID, the life of Haitian immigrants in the United States have been severely affected by various forces including prison detention, humiliation, dehumanization, diseases, deportation, and death. The life of the immigrant in the United States is a hard life. Danticat explains how racism and discrimination have guided immigration laws toward Haitian immigrants and asylum seekers in the United States. When Danticat’s uncle (Joseph) was detained at the Krome Detention Center in Miami, she goes there to visit him. In describing the immigrant life and experience at Krome, she courageously reports: During our visit, a group of men in identical dark blue overalls had been escorted into a covered, chain-link-fenced, concrete patio rimmed by rows of barbed wire. The men walked in two straight lines, sat at the long cafeteria-style tables and told our delegation their stories. They were Haitian “boat people” and in addition to their names identified themselves by the vessels on which they’d come. (Danticat 2007, 211) She continues with her report by noting the human dilemma at the Krome prison: Some detainees fought among themselves, sometimes nearly ­killing each other as uninterested guards looked on. They spoke of other guards who told them they smelled, who taunted them while

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  231 telling them that unlike the Cuban rafters, who were guaranteed refuge, they would never get asylum, that few Haitians ever get asylum. They said that the large rooms where they slept in rows and rows of bunk beds were often so overcrowded that some of them had to sleep on thin mattresses on the floor. They were at times so cold that they shivered all night long. They told of the food that rather than nourish them, punished them, gave them diarrhea and made them vomit. They told of arbitrary curfews, how they were woken up at six a.m. and forced to go back to that cold room by six p.m. ­(Danticat 2007, 109) American and European slave masters used the same procedure to inspect documented African slaves and indicate the age of the slaves who were forcefully transported to the Americas; correspondingly, American Immigration officers used this same technology to determine the age of the (Haitian) undocumented immigrants who came to the United States. I’d seen some men who looked too young to be the mandatory ­eighteen years old for detention at Krome. A few of them looked fourteen or even twelve. How can we be sure they’re not younger, I’d asked one of the lawyers in our delegation, if they come with no birth certificates, no papers? The lawyer answered that their ages were determined by examining their teeth. I couldn’t escape this agonizing reminder of slavery auction blocks, when mouths were pried open to determine worth and state of health. (Danticat 2007, 212) Evidently, the immigrant experience in the United States is a life of exile full of pain, suffering, and sorrows. In the following paragraph, ­Danticat describes the sentiments of two men she encounters at the Krome Center: One man, who had received asylum but had not yet been released when we visited, showed up burn marks over his arms, chest and belly. His flesh was seared white, with rows and rows of keloid scars. It seemed like such a violation, to look at his belly, the space where the scars dipped father down his body. But he was used to showing his scars, he said. He had to show them to a number of immigration judges to prove he deserves to stay. I’d sat across from an older man, a man who looked like he might be around my father’s age, who’d said, “If I had a bullet, I’d have shot myself already. I’m not a criminal. I’m not used to prison.” (Danticat 2007, 213) Life in the Krome Detention Center is a categorical violation of ­human rights and the mistreatment of human beings whom Immigration ­authorities have treated like animals and beasts. Danticat was filled with emotions and unspoken words; the easiest action she could take was to

232  Celucien L. Joseph imagine, observe, meditate, and ultimately report about this hard life of the collective immigrants. She poignantly writes: The shame of being a prisoner loomed large. A stigma most couldn’t shake. To have been shackled, handcuffed, many said, rubbing that spot on their wrists where the soft manacles were placed on them soon after they made it to the American shore, “I have known no greater shame in my life.” (Danticat 2007, 213) The undocumented Haitian immigrants, whom the American people have dubbed the “Boat People” in the 1980s and the 1990s respectively, who have escaped political violence, starvation, foreign interventions in Haiti’s affairs, and economic instability in Haiti also encountered discrimination at the hands of American Immigration officers and the American people. They have been treated unfairly and illegally as compared to other immigrants from Latin American who have sought refuge and asylum in the United States for similar reasons. Danticat discusses the unjust immigration laws that betray Haitian asylum seekers and deny them of a place of refuge and legal residency in the United States: I suspect that my uncle was treated according to a biased immigration policy dating back from the early 1980s when Haitians began arriving in Florida in large numbers by boat. In Florida, where ­Cuban refugees are, as long as they’re able to step foot on dry land, ­immediately processed and released to their families., Haitian a­ sylum seekers disproportionately detained, then deported. While Hondurans and Nicaraguans have continued to receive p ­ rotected status for nearly ten years since Hurricane Mitch struck their homelands, Haitians were deported to the flood zones weeks after Tropical Storm Jeanne blanketed an entire city in water the way Hurricane Katrina did parts of New Orleans. (Danticat 2007, 222) On the other hand, the great paradox is that life in the diaspora and life in exile in the United States for the young Edwidge could bring freedom, reinvention, and a new beginning. While at an early age, she understands exile as a mode of life, and was much panicked about the tragic death of Marie Michelle in Haiti, her childhood heroine and the person who has helped to raise her in Haiti. Thus, she inquires about it from her parents: After Marie Michelle died, I asked my uncle why they and in turn Marie Micheline, hadn’t tried to move to New York like parents did. “It’s not easy to start over in a new place,” he said. “Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.” Plus, he had more work to do, more souls to save, more children to teach. (Danticat 2007, 140)

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  233 Finally, the life in the diaspora, according to Danticat, is an experience of hybridity, fragmentation, and a life of contrasts. Elsewhere, Danticat (2010, 19) writes that the life in the diaspora accompanies “self-doubt, as it is probably one of the stages of acclimation in a new culture.” In the process of overcoming self-doubt, the next stage in the assimilation process for the immigrant involves “the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world” (Danticat 2010, 18). Her life and experience as an immigrant in the United States has radically transformed her perspective about Haiti. After returning to her homeland for a visit, Danticat communicates this sense of uneasiness and re-adaptation to a place she left at the age of twelve years old: “It’s Edwidge,” “I said, feeling a stranger now not just to her but to Bel Air and to Haiti itself” (Danticat 2007, 141). The process of re-adaptation in one’s homeland, after leaving it for the adopted country, was not an easy process of self-adaptation and reinvention for Danticat. The psychological effects were tremendous when she returned to Haiti to attend her uncle Joseph’s funeral. The feeling of guilt and betrayal characterize her new life; as a result, she begins to ponder what is home: Haiti or the United States? We’re her for a funeral, my father told the immigration officer who silently examined our American passports at Toussaint Louverture Airport. My Father and I had both become naturalized U.S. citizens exactly ten years after we’d received our green cards and we both felt a bit traitorous as the officer hastily scribbled his signature on our foreigner’s designated custom forms. (Danticat 2007, 146) Danticat captures this reality and the feeling of belong and not belong, estrangement, alienation, and the life-in-between, or the existence ­between two worlds in her powerful text, Create Dangerously: My country, I felt, both as an immigrant and as an artist, was ­something that was then being called the tenth department. Haiti then had nine geographic departments and the tenth was the fl ­ oating homeland, the ideological one, which joined all Haitians living outside of Haiti, in the dyaspora. . . I meant to recall conversations or debates in restaurants, at parties, or at public gatherings where members of the diaspora would be classified—justifiably or not—as arrogant, insensitive, overbearing, and pretentious people who were eager to reap the benefits of good jobs and political positions in times of stability in a country that they’d fled and stayed away from during difficult times. Shamefacedly, I’d bow my head and accept these judgments when they were expressed, feeling guilty about my own physical distance from a country I had left at the age of twelve during a dictatorship that had forced thousands to choose between exile or death. (Danticat 2010, 49–50)

234  Celucien L. Joseph Paradoxically, the life-in-between two countries and two worlds may create psychological anxiety. Nonetheless, the process of adaptation and re-adaption does not mean an individual has to choose one country above the other. Topics for Discussion •

• • •

As a group, research the process to immigrate to the United States. What are the requirements from a person or a family who wants to become a resident of the United States? What are the required documents for an individual to become a legal resident? What are the steps to become a naturalized citizen of the United States? How does one inquire the American citizenship? In what ways does the presence of immigrants benefit the United States and improve the American society? Discuss the challenges and disadvantages of illegal immigration in the United States.

Recommended readings • • • •

Danticat, Edwidge. Create Dangerously. The Immigrant Artist at Work. Princeton UP, 2010. Flore, Zephir. The New Americans: The Haitian Americans. Greenwood Press, 2004. Laguerre, Michel S. Diasporic Citizenship: Haitian Americans in Transnational America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Laguerre, Michel S. American Odyssey: Haitians in New York City. Cornell UP, 1984.

The Predicament of Death and Fear Arguably, Edwidge Danticat is the Novelist of death. The major theme of Brother, I’m Dying is death or “living dyingly.” In her recent book, The Art of Death, published in 2017, Danticat is very expressive about her fear of death. In growing up in her homeland where human life is not dignified and gone like a shadow in the wind, she informs the reader that she did not want to die. Death as a central theme would be the overarching subject in almost all of Danticat’s books. The subject has affected her thought process, the fictive characters she constructed, and even her non-fiction works. As she remarks in The Art of Death: Writing has been the primary way I tried to make sense of my losses, including deaths. I have been writing about death for as long as I have been writing. . . While much of my work is based on actual

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  235 events, I chose those particular subjects in part because, early in my life, before anyone close to me had died, I was afraid of death that I wanted to desensitize myself to it. (Danticat 2017, 7) For Danticat, writing about death is not just for her to grieve or to pay a tribute to someone who was dear to her; rather, writing about the subject of death has to do with life itself, her attempt to find healing through her death stories. Her writing about death has become a therapeutic process for her to cope with the tragedy of human life and trauma resulting in death and the annihilation of existence. For her, one can construct peace in life and engage effectively the intricacy of life through the literary meditation about death: We cannot write about death without writing about life. . . The act of writing, or talking about one’s death, makes one an active participant in one’s life. Even when we are not writing about death, we are still writing about death. After all, death is always the eventual outcome, the final conclusion of every story. . . I have found myself returning to when living with and writing about death. I am writing this book in order to learn (or relearn) how one writes about death, so I can write, or continue to write, about the deaths that have most touched my life. (Danticat 2010, 14, 20, 154–155, 7) Death in BID is not the most devastating phenomenon that threatens human existence. The fear of death seems to stimulate a kind of mental or psychological burden on the characters in the Memoir. Death seems to be immediate, but it disrupts human activity and the mental process through radical fear. Fear is presented to us as the absence of peace and light. It is pure darkness. Life, fear, and death are connected in the Memoir, and it is impossible to study these themes individually, especially death and fear. Various characteristics are ascribed to death in the story. Death is fearful, immediate, brutal, universal, and also implies the notion of absence and migration. The immediacy of death is articulated through an expressive fear when Danticat is found that simultaneously that she was carrying a belly in her womb and her father was living dyingly: “My father was dying and I was pregnant” (Danticat 2007, 14). Both phenomena become events of shock to Danticat. “I couldn’t fully keep both realities in mind at the same time, couldn’t find the words to express both events. I closed my eyes and held my breath, forcing myself to recite it as a mantra” (­ Danticat 2007, 15). The underlying matter of Danticat’s reaction indicates to us that she was dealing with the fear of her father’s death and concurrently with the fear of baby’s life. The existential questions that she asks about

236  Celucien L. Joseph life and death truthfully signal that both events (or subjects of human experience) became urgent and wary in her life: I was afraid of losing my father and also struck with a different kind of fear: baby panic. Everything was suddenly mixed up in my head and leading me to the darkest places? Would I carry to full term? Would there be complications? Would I die? Would the baby die? Would the baby and I both die? Would my father die before we died? Or would we all die at the same? (Danticat 2007, 14) Nonetheless, as Danticat’s life becomes more dreadful because of the impending death of her father, she becomes somewhat disoriented about communicating her true feelings to her father. She is unable to find the adequate words to express her existential fear to her dying father; the fear created a great silence in the most radical way: The words that both my father and I wanted to exchange we never did. These letters were not approved, in his case by him, in my case my uncle. No matter what the reason, we have always been equally paralyzed by the fear of breaking each other’s heart. This is why I could never ask the question Bob did. I also could never tell my ­father that I’d learned from the doctor that he was dying. Even when they mattered less, there were things he and I were too afraid to say. (Danticat 2007, 24) Inevitably, Danticat comes to accept the reality that her father or mother will eventual die, as it is integral to human existence. The fear of parents’ death is connected to Danticat’s fear of their absence and their migration to another world: “Her food and my father’s ride were part of a send-off that often left me feeling guilty and scared, guilty for leaving them behind and scared something awful, a stroke or a heart attack, might befall them in my absence” (Danticat 2007, 45). Elsewhere, Danticat confirms that all people will die even our parents we once thought were not subject to death: “When you’re young, your parents can seem immortal, then they get terminally ill and they remove the possibility of either you or them being immortal. When they die, you realize what it’s like to suddenly occupy an ambiguous space in the world” (Danticat 2017, 13). Furthermore, in a folktale, Tante Denise affirms the universality of death, “The Angel Death doesn’t play favorites. He takes us all, lame and stout, young and old, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful” (Danticat 2007, 145). When Danticat’s (2007, 60–61). Father learned about his doctor’s prognosis, he was very angry and declared the mortality of all people, “Screw the doctor. We’re all dying. Some of us might fall in the shower and hit our heads. Some of us might get hit by a bus. Some of us

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  237 might get struck by lightning. Some of us might have diseases we don’t even about. We’ll dying.” Danticat herself tries to avoid the subject of death in all conversations including those with her dying father: During his illness, whenever my father would bring up news-related deaths such as the ones from Jeanne (A cyclone), I’d try to steer him away from the subject. Knowing that he was often, if not ­always, thinking about his own death I feared that other deaths might ­further demoralize him. (Danticat 2007, 167) The real fear is not Danticat afraid of dying or living dyingly, but she observes that her father was living dyingly in front of her eye and she does not have the resources or ability to stop him from dying. Additionally, she (Danticat 2007, 257) confesses her fear that “I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to die.” Mira’s experience of death and fear of death is manifested in his last days of living dyingly. The trauma of death becomes a reality in Mira’s end-of-life trajectories. He often dreams of death and about family members who have died long ago. As Danticat (2007, 258) reports, “There were people, long dead, standing at his bedside, he would explain the next morning. His mother in a red dress. His father singing. His sister laughing. They were keeping him awake.” In another occasion, another dream occurs, “he’d dreamed of Granpe Nozial and Granme Lorvana and Tante Ino, his long father, mother and sister, standing at his bedside” (Danticat 2007, 262). Whether the repeated statement, “Le m ale.” “When I’m gone,” (Danticat 2007, 262) is indicative of Mira’s disposition to die spontaneously or he was psychologically tormented or traumatized by the fear of death itself is unclear in the Memoir. After Joseph tragically dies, Mira confesses that he dreamed of his brother. Finally, the Baptist preacher Joseph Danticat provides both a theological meaning and philosophical perspective about death. As a minister, his job consisted of eulogizing the dead. He believes that “children shouldn’t be shielded from either the idea or the reality of death” (Danticat 2007, 72). Often, he would tell his congregants that death was not something to be feared of because it is the transition to the next life with God. For the Christian, the hope of the resurrection comes after one dies and as Saint Paul states, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). At the funeral of Granme Melina, Joseph spoke eloquently about the meaning of death and human existence: Death is a journey we embark on from the moment we are born. . . An  hourglass is turned and the sand starts to slip in a different ­direction as soon as we emerge from our mother’s womb. Thank God those around us are too blinded by joy then to realize it. ­Otherwise there would be weeping at births as well. But if we keep at a death,

238  Celucien L. Joseph its because we do not understand death. If we saw death as another kind of birth, just as the Gospel exhorts us to, we wouldn’t weep, but rejoice, just as we at the birth of a child. (Danticat 2007, 73) Death is a universal and cross-cultural event, and the cemetery wherein the dead rests in peace is everyone’s permanent residence. The in-­ discriminatory character of death is expressed in this Haitian proverb: “Houses don’t have owners, only cemeteries do” (Danticat 2002, 27). While death menaces all human existence and challenges the living, Danticat presents religion as a catalyst of hope and redemption through which human beings or his characters can cope with and even conquer death. Topics for Discussion • • • •

What have you learned from the Memoir about the reality of death and living dyingly? In what ways the book has helped you to think about and prepare for death? What are the human and supernatural resources to cope with the reality of death and to help a loved one who is dying? Are those resources helpful? Why or why not. What should be our attitude toward pain and grief? How would you advise a friend or family member who is suffering? Does life in the world have any meaning? In the same line of thought, what is the meaning of death?

Recommended Readings • • • • • •

Danticat, Edwidge. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. Graywolf Press, 2017. Farmer, Paul. Aids and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. U of California P, 1992. Hitchens, Christopher. Mortality. On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. Scribner, 2014. Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. Scribner, 1997. Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. HarperOne, 2015. Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. HarperOne, 2009.

The Function and Role of Religion Religion plays an important role in BID and is used as a medium to engender optimism and resistance in the midst of calamity, social evil, and the problem of pain in the human experience in the world. The book is pregnant with religious concepts and references, as well as with

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  239 biblical allusions and echoes. In three fictional stories told in BID, heavy religious language is deployed by Danticat. Religion is also discussed in relation to Haitian politics, the personal life of certain characters such as Uncle Joseph and his wife Tante Denie, Mira and Edwidge herself. ­Protestant (Haitian) Christianity is the religious tradition discussed in the story. Also, Danticat does not shy away to engage the reader in the complexity of faith as it should be examined in the light of human ­suffering, illness, fear, and death itself. At the opening page of the Memoir, Danticat (Danticat 2007, 5) ­compares her father, who has been diagnosed with chronic ­psoriasis and eczema, to a “biblical leper, the kind people feared might infect them with skin-ravaging microbes and other ills. So, whenever he coughed, he covered his entire face with both his hands.” Like his brother ­Joseph, Mira is a devoted Christian who has regularly attended a Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn for more than thirty years. Danticat (2007, 16) ­believes because he is a religious man, he will be able to cope with the incurable pulmonary fibrosis; she suggests that her father will not ­“become disheartened, heartbroken, depressed.” His faith in God will sustain him, even in his suffering. Despite his strong faith that God will heal him and coveted Christian piety, Danticat informs us that “his ­future seemed most uncertain” (Danticat 2007, 7). The life of uncle Joseph, a Baptist preacher, is colored with various religious and moral virtues such as piety, holiness, faithfulness, patience, love, and his absolute dependence and trust in God. He is portrayed as an exemplary model of Christian piety and biblical discipleship in the Memoir. Danticat informs us before Joseph, an admirer of the influential Haitian politician and community activist Daniel Fignole, becomes a Baptist preacher, he was heavily involved in politics, participated in street demonstrations and protests, political meetings, and even thought about running for political office. In particular, as a nationalist and anti-imperialist fighter, he has been affected by the impact of ­A merican imperialism in Haiti and the memories of the American military ­occupation (1915–1934) in the country. Joseph believed that the Haitian must now “fight for progress. We want to fight with our minds. This is where real power lies” (Danticat 2007, 32). Because of an “ideological void” (­ Danticat 2007, 33) as Danticat phrases it, Joseph ­ aptist congregation in Haiti. Generally, the Baptists chamjoined a B pioned a sense of moral order, peace, unity in the Haitian society and promoted an ­ethnically based collective life for the country and Haitian families; in addition, Haitian Baptists supported covenant faithfulness and stability in ­marriage, religious piety, and made a sharp separation and contrast between the worldly and the sacred (Danticat 2007, 33). Joseph eventually married Tante Denise in the new Baptist congregation and became a deacon in the same church. Joseph would later enroll in a school designed to train future Haitian pastors led by American

240  Celucien L. Joseph Baptist missionaries. Because of his religious zeal and sense of spiritual calling to Christian vocation, Joseph started his own church where the rest of the family including Edwidge Danticat would receive spiritual formation and develop Christian virtues. The American missionaries will not only sponsor the newly established Baptist church, but they also provided financial support for a school he founded. However, Joseph’s attitude toward American cultural imperialism and economic capitalism and his zeal to fight for Haiti’s sovereignty and autonomy would make him suspicious about the involvement of American missionary Christians, often a great advocate of American imperialism, in the country. Joseph interprets the role of Christianity as institution that provides both spiritual redemption and social change in the Haitian society. The naming of the new church, “L’Eglise Chrétien de la Redemption”/the Christian Church of Redemption is indicative of the role this new church will play in Bel-Air, the slum of Haiti’s poor and the underclass. As Danticat (2007, 34) remarks, “He believed that the church had redeemed him, saved him from a series of potentially hazardous choices. . . he hoped, would redeem others as well.” He not only built a church for the people in the community, he created a school, and provided life necessities to the needy and the poor. Through his charismatic and straightforward preaching style and sermons that emphasize the necessity of social justice and political unity in Haiti, Joseph was able to win many converts and transform many lives in Bel-Air. Nonetheless, his central message was about God’s love for the poor and all people, and the ­importance for the Haitian people, both Christians and non-Christians, to love one another (Danticat 2007, 35). Joseph uses religion to mobilize and empower the Haitian people to live relationally, and to transform the moral conscience of the nation and to create a moral society for the common good and for everyone to flourish as individual Haitian citizen. In other words, religion is used to order morality and give individuals in the Haitian society correct direction about their ethical decisions and moral choices (Danticat 2007, 76–77). On the other, he was sensitive not to converge religion with politics; as Danticat (2007, 139). Remarks, “My uncle managed to stay out of harm’s way by avoiding the demonstrations and all other overtly political activity, including speaking out against the military from the pulpit of his church.” For Joseph, faith is a lifestyle that must be embodied and practiced in daily human interactions. He construes his life as a paradigm of faith, Christian piety, and as an archetype for spiritual dependence for the people in his community to emulate. When his church in Bel-Air was attacked by the paramilitary groups and gang members, both his friends in the community and his son Maxo warned him to close the gates of church’s building, Joseph refused; he responded that the heroic faith must endure the time of distress and persecution: “And what of

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  241 the people who are here?” “How can we turn them away? If we don’t open, we’re showing our lack of faith. We’re showing that we don’t trust enough in God to protect us” (Danticat 2007, 174). At the height of the violence in Bel Air and its expansion inside the church, the gang members burned the altar of the church and the principal’s office of the school. Some individuals from his congregation and the community at large were concerned about his safety; he assured them not to worry because “God is with me” (Danticat 2007, 178). Nonetheless, Joseph’s religion would become more significant and valuable in his life when he was diagnosed with radical laryngectomy in 1978 and would eventually undergo a larynx operation, (Danticat 2007, 62) which will drastically alter his speech forever. Similarly, after Mira found out that his both lungs were medically deteriorating, he grew in faith and religion provided both the comfort and shelter that he needed to stay strong. This Christian pastor who prizes the healing power and miracles of God also believes that God also uses medical science and technology to effect healing. In a conversation about his illness with his brother Joseph, he pronounces metaphorically, “Science is God’s way of shielding miracles” (Danticat 2007, 131). To put it simply, Joseph rejects the idea that science and religion are not compatible, as the subject pertains to divine intervention in both spheres. Finally, religion has become a pivotal element in Danticat’s own life. After her father Mira left Haiti for New York, she moved to Joseph’s house where she and her brother Bob would attend religious services regularly at his Parish (Danticat 2007, 55). She was reared in the moral precepts of her uncle Joseph’s Christian Protestantism; when she moved to New York to join her biological parents, her religious zeal continues. She informs us of her regular participation at weekly prayer meetings at various homes of the people from her parents’ congregation (Danticat 2007, 121). Even after she returns to Haiti after living in the United for many years, she would attend ecclesial meetings on Sundays at her ­u ncle’s church where she would make new acquaintances with the people in the congregation. Religion is not only private, but also personal the same way religious rituals such as the weekly prayer have both a personal significance and a communal value in the life of the faithful. Recommended readings2 • •

Brodwin, Paul. “Pentecostalism in Translation: Religion and the Production of Community in the Haitian Diaspora.” American ­Ethnologist 30, no 1: 85–101. Butler, Melvin. “‘Nou Kwe nan Sentespri’/‘We Believe in the Holy Spirit’: Music, Ecstasy and Identity in Haitian Pentecostal Worship.” Black Music Research Journal 22, no. 1: 85–125.

242  Celucien L. Joseph • •

Louis, Bertin. My Soul Is in Haiti: Protestantism in the Haitian ­Diaspora of the Bahamas. New York UP, 2014. Rey Terry and Alex Stepick. Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion in Miami. New York UP, 2013.

The Meaning of Prayer As mentioned previously, religious piety through the manifestation of prayer is a vital asset in the life of Edwidge, Mira, Joseph, and the rest of the family. Spirituality through prayer is both individual and collective. In BID, individuals deploy the instrument of prayer to achieve both individual and collective goals and objectives. Danticat informs us that his parents and his uncle Joseph are individuals who pray continuously and gain spiritual comfort by praying. In the Memoir, the meaning of prayer is associated with death, life after death, the problem of pain and suffering, and the hope of the Christian resurrection. Prayer is intimately connected to the spiritual development and dimension of the characters in the story and transforms their worldview about life itself. Prayers are addressed to God for physical healing and for the characters to develop stronger moral character, and spiritual virtues that are necessary for the Christian life. For example, Danticat’s (2007, 52) uncle and his wife prayed regularly because they couldn’t conceive; the church prayed that they will have children. Prayer becomes more vital in the life of Mira and Joseph in their battling with deadly diseases and facing the end-of-life itself—death. “Pray hard” (Danticat 2007, 194) as one of the characters in Brother, I’m Dying urges simply indicates that prayers as a mechanism can empower individuals to face hard circumstances, especially those dealing with the problem of pain and suffering in life. Not only prayers are presented as cathartic mechanism in the story, Bible reading is an important vehicle through which the characters ­muster up spiritual hope and strength and seek peace and consolation in hard times: “My uncle was sitting on Man Jou’s bed, calmly reading his Bible” (Danticat 2007, 195). Nonetheless, the paradox of seeking spiritual comfort and peace in difficult times, both through prayer and Bible reading, is not always a guarantee of safety; as the narrator in the story speculates and even infers, “There could be a war raging in some neighborhoods, while others were as peaceful. . . usually one might say as a church or perhaps a cemetery, but peace was hard to find now in some churches and cemeteries too” (Danticat 2007, 198). Prayer was the way toward peace, reconciliation, and transition from life toward death. After uncle Joseph suffers a cruel death at the careless hands of ­A merican immigration authorities, Danticat, suggested to her brother Maxo that “When things are calmer, we can all go back and bury his ashes on his own soil with Tante Denise. Maxo responded that Uncle Joseph’s religious believes wouldn’t allow such a burial ritual because

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  243 “In the final day of judgment, when the dead rise out of their tombs, we want his body there” (Danticat 2007, 245).3 Not only Danticat presents the idea of Christian resurrection as future hope, heaven is described as the next blissful journey to the future life: Tapping my uncle’s check, as if to stir him from fainting spell, my father simply said, “Brother, the last time we spoke, you said you were leaving me with a heavy heart. This time I’m the one leaving you with a heavy heart. We may not see each other again on this earth, but I will see you soon” (Danticat 2007, 251). On the other hand, the author’s own sense of religious uncertainty about the future life is indicative of the crisis of faith for many individuals, as she now loses both her admired uncle and admirable father: Like perhaps most people whose loved ones have died, I wish that I had some guarantees about the afterlife. I wish I were absolutely certain that my father and uncle are now together in some tranquil and restful place, sharing endless walks and talks beyond what their too-few and too-short visits allowed. I wish I knew that they were offering enough comfort to one another to allow them both not to remember their distressing even excruciating, last hours and days. (Danticat 2007, 268) After his brother Joseph dies inhumanly in the Krome in Miami, Mira himself, who was living dyingly, cultivated a consistent life of prayer, the channel for his hope in God. Along with his breakfast, he would take his first series of medicines, both herbal and pharmaceutical. Then he would pray out loud as though conducting a boisterous one-sided conversation with God. His prayers were most often about his illness— “God, if you see it fit to cure me, please do. If not, your will be done”—but he also prayed for me and my brothers, for our safety and well-being. He prayed for patience and strength for my mother, who was caring for him. He asked God to bless her for taking care of him. He prayed for a favorable outcome to the American presidential elections, for peace in Haiti and in the world in general. (Danticat 2007, 159) ­ ealing As both the father and uncle searching for divine consolation and h through the medium of prayer and spiritual dependence on God, the ­author observes keenly: The week after my father left the hospital, my uncle would rise early to pray with him. Sleeping in the room next to my father’s, I would

244  Celucien L. Joseph sometimes be awakened by their combined voices, my father’s low, winded, my uncle’s loud, mechanical, yet both equally urgent in their supplications. (Danticat 2007, 159–160) The uncle’s life is saturated by incessant prayers and supplications to God, as he finds prayer more urgent in time of despair and life’s uncertainty: Sometimes, my father remained quite while my uncle alone implored. “God do not forsake your servant now. He’s sixty-nine years old. He has so much yet to experience. He’d so like to live to rejoice in all the promises you’ve made to those who serve you. He’d like to watch his progeny flourish, to see the generations emerge before him. He would glorify your name if you were to grant him your grace and lengthen his days. Were you to allow him to return from where he’s standing now on the edge of the valleys of death, he’d have a testimony to match that of many of your prophets.” (Danticat 2007, 160) In a different occasion, when Uncle Joseph is ready to return to Haiti, the reality of family separation becomes intolerable for both brothers. They employ prayer as a resource to console each other, to foster comfort and relief, and to aid them to remember their common trials, memory, and oneness: That morning, my uncle prayed the longest he had ever prayed at my father’s bedside. My father closed his eyes and listened quietly, only occasionally chiming in with “Yes. Thank you”. (Danticat 2007, 163). “Lord,” my uncle said, “You already know our deepest wish. You know how much it would please us to see your servant rise from this bed and live and work again among those who are well. You know how even the angels would hear our cries of jubilation if his pain were to disappear. You know how much wisdom he would gain, how much insight he’d have to share with others who take their lives for granted.” (Danticat 2007, 164) The narrator continues by stating that “My uncle lowered the hand that wasn’t’ holding the voice box and pressed it against my father’s forehand. He then recited the Lord’s Prayer, encouraging me to join with a nod of his head” (Danticat 2007, 1633–1634). Despite the incredibly prayer life of uncle Joseph and that of Danticat’s father, coupled with their coveted Christian piety and sustaining faith in God the Healer and Comforter, elsewhere in BID, both characters struggle with the meaning of God and the meaning of death. This crisis of faith occurs as both brothers

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  245 experience suffering and witness the consistency of the problem of evil and pain in their community, and the reality of death in their own life. This idea is effectively communicated through a folktale in the book: The Angel Death doesn’t play favorites. He takes us all, lame and stout, young and old, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful. You [God], however, give some people peace and put some of us in war zones like Bel Air. You give some enough food to stuff themselves, while others starve. You make some powerful and others defenseless. You make some healthy and let some get sick. You give some all the water they need while some of us have very little. (Danticat 2007, 145) Nonetheless, in the Memoir, religion remains a source of sustaining hope, transformation, and renewal. Danticat does not comment on the dark side of religion and how religious fanatics and zealots use religion as a weapon to destroy lives and spread suffering in the world. Topics for Discussion • • •

•

Does Edwidge Danticat present religion as an opium to the faithful and those who suffer? In what ways does religion help individuals to cope with life’s ­challenges, uncertainties, and disappointments? As a society we have made tremendous progress in scientific ­development and technological advancements, does religion still have a place in the public or private life? Will there be a time religion will become unnecessary to human beings and in society? Should all religious traditions have equal rights of public function and political representation in contemporary American society? Why? Why not?

Recommended Readings4 • • • • • • •

Brown, Michael Joseph. The Lord’s Prayer through North African Eyes: A Window into Early Christianity. T & T Clark, 2004. The Book of Common Prayer. Keller, Tim. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. Penguins Books, 2016. Smith, James K.A. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Brazos Press, 2016. Tutu, Desmond. An African Prayer Book. Random House, 2009. St. Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict. Vintage, 1998. Washington, James M. Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans. Amistad, 2014.

246  Celucien L. Joseph

Constructing and Reconstructing Hope and Redemption While Brother, I’m Dying is a story of human trauma in which living dyingly and death undergird the plot and mark the experience of the major characters, BID is also a narrative of human hope and redemption. The problem of pain, suffering, hunger, poverty, and the fragility of the Haitian life make hope and redemption necessary to the human condition in Haiti and the life in exile. Danticat (2007, 249) believes that love itself is an important human emotion that makes life in this world worth living, “Surely there was nothing to fear. Of the many ways that death might transform the love that the living had experienced, one of them should not fear.” In the Memoir, Danticat employs two complementary ways she envisions an alternative world and more promising future possibilities. First, through the effective use of religion in the personal life of the characters such as her father Mira and her uncle Joseph, she constructs a narrative of hope and redemption. For her, faith is what sustains these characters and the human life in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora. The kind of faith she articulates in the memoir has a spiritual aspect, which involves constant dependence or reliance on God. It is uncle Joseph and Mira’s trust in God that provides empowerment and resilience to them in the midst of their hardships and life tragedies. In particular, as already noted in the previous section, prayer plays a cathartic role in fostering hope and ­redemption in the life of Joseph and Mira, and as they live dyingly, and ultimately death. They believe in the Christian hope of the resurrection in the life after death, which is a great assurance in the Christian tradition. Second, Danticat manufactures hope through literature. She construes the written word as a (symbolic) mechanism to create an alternative universe, the world of the imaginary, and the sphere of psychic relaxation. Her letter-writing process is also a source that provides mental relief. In particular, reading Madeleine, a children’s book written by Ludwig Bemelman, would open up another universe for the young Edwidge Danticat, a universe of texts and texts that have the cathartic and transcendent power to reorder her thought-process and alleviate the pain of alienation. As a child in Haiti, she would find solace in this book to cope with the existential reality of geographical distance from her ­i mmigrant parents; yet Madeline, in the most relational way, brings to the young Edwidge geographical proximity, psychic intimacy, even physical ­presence with the virtual characters. As a custom, Edwidge would use the Kerosene lamp, the night light to read Madeleine. The delight and pleasure she gains through her active engagement with this book provide to the adolescent Edwidge not only the transcendent value of literature, but also the radical self-­ transformation she undergoes.

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  247 Additionally, another character in the Memoir who becomes a source of hope and consolation to Danticat is her own daughter. Her name is Mira who has become for her and her family a restful place herself. After giving birth to Mira, Danticat (Danticat 2007, 253–254) pronounces these powerful words of prophetic hope to her, “Looking at her tine face, her bow-shaped lips so red. . . May you be a repozwa, a place where children can rest.” Not only Danticat symbolizes that resting place, Mira herself will also be a repozwa to humanity. Three weeks after the birth of Mira, Danticat takes a trip to New York to introduce her baby daughter to her father in order that she might comfort him in his death-bed. As she indicates the signification of the name to her father: Look, Papa, I’d say. You’ve waited for her. You’ve lived long enough to see her. Today is not just her day, but all of ours. And we’re not the only ones who will cradle and protect her. She will also hold and comfort us. She too will be our repozwa, our sacred place to rest. (Danticat 2007, 255) Her father’s response is important of the significance and potential legacy of the name: “I’m really touched that you named her Mira,” he said, as I snapped another picture. “Now even when I’m gone—and we all can say that, even those of us who are not sick—even when I’m gone, the name will stay behind” (Danticat 2007, 257). Mira symbolizes the life, meaning, and legacy of the author’s father. At the pregnancy stage, Danticat sees the eventual birth of Mira will bring joy, happiness, and a sense of restoration to her family. Mira is the very substitution of death and living dylingly: “Bringing a child into the world seemed to be about anything but death. It was a huge leap of faith in the future, an acknowledgement that one would somewhere continue to exist” (­Danticat 2007, 14). In fact, in the process of carrying the new baby girl in her belly, Danticat (Danticat 2007, 249) links the phenomenon of death with life itself. For example, at the funeral of her father, she remarks: “What I really wanted to say was that the dead and the new life were already linked, through my blood, through me.” Literary scholarly Ian Bennett (2008, 272) correctly infers that the title of Danticat’s memoir “reveals an idea of death and gloom, the narrative quickly dispels this notion.” Finally, Mira is the embodiment of life and future possibilities. She is also the antithesis of death, which the author trembles about. She is the sacred restful place, as her mother hopes: “She will also hold and comfort us. She too will be our respozwa (resting place), our sacred place to rest” (Danticat 2007, 253). Mira is not only the embodiment of a new life, she symbolizes rootedness and uprootedness: “She was leaving my body and going into the world, where she would spend the rest of her life moving away from me” (Danticat 2007, 255).

248  Celucien L. Joseph Topics for Discussion •

• •

What is the source of hope and joy for the suffering characters in the Memoir? How have the characters in BID constructed, defined, and imagined hope and redemption? Is there a difference between optimism and hope? What are the forces in the Memoir that introduced hopelessness and a sense of human despair? Can an individual have hope and joy without having previous experience with despair and pain?

Recommended Readings • • • • •

Roumain, Jacques. Masters of the Dew. EducaVision, 2012. Eagleton, Terry. Hope without Optimism. The U of Virginia P, 2015. Strom, Kay Marshall and Michele Rickett. Daughters of Hope: Stories of Witness & Courage in the Face of Persecution. IVP, 2003. Kapic, Kelly M. Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering. IVP, 2017. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. Penguin Books, 2000.

Notes 1 On the same page, Danticat also writes, “At the airport, I thought I might cry, throw another tantrum as I did the first time mother left, but I didn’t, and neither did Bob. We were much older now and were more accustomed to being without them than being with them. At least, I remember thinking, we had seen them again.” 2 In Brother, I’m Dying, the focus is on Haitian Protestantism; hence, I try not to go beyond this particular religious tradition or theme. Unfortunately, there is not a single published book or full text written in the English language on the history of Christian Protestantism in Haiti or Protestantism in the Haitian Diaspora, with the exception of the text mentioned (the text above focuses on Haitian Protestantism in The Bahamas, not in Haiti, per se; when it comes to Haitian Vodou, the literature is numerous and incomparable. 3 In the same conversation, Danticat retorts that “In the final day of judgment, will my uncle care from whence he’d rise?” 4 While these recommended texts do not explicitly deal with the spiritual discipline of prayer in the Haitian context and life, they deal with prayer in the Christian life as well as prayers from the perspective of Black people. Because the religious tradition in Brother, I’m Dying, is Haitian Christian Protestantism, I do not recommend prayers in Haitian Vodou or any religious tradition, such as Islam, practiced in Haiti.

Bibliography Bennett, Ian Bethel. “Review of Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I am Dying.” ­Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 6, no. 1 (2008), Art. 10, 1–4.

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  249 Danticat, Edwidge. After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti. New York: Crown Publishers, 2002. ———. Brother, I’m Dying. New York: Vintage, 2007. ———. Create Dangerously. The Immigrant Artist at Work. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010. ———. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017. Dash, Michael J. “Danticat and Her Haitian Precursors.” In Edwidge Danticat: A Reader’s Guide. Edited by Martin Munro. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010. pp. 26–38. Gruez, Kirsten Silva. “America.” In Background Readings for Teachers of American Literature. Edited by Venetria K. Patton. Boston: Bedford/St. ­Martin’s, 2014. pp. 304–319. Shannon, Sandra G. and Sandra L. Richards (ed.). Approaches to Teaching the Plays of August Wilson. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2016.

Excursus I

Sample Class Activities on BID

Course Syllabus for English Composition II (ENC 1102) Fall Semester, 2016 Writing Assignments 1 Literary Research Paper (8 pages) Every student will write a critical literary research paper based on a theme, motif, or symbol in one of the following stories: 1 Brother, I’m Dying (BID) by Edwidge Danticat or 2 “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry The student may also elect to do a character analysis based on BID (Danticat) or the play (Hansberry). The length of the research paper should be about 8 pages excluding the Works Cited entry. Students will also submit a research proposal (1–2 pages) outlining the details and direction of their subject of research. They will turn in the first half of this paper (4 pages), and I will provide feedback for subsequent revisions and final submission. Students will generate a thesis statement for the research paper. However, the instructor must approve the thesis before formal writing begins. The final Research Project will include the following: a cover page, an outline, a research proposal, and a Works Cited page. The paper must follow the MLA style and guidelines. The Works Cited should include about four to five secondary sources. The sources can be a combination of the following: scholarly/peer-reviewed articles, books, Encyclopedia, Web source, magazine/newspaper, etc. All secondary sources will be peer-reviewed. A Some Common Themes in Brother, I’m Dying 1) Death 2) Human Rights and Immigration 3) The Function of Language and Orality in BID 4) Religion 5) Destiny and the Struggle of the individual with society 6) Exile, Presence, and Absence 7) ­Existentialism 8) Home and Imagined Home

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  251 B Literary Research paper Grading Scale: 35% a Research proposal and thesis statement (1–2 pages): 5% b First Half of the Paper (4 pages): 10% c Final submission of 8 page Research Paper (excluding the Works Cited Page): 10% d Annotated Bibliography: 5% e Works Cited Entry: 5%

Course and Assignment Schedule (Tuesday & Thursday) Assignments from Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama will be indicated by Literature; assignments from Brother, I’m Dying will be indicated by BID in the syllabus. With the exception of in-class ­writing or testing assignments, you should complete the reading assignments before the date indicated and be prepared in that class to discuss the material.

Week 1 (August 22 & 25) Tuesday: No Class! Thursday Course Overview •

Introduction to Blackboard

First Writing (Diagnostic) Assignment: Write a short review of your favorite movie or book. You may also want to write about your hero/ heroine or the most influential person in your life—250 words— (to be submitted online via Blackboard by Friday, August 26)

Week 2 (August 30 & September 1) Tuesday Reading Assignments: Reading Fiction “Introduction” (Literature 1–19) “Reading Stories” (Literature 27–32) “Questions for Writing about Fiction” (Literature 125–127) Thursday Reading Assignments “Elements of Fiction” (Literature 43–51; 49–51; 59–62; 66–67; ­77–78; 85–86) “The Canon and the Curriculum” (Literature 2156–2161)

252  Celucien L. Joseph

Week 3 (September 6 & 8): Themes: Gender, Sexuality, and Community Tuesday Reading Assignments “Formalist Perspectives,” “Biographical Perspectives,” and “Historical Perspectives” “The Canon and the Curriculum” (Literature 2161–2169) “Psychological Perspectives,” and “Sociological Perspectives” (Literature 2169–2174) Thursday Reading Assignments William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” (Literature 78–86) Flannery O’ Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (Literature ­202–212); Frederick Asals’s “On ‘A’ Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Discussion Forum # 1: On Fiction. • Due by midnight: Friday, 9 /11 as a POSTED Discussion in the Blackboard system. 2 Quiz # 1: Due by midnight on Blackboard: Friday, 9/09 • Covers all textbook readings from weeks 2 & 3

Week 4 (September 13 & 15): Themes: Religion, Human Solidarity, and Community Tuesday Reading Assignments Good Man Is Hard to Find’” (Literature 235) “Have You Enjoyed Your Life?” to “We’re All Dying” (BID) Thursday Reading Assignments “Good-bye” to “Gypsy” (BID) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Discussion Questions (Handout) on BID due 2 Quiz # 2: Due by midnight on Blackboard: Friday, 9/16 • Covers all textbook readings from weeks 4 & 5

Week 5 (September 20 & 22): Themes: Religion, Human Solidarity, and Community Tuesday Reading Assignments “Brother, I Can Speak” to “Limbo” (BID)

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  253 Thursday Reading Assignments “No Greater Shame” to “Transition” (BID) Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” (Literature 684–697) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Discussion Questions (Handout) on BID due

Week 6 (September 27 & 29): Themes: Culture, Feminism, and Realism Tuesday Reading Assignments Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (Literature 743–749) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (Literature 399–404) Thursday Reading Assignments “Writings in Literature” (Handout) “Documenting Sources” (Handout) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Discussion Forum #2: On BID • Due by midnight: Friday, 9/30

Week 7 (October 4 & 6) Tuesday Reading Assignments: Drama “Reading Plays” (Literature 1247–1249) “The Interpretation of Drama” (Literature 1260–1264) Thursday Reading Assignments: Drama “Types of Drama” (Literature 1265–1267) “Elements of Drama” (Literature 1268–1283)

Week 8 (October 11 & 13): Themes: Class, Race, and Gender Tuesday Reading Assignments Introduction to Lorraine Hansberry and A Raisin in the Sun Watch Video Presentation “A Raisin in the Sun” (Literature 1869–1897; Act I)

254  Celucien L. Joseph Thursday Reading Assignments “A Raisin in the Sun” (Literature 1897–1914; Scene III)

Week 9 (October 18 & 20): Themes: Class, Race, Dream, and Gender Tuesday Reading Assignments Watch and Discuss A Raisin in the Sun “A Raisin in the Sun” (Literature 1914–1936; Scene III-Act III) Thursday Reading Assignments Watch and Discuss A Raisin in the Sun “Revising, Editing, Proofreading, and Formatting” (WM 82–105) “Finding Information” (Literature 206–229) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Research Paper Proposal Due (1–2 pages) 2 Quiz # 3: Due by midnight on Blackboard: Friday, 10/21 • Covers all textbook readings from weeks 6–9

Week 10 (October 25 & 27): Themes: Class, Dream, and Gender Tuesday Reading Assignments Watch and Discuss A Raisin in the Sun “Evaluating Information” (Literature 230–245) Thursday Reading Assignments “Thinking and Reading Critically” (Literature 108–133) “Writing the Research Project” (Literature 264–286) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Discussion Forum #3: On Poetry 2 Due by midnight: Friday, 10/28

Week 11 (November 1 & 3) Tuesday Reading Assignments: Poetry “Reading Poems” (Literature 763–774) “Writing about Poetry” (Literature 843–847, 858–861)

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  255 Thursday Reading Assignments: Poetry “Types of Poetry” (Literature 775–778) “Elements of Poetry” (Literature 779–798)

Week 12 (November 8 & 10): Themes: Love, American Dream, and Racial Harmony Tuesday Reading Assignments “Langston Hughes in Context” (Literature 989–1026) Thursday Reading Assignments Selected Poems Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death” (Literature 810, 951), and “Faith is a fine invention” (915); Frost, “The Silken Tent” (815); Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” (844); Shakespeare, “Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day?” (874) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Quiz # 4: Due by midnight on Blackboard: Friday, 11/11 • Covers all textbook readings from weeks 11 & 12 2 Discussion Forum #4: On Poetry • Due by midnight: Friday, 11/11

Week 13 (November 15 & 17): Theme: Community and Cosmopolitanism Tuesday Reading Assignments Selected Poems Paz, “The Street” (1052); Soyinka, “Hamlet” (1052); Walcott, “House of Umbrage” (1053); Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask” (1101) Thursday Reading Assignments Group Poetry Workshop

Week 14 (November 22 & 24) November 23, 24, & 25 (Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday): HOLIDAY— Thanksgiving Tuesday

256  Celucien L. Joseph Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Poetry Analysis Due Today • Pick a poem from the book—an unassigned poem and one that was not discussed or analyzed in class • Write a 500 word critical analysis on a selected poem from the book • Poetry Analysis Due (500 words = 2 pages) 2 Quiz # 5: Due by midnight on Blackboard: Friday, 11/25 • Covers all textbook readings from weeks 13 & 14 3 Discussion Forum # 5: On Poetry/Due by midnight: Tuesday, 11/29

Week 15 (November 29 & December 1) Tuesday Reading in Poetry Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Final Research Paper due (8 pages excluding Works Cited Page) 2 Works Cited Page due Thursday •

Non-Anglophone Poets Class Handout

Week 16 (December 6 & 8) Tuesday Review for Final Poetry discussion Thursday •

FINAL EXAM

*The instructor reserves the right to change or modify due dates, ­assignments, to accommodate students and enhance their learning.

Excursus II

An Eight-Week Teaching Model to BID

Week I: Background of Haiti (Colonial Saint-Domingue) • • • • • •

Show Modern Map of Haiti: www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/ map/haiti_map.htm Show (Colonial) Map of Saint-Domingue: www.bl.uk/collection-items/ map-of-saint-domingue-c-1750 Discussion about the European Transatlantic Slave Trade Discussion about the colonial society, life dynamics, and the slave institution in Saint-Domingue Documentary: PBS Documentary about the Haitian Revolution: “Égalité for All: Toussaint Louverture & The Haitian Revolution,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn32cWUT83E Assigned readings: A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution by Jeremy Popkin https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/jeremyd-­popkin-a-concise-history-of-the-haitian-revolution-2011.pdf

*** Group Activity: Divide the class in Group of four or five: Provide guiding questions to each group/student about the material covered this week. For example, the instructor can assign a prompt to the class about what they have learned about the colonial system in Saint-Domingue; the students can write a 500 word-reflection paper on the material. ­Second, each group can do a group presentation about a particular aspect (i.e. slavery, social class systems, plantation system) of the colonial society or the Haitian Revolution (i.e. Human Rights, Human Emancipation, Toussaint Louverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, the Bois Caiman event of August 1791, the Battle of the Haitian Independence/Vertieres, the birth of Haiti in January 1804).

Week II: The Modern State of Haiti • •

Show Modern Map of Haiti: www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/ map/haiti_map.htm Documentary: “Haiti: After the Quake” by ALJAZEERA, www. aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2011/09/201196 122110280787.html

258  Celucien L. Joseph

•

Public Lecture: “Haiti: The Aftershocks of History” by Laurent Dubois, www.youtube.com/watch?v=90eyrp4Rf7Q Assigned readings: “COUNTRY PROFILE: HAITI” prepared by the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/rr/frd/ “Haiti Fast Facts” by CNN Library, www.cnn.com/2013/10/17/ world/americas/haiti-fast-facts/index.html “Haiti Country Profile” by BBC News, www.bbc.com/news/ world-latin-america-19548810

***Group Activity: Divide the class in Group of four or five: Provide guiding questions to each group/student about the material covered this week. For example, the instructor can assign a prompt each group about what the students have learned about the rich culture of Haiti (i.e. Haitian arts, Haitian Carnival, holidays and festival, the music, the Vodou religion, Evangelical Missionary Christianity in Haiti) and Haitian contemporary politics (i.e. the Duvalier Regime, American military occupation of Haiti, Haiti and the International Community); the students can write a 500-word reflection paper on the subject matter. Second, each group can do a group presentation about a particular aspect of the suggested topics/subjects.

Week III • • •

• •

Assigned readings from BID: “Have You Enjoyed Your Life?” to “We’re All Dying” Additional assigned readings: “Memories of a Duvalier M ­ assacre, 50 Years Later” by Edwidge Danticat, https://progressive.org/dispatches/ memories-duvalier-massacre-50-years-later Interview: “In New Memoir, Award-Winning Haitian Novelist Edwidge Danticat Chronicles Death of Her Uncle at Federal Immigration Jail” (Interview on Democracy Now) www.democracynow.org/2007/10/5/in_new_memoir_award_ winning_haitian Documentary: “Whicker’s World François Papa Doc Duvalier,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChRUlldPcus Suggested Teaching Materials: “Lesson Plans for Brother I’m Dying” by THE NEA BIG READ, www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/­Danticat_ TG2015.pdf a

Reader’s Resources: Brother, I’m Dying, by THE NEA BIG READ, www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Readers-Guide-­Brother ImDying.pdf b Historical and Literary Context: “Haiti’s History and the Life and Times of Edwidge Danticat” by THE NEA BIG READ, www.arts. gov/sites/default/files/Readers-Guide-BrotherImDying.pdf https://blogs.hope.edu/thebigread/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/ 2014/09/BIDGroupResources.pdf

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  259 ***Group Activity: Group Activity: Divide the class in Group of four or five: Provide guiding questions to each group/student about the material covered this week. Have one group present about “Haiti’s History and the Life and Times of Edwidge Danticat;” another group to discuss “Memories of a Duvalier Massacre, 50 Years Later;” another group to discuss the Duvalier documentary; and finally, another group to discuss the assigned readings in BID for the week.

Week IV • •

Assigned readings from BID: “Good-bye” to “Gypsy” Additional assigned readings: “Haitian Fathers” by The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/books/review/Row-t.html

“DUVALIER FLEES HAITI TO END FAMILY’S 28 YEARS IN POWER: GENERAL LEADS NEW REGIME; 20 REPORTED DEAD” by The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/1986/02/08/world/­duvalierflees-haiti-end-family-s-28-years-power-general-leads-new-­r egime20.html •

• •

Documentary/Interview: “Haiti: Killing the Dream: Excerpt of Documentary on Centuries of Western Subversion of Haitian Sovereignty” (Democracy Now), www.democracynow.org/2010/2/10/ killing_the_dream_excerpt_of_documentary Interview: Brother, I’m Dying (C-Span Talk) by Edwidge Danticat, www.c-span.org/video/?201168-1/brother-dying Documentary: “Exposing Imperialism in Haiti” (R Documentaries) www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/aawiad/exposing_ imperialism_in_haiti_2015_how_america/

***Group Activity: Group Activity: Divide the class in Group of four or five: Provide guiding questions to each group/student about the material covered this week. Have one group present about “Haitian Fathers;” another group to discuss “Haiti: Killing the Dream;” another group to discuss the “Exposing Imperialism in Haiti” documentary; and finally, another group to discuss the assigned readings in BID for the week.

Week V • • •

Assigned readings from BID: “Brother, I Can Speak” to “Limbo” Additional assigned readings: “A Very Haitian History” (The New York Times) by Edwidge Danticat, www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/ opinion/24danticat.html Interview: “Edwidge Danticat, Dealing with Birth and Death” (Interview on NPR), www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14721447

260  Celucien L. Joseph •

Documentary: “11 Documentaries About Immigrants Everyone Should Watch Right Now” (HuffPost), www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/11-­ documentaries-about-immigrants-everyone-should-watch-right-now_ us_5874fc34e4b02b5f858b20c0 a 2004, “The New Americans,” www.youtube.com/watch?time_ continue=4&v=McjSuiHC3AE b “Made in L.A.—Trailer—POV” (PBS), www.youtube.com/ watch?time_continue=35&v=Nr1ABz65hXI

***Group Activity: Group Activity: Divide the class in Group of four or five: Provide guiding questions to each group/student about the ­material covered this week. Have one group present about “A Very ­Haitian ­History;” another group to discuss “Edwidge Danticat, Dealing with Birth and Death”; another group to discuss the “Made in L.A.— Trailer—POV” documentary; and finally, another group to discuss the assigned readings in BID for the week.

Week VI • •

Assigned readings from BID: “No Greater Shame” to “Transition” Additional assigned readings: “Interview with Edwidge Danticat” (Foreign Policy in Focus), https://fpif.org/interview_with_edwidge_ danticat/ a

“4 myths about how immigrants affect the U.S. economy” (PBS News Hour), www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/ 4-myths-about-how-immigrants-affect-the-u-s-economy b “These U.S. industries can’t work without illegal immigrants” (CBS News), www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-usjobs-economy-farm-workers-taxes/ c “The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States” (MPI), www.migrationpolicy.org/research/economicsand-policy-illegal-immigration-united-states • •

Interviews: “One to One: Edwidge Danticat, author, Brother, I’m Dying” (Interview on CUNYTV75), www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsTkZ8sDlFg Documentary: “Ellis Island—History of Immigration to the United States | 1890–1920 | Award Winning Documentary,” www.youtube. com/watch?v=8X4CypTaOQs

***Group Activity: Group Activity: Divide the class in Group of four or five: Provide guiding questions to each group/student about the ­material covered this week. Have one group present on “One to One: Edwidge Danticat, author, Brother, I’m Dying;” another group to present on “4 myths about how immigrants affect the U.S. economy;” another group to discuss “The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United

Comprehensive Resource Guide: Part B  261 States;” another group to discuss the Duvalier documentary; and finally, another group to discuss the assigned readings in BID for the week.

Week VII: Thematic Approach/Research-Based Oral Presentations: Students’ Individual Presentations • • • • • • • • • • •

Student Presentation 1: The Meaning of Haiti Student Presentation 2: The Meaning of the United States Student Presentation 3: The Immigrant Experience in the United States Student Presentation 4: The Function of Religion in BID Student Presentation 5: The Role of Prayer in BID Student Presentation 6: The Predicament of Fear and Death Student Presentation 7: Exile, Presence, and Absence in BID Student Presentation 8: Migration and Displacement Student Presentation 9: Existence as Journey and Destiny Student Presentation 10: Symbolism in BID Student Presentation 11: Family Ethics, Unity, and Values in BID

**** Week 7 will be devoted to students’ oral presentations. A The topics above are based on the research paper the students wrote in this course. I suggest that the instructor should include an oral component to this assignment, in which students will have an opportunity to share their research findings with their classmates or peers. B Student Teaching: Divide the class in team of four or five students. Each group will be asked to teach on these various topics and subjects. Each group should meet before its presentation to review the assignment. Distributing study and guiding questions ahead of time to the entire class will help students to think more critically about the assignment and contribute to learning effectiveness.

Week VIII: Community-Based Service Learning Projects: Individual and Group Oral Presentations • • • • • • • •

Project 1: Immigration Laws and Policies Project 2: The Life of an Immigrant: Learning the English Language and Assimilate in the American Society Project 3: Community Service and Civic Engagement Project 3: Health-Care Related Fields Project 4: Social Justice and Food Project Project 5: Literacy Project Project 6: Travelling in the Third World/Developing Nations Project 7: On U.S. International and Foreign Relations

262  Celucien L. Joseph • • •

Project 8: on American military intervention and American imperialism Project 9: Environmental Project Project 10: Poverty and Starvation Project

**** Week 8 is the final week of on BID. The above topics are very broad in scope; I designed them to be very general so the student will have an opportunity to focus on a topic of interest. These topics will encourage students to participate in various community-based learning projects, which would entail them to serve their community in that particular area (i.e. at a nursing home, food bank, animal shelter, human shelters, immigration center, schools). The instructor should provide to the students a list of the organizations (i.e. churches, mental institutions, fraternity clubs, tutoring centers, schools) and companies in the city or community that are actively involved in civic participation and engagements projects with the goal to improve the human condition and lives in the city and contribute to the common good. Students should volunteer their time according to the service availability.

Part IV

Citizen-Artist and Teaching as Activism

12 Edwidge Danticat’s “Citizen-Artist Curriculum with Columbia College Freshmen” Stan West General Introduction As a First-Year Seminar (FYS) instructor at Columbia College Chicago, I created a course and curriculum centered on “The Artist-Citizen” using The Dew Breaker as the core text to allow students to invent myths, codes, and stories, which Danticat said is the Haitian/Kreyol ­community way of problem-solving. This is quite unique in that it’s a Haitian way of problem-solving—one rooted in Black aesthetics and post-­colonial aesthetics where a community approach is deemed most appropriate to making the community feel more beautiful, which is counter to the ­dominant ideology of Western aesthetics where the individual approach is often hailed as supreme with a goal addressing the beauty of an ­individual’s art object. The Dew Breaker is an elegant novel in nine sections, each of which can be read on its own. Together, they pack a punch. The phrase “dew breaker” is a Kreyol nickname for torturer. In the novel, ­Danticat ­challenges the reader to observe the dew breaker through multiple ­vantage points. He is rarely seen directly; rather we gain a picture of him through the eyes of those who are victims of his torture, as well as those close to him. Danticat, a human rights activist, models perfectly for us the role of artist | citizen through her main character, Ka, a citizen-artist. This unique class creation infused civic engagement and service learning with critical thinking and art creation. Students at this arts and media college very much identified with citizen artists like Danticat and Ka, some evolved into that themselves. This chapter begins featuring the actual lesson plan with the author’s own words. Warts and all, it was our guiding document for teaching Danticat to students who had never heard of her. Most admitted they never studied a woman writer of color. Attached at the end is a Word document from the PowerPoint presentation created by my students of all stripes and their professor chronicling how they put citizen-­artist ­theories into practice amid America’s “Black Lives Matter” movement that she was an early supporter of. Columbia College staffers who assisted with form and content included Haitian-born educator Dr. Carolle Voltaire,

266  Stan West who directs Columbia’s “Upward Bound” project, who witnessed the final project—an exhibit with art, music and a collective poem—that received a group grade she and students agreed upon. “It brought tears to my eyes hearing music mirroring my childhood created by the s­ tudents and art that connected with the earthquake that shook my community,” Voltaire told spellbound students in their December 2014 class exhibit presentation. Gifted individuals from Columbia’s Writing Center— Sandy Weinstein Andrew Meyers, Nancy Rinehart and Director Tanya Harasym edit the chapter and align it in late F ­ ebruary 2018 with the Chicago Manual of Style. Pedagogy and Observation Please note the curriculum included students assigned to write weekly journal entries. With the first journal entry that hopefully illustrated a level or empathy, I required some structures based in part on experiential education philosopher John Dewey’s six-part structure as proposed by theorist David Kolb (1984) regarding inquiry, which is an FYS goal.1 According to the “Introduction to Service-Leaning Toolkit” (Cone & Harris, 5), Kolb conceptualizes Dewey’s six steps as a four-stage experiential learning cycle involving concrete experiences, reflection, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Learners are engaged in a cycle in which community of work settings forms the basis for (online) written or oral communication. Under the guidance of an instructor, reflective work is used to form abstract concepts and hypotheses are generated which then get cycled back into further concrete experiences. It is a student-centered model which Kolb believes allows students with very different learning styles to develop and integrate their skills. (5)2 1 Encountering a problem 2 Formulating a problem or question to be resolved 3 Gathering information which suggests solutions 4 Making hypothesis 5 Testing hypothesis and 6 Making warranted assertions. Through their journaling, students learned this course was more time-­ intensive than traditional courses. It was just as rigorous, maybe more, some said. Our goals, objectives, strategies, expectations were clearly spelled out in the beginning of the course. They consisted of FYS’ c­ urrent academic learning objectives of critical-thinking and p ­ roblem-solving skills through inquiry community learning skills such as learning about the wider Haitian art community and the local Haitian American

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  267 community of more than 30,000 as well as inter- and intra-person l­earning such as how to collaborate with others, learning about groups and cultures, exploring personal values, ethics, learning about self, and developing a sense of awe, all of which are also FYS learning objectives. I used the “Matrix 3b and 3d Learning Strategies and Assessment ­Methods”3 worksheets and the “Readings for Students about Civic ­Responsibility” handout obtained from experts like Editor Jeffrey Howard of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning at the University of Michigan, 2001). Local Haitian American leaders like Janine ­Raymond, liaison to the “Clinton-Bush Fund” and ­“Rainbow Push” and Haitian-born gallery owners like Nicole Smith and ­Elsie ­Hernandez, assessed FYS students from a community perspective. Students also did weekly self-assessments. I explained that the service component was “increasing visibility of post-earthquake Haitian r­ econstruction, and awareness of Haitian art communities” has been determined by our community service partners, but the sound learning objectives have been determined by yours truly in conjunction with the established best practices. I mentioned our need to be a little flexible, adapting to changing ­logistical conditions. I explained the self-assessment and a­ ssessment tools we used. Finally, students created artistic group products and wrote artist statements to show how they addressed my provocative questions; can a service learning class “invent community” with Haitian art? Can students become citizen-artists as individuals and as a group? In addition, if so, can we assess if “transformational learning”4 has taken place? The short answer is—probably. The long answer will be explored in this scholarly journal using “coding” from students’ critical reflections, assessments and art objects to cite themes some cited as evidence of learning using Black aesthetics and Western aesthetics as a global way to connect the dots between Caribbean and colonial as well as between theory and practice. Teaching Methods and Planning Please allow me to back-track a little bit to the writing-reflection element of their weekly reports. To add more depth to the “critical reflection,” I built on David Moore’s 1990 post-structuralist approach to experiential learning using a “critical pedagogy” that investigates the history, power relationships, and value commitments of social institutions, which in this case involves the colonial French and imperial American links to the fragile, oft-corrupt Haitian state, and how that has played out in the second democracy in the West. (The U.S. was first). It is important that students know that it is essential in this course to “approach experience with conceptual tools” (Cone & Harris, 5). In this case, those tools are questions and knowing how to gather information. Using outside

268  Stan West reading, lectures from the gallery owners, and set up questions from me and the students added depth and detail to their weekly notes, which were both online and in hard copy, even video and audio files. To augment their multimedia chronicles, I invited guest speakers in person and via Skype to chat from remote locations including Haiti and about how well or not so well the service-learning class is performing helpful, transformable change. Experts were pleased with the process and the product from our class. Haitian American leaders used the “ ­ Matrix 3d Learning Strategies and Assessment Methods.”5 This tool measures “social responsibility learning” in “knowledge, skills and ­values.” What this means is she and the three gallery owners assessed “how individuals in a particular profession act in socially responsible ways” and “how individuals show responsibility to others when using their skills for the betterment of society.”6 FYS students assisted in videotaping, sound capturing, promotion, publicity, marketing, event planning, and other activities that are within student disciplines. Haitian leaders and gallery owners praised our students. Additionally, students improved their writing skills, artistic skills, and marketing skills as well as learned the cultural geographies of the Uptown area’s Haitian American Museum of Chicago downtown’s polished gallery district, Oak Park’s organic art district and Pilsen’s vibrant art district, and in doing so provide muchneeded service to the Haitian art community. One indicator was the grade given at the beginning of class where students averaged about 1–1.5 out of 2 (out of a possible hundred-point semester total) on weekly reflections with some not turning them in. By the end of class, when we got more buy-in from everyone, grades averaged between 1.5 and 2 (out of a possible hundred-point total). In an unorthodox way, I also used the “Matrix 3b Learning Strategies and Assessment Methods” worksheet (Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning at the University of Michigan, 2001).7 Usually teachers use this to assess their peers. I adapted its use for our students to chronicle what they learned. It measures “knowledge, skill and values,” which includes “understanding root causes of social problems” and “developing active learning skills.”8 Each of these communities has a distinct flavor and history that broadened the viewpoints of the students’ own life experiences and perhaps gave them the chance to “Invent Community,” which is a way to redefine and broaden their own sense of people working together for a common goal. In this case, provider and the recipient both benefitted. Students visited the Writing Center, which they said helped improve their writing skills; the Library, which helped improve their researching skills; and the Portfolio Center, which showed them better ways to ­catalog and present their body of work. At semester’s end, only one failed because he showed up once; a few students received Cs; most ­received Bs; and some earned As. I believe the gallery owners also learned

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  269 a little bit more about the culture of Columbia’s community through the FYS students, who were effective ambassadors of our school’s “create change” mission. On their way to inventing community with the Haitian art world, ­students first built community with themselves. While the main intention of this carefully monitored service-learning class was to provide volunteer community service and field study opportunities for freshmen students to polish their academic skills, educational researchers report that this experiential educational approach is premised on “reciprocal learning” (Sigmon, 1979).9 One immediate lesson local gallery owners said they learned was “how engaged our youth are.” Often youth are portrayed in negative ­stereotypes. Our FYS class provided a more complex portrait of youth, according to our community partners’ assessments. This is another way of “Inventing Community.” Conversely, students learned the hows and the whys that Haitians have often been stereotyped, too, through H ­ ollywood and through the media. UC Berkeley a­ nthropologist Dr. Anna Creagh researched the cinema’s negative portraits of H ­ aitian ­religion in particular and Haitian people in general presenting her UCLA doctoral research at conferences at the 2011 Hawaii International ­Conference on Arts and Humanities. According to her LinkedIn site, “Creagh’s ongoing research theorizes “undeath” in the context of ­postcolonial narratives, with attention to folklore (specifically genres such as rumor, legend, myth, and folk belief), ethnography, and popular film texts.” While her dissertation is primarily concerned with the ­Haitian Revolution and how it gave rise to zombie-lore in the U.S., she has conducted fieldwork on indigenous practices of Vodun vis-à-vis “Voodoo tourism” in Ghana, Togo, and Benin. At UCLA, Creagh ­developed the course “Film as Folklore: Ideology and Inequality” to ­“introduce undergraduates to both folklore studies and film theory, teaching them to recognize how ideology is produced, patrolled, and resisted via engagement with popular media.”10 FYS students learned how to “read” Haitian art. They learned why the poorest country in the Western hemisphere is perhaps the ­richest ­country in its artistic contributions considering its proportional p ­ opulation. A few said they would likely continue to study Haitian art after the FYS course. Others may take up French or Kreyol like I did. Some said they would seek out new service-learning courses where ­academic skills ­caress community reality. These are among the ways they are taking service learning to the next level. In sum, my research largely employs a qualitative thematic analysis. Sources of data include pre-class and post-class open-ended inquiries asking students about their interest, experience, and commitment to service and social change. Jack Mesirow (1991) ­supports this kind of evidence.11 Data should show movement from ignorance to knowledge. The attached syllabus should provide more evidence of how Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker helped ­Columbia College FYS Citizen Artist students learn.

270  Stan West

Artist | Citizen Tragedy often shows us our collective and individual vulnerability. Words have feet/words have wings —Edwidge Danticat12

FYS “ARTIST-CITIZEN” WEEKLY LESSON PLAN FOR MOODLE—FALL, 2014 Unit 1: Tentative Course Outline Please Note that this syllabus is a work in progress that may be amended as the semester progresses. Student will be given ample notice of any change. All assignments are due the next class period unless otherwise noted. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED! For my cool FYS section, if you could pardon my food metaphors, I’m serving up a “Composing a Self” appetizer to introduce identity issues using Persepolis; followed by a main course of “The Artist-Citizen” using The Dew Breaker as the core text so students can invent myths, codes and stories, which author Edwidge Danticat said is the Haitian/ Kreyol community way of problem-solving; and for dessert, “Manifesting Vision” where Stranger with A Camera is the text helping students ask and answer if they have a social and ethical responsibility for what they create? All three sections align themselves with FYS’s learning goals of questioning, exploring, evaluating, and communicating in fun ways. The three units end with individual students creating art objects that will be in a group exhibit. Bon appétit! Unit 1 Topic: Composing a Self/Self in Community Grounded by Desmond’s (1997) culture is a construct and Anderson’s (1983) notion of imagined communities, we add the following Guiding Questions which focus on the complex interactions among individuals and the communities they inhabit within the framework of Self and Community: Guiding Questions: This topic explores where we come from and what lenses or filters we bring with us. We explore questions that are at once basic but confounding: What is the relationship between self and identity? Who are we? How do we see ourselves? How do others see us? In what ways are we connected to other people and communities? While we will begin by thinking about our own selves, we will be pushed to consider the ways other selves, other identities, are composed, and how we perceive them. We will examine the assumptions underlying the ­categories that we create and impose on others and ourselves as a means of navigating our communities. What kinds of labels do we generate? Why do we apply them to certain people? How do we identify and think about ourselves? How do we find a balance between our private selves

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  271 and our public selves? How do we negotiate between our individual freedoms and our communal responsibilities? How do we imagine ourselves as individuals and as collectives, and how do those images influence our individual and collective dreams, responsibilities, beliefs, and actions? Texts: 1 Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. Pantheon, 2004. ISBN 978–0375714573. Need to purchase.13 2 Danticat, Edwidge The Dew Breaker. 242 pp. Vintage; Reprint edition (March 8, 2005) ISBN-10: 1400034299, ISBN-13: 978–1400034291 Need to purchase.14 3 Barrett, Elizabeth. Stranger with a Camera, 2000. [DVD15] (We have a copy). 4 Museum Visits: US Holocaust Memorial, Art Institute of Chicago, Haitian American Museum of Chicago; National Mexican Art ­Museum; Dusable Museum of African-American Art. Choose one for each unit. Work with FYS partner as a team. Primary Guiding Questions: What does it mean to be an artist? Why do we make art? Is the role of the artist the same everywhere and at every time? What is the relationship between the artist and her/his/their public? What does it mean to be a citizen? What responsibilities do we have to society? To our community? To each other? How do our roles as artists relate to our roles as citizens? What does it mean to lead? What’s politics? Introducing the Ideas / Framing the Text: The Dew Breaker is an elegant novel in nine sections, each of which can be read on its own. Together, they pack a punch. The phrase “dew breaker” is a Kreyol nickname for torturer. In the novel, ­Danticat challenges the reader to observe the dew breaker through multiple vantage points. He is rarely seen directly; rather we gain a picture of him through the eyes of those who are victims of his ­torture, as well as those close to him. Danticat, a human rights ­activist, models perfectly for us the role of artist | citizen through her main character, Ka, a citizen-artist.16 Unit Study Ideas Both options are designed to give students an opportunity to explore complex issues from multiple perspectives, and to deepen their understanding of their own views on art and citizenship. Students will be ­divided into two groups. Each group will choose one of the options and present their work the last week of class.

272  Stan West Town Hall Meeting: Students will examine the conflicts raised in The Dew Breaker, and create a scenario for a Town Hall meeting that examines the role of the Artist as Citizen. It is up to members of the team to decide on the issue being debated, and the setting of your community. Mock Bench Trial: Students on the team develop a scenario involving an artist’s role as c­ itizen. At the trial, you will assume your interviewee persona, history and position on the issues of the trial. Everyone will be called to ­“testify” before a judge (the instructor or perhaps a guest of the instructor) and members of the community (the rest of the class). The accused and ­witnesses will be asked questions by the judge. After the verdict is rendered, the community members will participate in giving feedback on what arguments were compelling and why. Week One Guiding Questions: What does it mean to be an artist? Why do we make art? How has the role of the artist changed throughout history? Is the artist’s role the same everywhere and at every time? What’s the relationship between artists and their public? Wednesday, Oct. 8 Key concepts: questioning, open-mindedness, citizenship, community In-class activities: 1 Read and Discuss Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” What’s your position inside or outside of the “cave” at this point in the course?17 www.math.nus.edu.sg/~matlmc/Allegory_cave.pdf • Introduce The Dew Breaker and discuss Haiti’s history. Here’s Dr. Henry Louis Gates’ “Haiti and the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided.” Run Time 51:25 http://video.pbs.org/ video/1877436791/18 Reading and/or process assignment before next class: •

Post to Moodle: Analyze and discuss your own position in the cave. How is “The Allegory of the Cave” important to the artist | citizen?

Monday, Oct. 13 Key concepts: patriotism, loyalty, citizenship, community In-class activities: •

Consider whether or not you could kill someone. What circumstances might push you to this action? Write a response, pair up, and share findings with the class.

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  273 • •

“Live, Die, Kill” audio documentary by Karen Michel. Run time: 14:14 www.thirdcoastfestival.org/library/94-live-die-kill19 Discuss the responsibilities of citizenship and the terms of patriotism. Where do you stand? (This will be revisited after reading The Dew Breaker.)

Reading and/or process assignment before next class: • •

Read the opening epigram, “The Book of the Dead, Seven, Water Child,” pp. 3–68, from The Dew Breaker. 20 Post on Moodle: How might a citizen in exile express his/her ­relationship to patriotism and their home country? How might “Dreamers” at Columbia respond?

Guiding Questions: What does it mean to be a citizen? Who is a citizen? What are the power relationships in who decides? What responsibilities do we have to society? To our community? To each other? To individual freedom? To our art? Wednesday, Oct. 15 Key concepts: choice, bearing witness, forgiveness, reconciliation, remedies, voice In-class activities: • •

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• • •

Discuss Moodle posts and the reading. Introduce the concept “The Personal is Political” (choice). Discuss how The Dew Breaker characters epitomize this concept. Does Ka have a social responsibility for the art she creates in truth telling, giving voice, or bearing witness? Prompt students to suggest individuals who have disobeyed a directive from a high authority where “a brutal punishment” has resulted. Examples might be: Edward Snowden, Nelson Mandela, MLK, Pussy Riot, and Bradley Manning. Introduce Unit Study: Town Hall Meeting or Mock Bench Trial Read “The Book of Miracles, Night Talkers, The Bridal Seamstress,” pp. 69–138. 21 Read “Patriotism, Fear, and Artistic Citizenship” essay22

Monday, Oct. 20 Key concepts: patriotism, post-colonialism, western aesthetics, ethics In-class activities: Discuss “Patriotism, Fear and Artistic Citizenship” • •

View and discuss Chimamanda Adichie, TED Talk, run time 18:49 www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_ single_story23 Post to Moodle: Give an example of a situation where the personal has become the political. Was there a dilemma involved? What action did you take?

274  Stan West Guiding Questions: How do our roles as artists relate to our roles as citizens? What does it mean to lead? What is politics? How does site or “place” play a role in forming relationships between creating art, ­citizenship, and power? Wednesday, Oct. 22 Key concepts: ethics, patriotism, creativity In-class activities: • •

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Read “Monkey Tails, The Funeral Singer,” pp. 139–24224 Post to Moodle forum: Model Ka’s dilemma. This in-class journal entry asks how the student would hypothetically navigate their own family/artistic dilemma if when traveling back home for Christmas for an exhibit, it would bring attention to the student’s father’s very publicly reported criminal past? How would they handle that? This post will not be published. Here’s a 2-minute video about women in Haiti to prompt the journal entry. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdyFedpeoIo25

Monday, Oct. 27 Key concepts: ethics, virtue • • •

Visit to the Haitian American Museum of Chicago, 4651 N. Racine Avenue, www.hamoc.org Post to Moodle forum: Reflections26 on Museum visit.

Guiding Questions: How does the role and work of the artist overlap with and/or distinguish itself from the role and work of the citizen? Wednesday, Oct. 29 Key concepts: ethics, economics, globalization, activism In-class activities: • • • •

Discuss museum visit and Moodle posts. View “Sweatshops in Haiti,” by Elizabeth Schmidt www.youtube. com/watch?v=CLU2yeERWbI 27 View GRITtv: Rebuilding Haiti with Sweatshops—run time 1:47 www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMi7KPV3tvI 28 www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9sBRnVeUuI Are My Hands Clean? Sweet Honey and the Rock, Reagon BMI Songtalk Live at Carnegie Hall FF29

Reading and/or process assignment before next class: •

Take a tour of your closet. Check the labels on your garments and find the country of origin. Take small photos of your clothing and paste the pictures on a world map, showing the country of origin.

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  275 • •

Post to Moodle forum: Your reaction to your wardrobe from your personal closet tour. Where did you locate sweatshops? What is your purchasing responsibility? Prepare questions/agenda for Town Hall or Mock Bench Trial

Monday, Nov. 3 Key concepts: censorship, patriotism, politics In-class activities: •

Meet with Town Hall or Mock Bench Trial team members and create Agenda/Plan for Meeting/Trial (submit to instructor)

Guiding Questions: What does it mean to lead? What is politics? How does art embed itself in public and political discourse? Are people who do graffiti “citizen artists”? How do we decide this? How does dominant ideology influence that decision? Wednesday, Nov. 5 Key concepts: political discourse In-class activity: Town Hall Meeting or Mock Bench Trial •

Write Rationale for Unit Study

Monday, Nov. 10 Key concluding concepts: citizen, artist, cave In-class activity: Debrief about Unit Study and revisit the questions discussed after “Live, Die, kill” Where do you stand? Using space, show your position in the cave. Show PowerPoint on Haitian Vodun Art. Wednesday, Nov. 12—Rationale and Study Due

Requirements Your grade in First-Year Seminar will take into account these principal requirements: 1 Collaboration (14%). Because FYS is a seminar—a class based on discussion—every class session is a collaborative endeavor. You will be learning from your fellow classmates as well as your instructor, and they from you. Therefore, it is imperative that everyone attends every class prepared to participate. If you are absent or unprepared for class, your classmates suffer because your input and perspective are missing. No notes, handouts, or make-up work can compensate for your absence. Any absence will affect your grade and missing more than 5 classes typically results in failing the course. 2 listening, and reflecting outside of class. These “process assignments” are an integral part of preparing for class. Some kind of process ­assignment will be due at every class—2 points per week.

276  Stan West 3 Studies and Rationales (60%). You will create Studies in various ­media, each of which engages with and responds to the questions and discussions of a particular topic of the course. Each piece will be accompanied by a Rationale, a written document in which you explain how your Study engages the learning goals of the course. The Collaboration, Process and Study/Rational Assignments totals 100 points. (Much credit for this lesson plan goes to my FYS colleagues Dr. Diane ­ awrejko, Dr. Kathy Giles, who along with Lisa DiFranza, provided many W of the Unit 2 assignments; and Nic Ruley, Rosalind-Cummings-Yeates and Joan Giroux, who helped me polish this document in Moodle). The Citizen Artist in the “Hands Up/I Can’t Breathe” Era PowerPoint Presentation My Citizen Artist class (#1) began shortly after Ferguson protests erupted. Two of my White students had dads who were police officers including one girl whose pop was a Ferguson cop. Two of my other students were Black males who are routinely stopped by cops (#2) because they “fit the description.” My journalist colleagues concur. The Associated Press voted police shootings of unarmed Blacks to be the biggest story of 2014, according to a poll by editors and news directors. These are facts. This class helped us understand that depending on our “knowledge structures” (#3)—where, when and from whom we get our ideas (facts) from, and how that paints our prism, our world view. For instance, we learned there are some who think Blacks get occasionally stopped and some who think they often get pulled over for driving while Black. They both have legitimate perspectives based on their experiences. We used Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” (#4) as a secondary text for all of our units where the themes of “inside” and “outside” of the cave helped us better understand dominant ideologies, which are often repressive of subordinate ideologies, which are often associated with working class people of color. Plato, along with Afro Italian documentary filmmaker Fred Kuwornu (#5) who visited our class, helped us better understand “inside” and “outside” perspectives on immigration here where President Obama granted a 3-year amnesty to 5 million people in the U.S. while the ­Italian government refuses to grant citizenship to 1 million people of color born there. Our class had as its core text, The Dew Breaker, (#6) a beautifully written lyrical novel, based on a series of short stories, by Haitian-­ American writer Edwidge Danticat about a conflicted sculptor who as adult discovers that her heroic dad from her childhood who inspired her

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  277 latest piece is actually a torturer, which is the Kreyol translation. The last syllable in her French name is silent as is often in the case in most French words. Both Ka and Danticat are immigrants. Danticat, (#7) like her main character “Ka,” is herself a citizen ­artist. On one hand, she arguably creates the most beautiful fiction for a writer of her generation. Yet, like her Dominican counterpart, Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist, Junot Diaz, she protests the Dominican Republic’s harsh immigration policies toward its Haitian residents. Diaz spoke with my students. As you know, both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the island of Hispaniola (#8) where residents there discovered Columbus when he stumbled on the place looking for India, looking for gold, seeking slaves. Haiti was colonized and enslaved by French, but later rebellious slaves (#9) kicked the colonial European power out of the western hemispheric island where many Black residents then and now understand west ­A frican religions transported to the Western hemisphere called Vodun, or what Hollywood has bastardized as “voodoo” giving it a negative zombie-linked aura based on the “knowledge structures” of those media creators doing the naming. Today, while Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere many argue for its size it’s the most artistic. To learn more about its ­artistic prowess, our Citizen Artist class spent quality time at the ­Haitian American Museum of Chicago (#10). Some visited a concert with Haitian and American musicians. Some visited two busloads of rich White ladies from the Field Museum’s ­Haitian Vodun exhibit. Others visited DePaul University students who were also exploring discovering, evaluating, communicating Haitian art’s sense of wonder and excitement by using both western “art for art sake” aesthetics (#11) . . . as well as the more communal, social justice Black aesthetics (#12). Each is good. Each has its own “knowledge structures” & ­ideology as do the police & protesters outside our windows. Sirens soar during class. The real-world sings songs of sorrow in this city founded by a Haitian explorer. To help students better ­understand their own social and ethical responsibilities as it related to textile ­sweatshops in post-earthquake Haiti and other developing countries, we viewed Sweet Honey and the Rock’s “Are My Hands Clean”? (#13) We asked students to look in their own closets and ask the same question. All admitted having dirty palms. We asked Haitian American consulate officials (#14) to help explain the country’s political and economic history. Like most subjects, the answers were complicated. We invited my own Haitian-American musician cousin, Grammy Award-winning composer Jean Paul Bourelly (#15), to share insights

278  Stan West about his fusion of Haitian Vodun music with raucous jazz-rock guitar and spoken word. It helped inspire my students to mix and match forms from the east and the west. We learned from artist and Haitian Vodun art collector Laurie Beasley (#16) about the beauty of island forms. Here she is explaining Haitian Vodun sculpture in French to my son, Amman, who visited our class. We learned a lot from Nicole Smith, whose Nicole Gallery, inspired one student to do a poetic video in the honor of this proud Port-au-Princeborn woman who singlehandedly has catapulted Haitian painting in the western art world’s higher echelons. Here’s Nicole in the middle with another cousin, Dotie to the left and Haitian Consulate official Marie Casimir to the right (#17) who was also at the Haitian Museum with me and students and at the Field Museum’s Vodun exhibit with the same get-fresh-crew. All of the art inspired and informed several our Citizen Art students to do a series of water colors (#18) Marvel at the beauty and simplicity of their work. Another student edited a collective poem where everyone wrote a stanza. Perhaps the most moving of the encounters was how well Citizen ­A rtist students identified with teenage painter Jean Yves Hector (#19) His painting hangs in the Haitian American Museum while he attends his senior year in high school. My students lobbied to get him admitted to Columbia College. And while I did not get admitted to the college because of a six-month visa prevented him from doing so, Jean-Yves did visit Chicago and stay here for a couple six-month excursions. To my students, Jean-Yves was “inside” of Haiti’s cave but needed to come “outside” to a different view here in Chi-town (#20). Meanwhile, the Windy City, like 170 other major U.S. locations and a dozen or so abroad lit up with Black and Blue protests to the increasing incidents of police brutality against Blacks, how it’s covered by the mainstream media and how it has covered up the local and state justice systems, was a teachable moment. Our lively classroom dialogue about the tension between our public selves as citizens and our private selves as artists blurred as four of my students took their art to the streets with documentarian saying “for the first time since I’ve been at Columbia, I’m finally a Citizen Artist!” (return to class shot).

Notes 1 David Kolb, “Introduction to Service-Learning Toolkit,” Cone and Harris, (1984): 5. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 5. 4 Editor Jeffrey Howard, “Matrix 3b and 3rd Learning Strategies and Assessment Methods,” U of Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Edward Ginsberg Center of Community Service. (2001): 42.

Citizen-Artist Curriculum  279 5 Kolb, 5. 6 Howard, 42. 7 Ibid., 42. 8 Ibid., 42. 9 Ibid., 42. 10 Ibid., 42. 11 Ibid., 42. 12 Quoted on her LinkedIn site, Anna B. Creagh, UC Berkeley anthropologist. Feb. 28, 2018: www.linkedin.com/in/anna-b-creagh-771b6750/ 13 Howard, 42 14 Quoted in interview on release of her book, Edwidge, Danticat, The Dew Breaker. 242 pp. Vintage; Reprint edition (March 8, 2005). 15 Howard, 42 16 Danticat. Inside jacket. 17 Plato. “Allegory of the Cave.” Republic, www.math.nus.edu.sg/~matlmc/ Allegory_cave.pdf 18 Henry Louis Gates. “Haiti and the Dominican Republic: An Island ­Divided.” Run Time 51:25 http://video.pbs.org/video/1877436791/ 19 Karen Michel.” Live, Die, Kill” audio documentary. Run time: 14:14 www. thirdcoastfestival.org/library/94-live-die-kill 20 Danticat. “The Book of the Dead, Seven, Water Child,” pp. 3–68. 21 Ibid. “The Book of Miracles, Night Talkers, The Bridal Seamstress,” pp. 69–133. 2 2 Mary Schmidt Campbell, Randy Martin, Artistic Citizenship: A Public Voice for the Arts, Taylor & Francis. 2006. 2 3 Chimamanda Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story.” TED Talk, run time 18:49. www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story 2 4 Danticat. “Monkey Tails, The Funeral Singer,” pp. 139–242. 2 5 Here’s a two-minute video about women in Haiti to prompt the journal ­entry. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdyFedpeoIo 2 6 Visit to the Haitian American Museum of Chicago, 4651 N. Racine Avenue, www.hamoc.org 27 Elizabeth Schmidt. “Sweatshops in Haiti,” video. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CLU2yeERWbI 28 View GRITtv: Rebuilding Haiti with Sweatshops – run time 1:47 www.youtube. com/watch?v=yMi7KPV3tvI 29 www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9sBRnVeUuI Are My Hands Clean? Sweet Honey and the Rock, Reagon BMI Songtalk Live at Carnegie Hall FF.

13 The Exigency of the Floating Homeland and Engaging Postnationalisms in the Classroom Approaches to Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work Maia L. Butler Teaching Create Dangerously is an opportunity to help students ­grapple with the increasingly exigent issue of immigration and the fraught ­nature of home and belonging for black migratory subjects. Danticat performs the construction of the “floating homeland” through the s­ tructure of her memoir and through representations of communities defying ­national borders. Danticat uses this term to describe the Haitian diaspora. Haiti is organized into ten geopolitical departments, and Danticat describes the popular conception of an additional, ideological, imagined h ­ omeland, where Haitian exiles and immigrants imagine they live after becoming a dyaspora, to use the Kreyol term. In the classroom, we can make two entry points into discussing ­Danticat’s postnational imaginary, the floating homeland, to address contemporary immigration issues: we can discuss form, and we can discuss content. Through both of these, Danticat furthers the floating homeland as a response to black immigrants’ marginalization within the geopolitical boundaries of the nation. We can encourage students to consider how the essays within the memoir weave together fragmented experiences—Danticat’s and others’—of navigating belonging within Haiti and its diaspora. We can consider the impact of storytelling and the journalistic mode on the construction of the text, and when considering the content, provide support to students pursuing the cultural and historical contexts of immigration Danticat describes in the essays. The author’s ongoing contributions to The New Yorker pair well with this text; the attention that she brings to issues of immigration and citizenship in both the United States and Haiti underscores the myriad historical and cultural connections between the countries.

The Immigrant Artist at Work  281 Create Dangerously is an exemplary addition to any course devoted to migrations, borderlands, (post- and trans-)nationalisms, or Haitian, Caribbean, or Africana literature and culture. Danticat’s text allows for discussion of contemporary structural inequality and racial marginalization and her argument for floating homelands underscores the difficult work of conceptualizing postnationalism and the exigency of this work at a time when migrations are at the foreground of our present political and popular discourse. This chapter on approaches to teaching the text includes suggestions for further reading on several key concepts; these readings might accompany the text or provide a touchstone for further research projects. This chapter also contains a reading guide I created for students with which to approach the text and focus their reading and thinking before class discussion. The concepts and questions in the reading guide may also serve as large or small group discussion prompts and as touchstones for written response work. Teaching Edwidge Danticat’s memoir, Create Dangerously: The ­Immigrant Artist at Work (2010) is an opportunity to help students grapple with the increasingly exigent issue of immigration and the fraught nature of home and belonging for black migratory subjects. Danticat performs the construction of the “floating homeland” through the structure of her memoir, and through representations of communities defying national borders. Danticat uses this term to describe Haiti’s tenth department, the Haitian diaspora. Haiti is organized into ten geopolitical departments, and the one that Danticat refers to is an ideological, imagined homeland, where Haitian exiles and immigrants imagine they live after becoming a dyaspora, to use the Kreyol term. Danticat writes, “My country, I felt both as an immigrant and artist, was something that was then being called the tenth department. Haiti then had nine geographic departments and the tenth was the floating homeland, the ideological one, which joined all Haitians living outside of Haiti, in the dyaspora.”1 Danticat’s work in this text draws attention to the constructed nature of the nation, and the hopeful possibilities of postnational imaginaries for immigrants, especially those negotiating their belonging in the United States, which she argues may not be as different from “third world” countries as the nation’s collective imagination would like to believe. The multiplicity of experiences she weaves into this memoir, collective in nature and verging on the manifesto, speaks to the fact of immigration as nearly ubiquitous in present times. These issues touch us all; our communities include immigrants and neighbors who were once distant grow ever closer. In the classroom, we can make two broadly conceived entry points into discussing Danticat’s postnational imaginary, the floating homeland, to address contemporary immigration issues: we can discuss form, and we can discuss content. Through her negotiation of both of these, Danticat

282  Maia L. Butler furthers the floating homeland as a response to black immigrants’ marginalization within the geopolitical boundaries of the nation. We can encourage students to consider how the essays within the memoir weave together a multiplicity of fragmented experiences, those of Danticat and others, of navigating belonging within Haiti and its diaspora. We can also consider the ways the text is highly allusive; it presents a panoply of intertextual references that transcend borders of literary canons and nationally organized reading communities. We can consider the impact of storytelling and the journalistic mode on the construction of the text, and when considering the content, we can provide support to students pursuing the cultural and historical contexts of immigration Danticat describes in the essays within this memoir. In this chapter, I will gloss the context of my recent teaching of Create Dangerously and my choices about how I situated the text within the broader course. I discuss the exigency of teaching migration narratives in our cultural moment, nd advance a discussion of the concept of d ­ iaspora as a touchstone for thinking about the floating homeland in Danticat’s work. I have organized this chapter into three sections that each address: an entry point or point of focus for discussion, some ­examples of the discussions that took place in my classroom when I taught this text, and some suggestions for further reading. Excerpts from these critical texts might be introduced during small or large group discussion, might be used as prompts for response papers, or might be a starting point for further research for student research papers. They might also be paired with the primary text and assigned in their entirety for graduate classes. Finally, I reflect on the teaching experience and discuss some ideas that students advanced in their response papers before including, as an a­ ppendix, a reading guide that I created for students to approach the text with. In Lafayette, Louisiana, my classrooms are a diverse makeup of mostly local and often first generation students. My students identify as black, white, mixed race, Cajun, Creole, and some are first- or second-­generation immigrants from Mexico, South America, India, Saudi ­A rabia, and other countries. My black students identify as African American, black of Haitian origin and at times Creole (a regionally rooted identity characterized by a mixedness which can be conceived of including blackness, or not). The colonial and postcolonial histories of Louisiana mean that students here are often aware of shifting national borders and cultural contact over time, but it does not mean that they are used to unpacking the implications of these histories on their daily lived experience and cultural habits of being. For instance, although students are aware that other places don’t “do” Mardi Gras like we do, they may not be aware that other places don’t observe the whole of Holy Week with heightened festivities. Our deeply Catholic ways of living in this area of Louisiana, a result of our particular colonial history, can sometimes be taken for

The Immigrant Artist at Work  283 granted. The semester that I am writing this chapter, I am teaching a sophomore level course in Modern American Literature with a focus on space and place. This means we have been digging into the ways various regional histories have impacted the contemporary borders of a place, the development of the landscape, and the cultures of those who people it. For my students, thinking about Louisiana and Haiti’s shared history, and how the water that separates us is a fluid border in more ways than one is not too much of a leap. Rather, engaging this fact as a touchstone for discussion of Danticat’s work lends itself to deeper thinking activity than they may have previously afforded the topic. A note on my personal politics of location: I’m not a Southerner, and this is usually apparent to my students when I walk into the classroom on the first day and verbally introduce myself. As a black woman, I am accustomed to receiving resistance, from time to time, from s­ tudents in the classroom about making discussions “all about” race and ­gender. I  believe this response is a mix of a reflexive response to my identity, an anticipation of college instructors pushing liberal agendas in the ­classroom, and a lack of classroom discussions in the past that would have given students valuable practice with broaching these considerations. Many students do not have experience reading with cultural ­considerations such as race, class, and gender in mind, and as a result, grow uncomfortable with doing the work out loud in a large group of “mixed company.” I find it imperative to keep our noses close to the text for this reason. I use close reading as an avenue to unpack cultural arguments. Considering the argument Create Dangerously is making (I’m not the one making the argument, though I can and do speak to why I chose the text) leads to fruitful discussions of the nation as a construct, the historical shaping of a region as influenced by race and racism, and allows us to consider a gendered response to the ways the nation ails us. Danticat’s memoir is necessarily reflective, containing her own experiences and memories and also working in those of her family and her nation(s). Her focus ranges from the local to the global; there is something of the collective to this memoir woven together with a range of ­narratives that counter more familiar accounts of Haitian and American histories. Create Dangerously is a highly intertextual work; ­Danticat draws on the thinking of African American authors such as W. E. B. ­DuBois and James Baldwin, of Haitian authors such as Jean J. ­Dominique and ­Marie Vieux Chauvet, incorporates films, relays historical accounts, and recounts popular cultural myths. In this way, it is multivocal and formally complex, and it is also a manifesto of sorts. The text argues the act of writing and reading the Haitian dyaspora dispels borders and undermines nationalism, firmly situating itself in contemporary postcolonial discussions framing home as diaspora in which transnational subjects live and move, write and read. Danticat writes about and from various hemispheric American locations in this memoir, suggesting the

284  Maia L. Butler journeying nature of diasporic subjectivity and paralleling this narrative journey through the structure and form of the text. The opening ­chapter, “Create Dangerously,” addresses readers and writers creating (at times unlikely) communities and redrawing lines of literary influences; Papa Doc Duvalier’s dictatorship disrupted a generation of writers and artists’ work, but Danticat shows that creativity persisted nevertheless. “I Am Not a Journalist” recounts the assassination of a friend and popular Haitian journalist, Jean Dominique, and contains the bulk of Danticat’s definition work of the floating homeland. The chapter “Daughters of Memory” describes the entwined histories of the United States and Haiti, through attention to the Haitian Revolution and the U.S. occupation, and broaches the function of a Haitian collective memory—and forgetting. The chapters “Bicentennial,” which refers to the commemoration of Haiti’s independence and establishment as the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, and “Acheiropoietos” also address histories and historiography, while “Another Country” and “Flying Home” focus on the relationships between the United States and Haiti as exemplified by responses to disasters such as Katrina and Jeanne, and examine ­communities local, hemispheric, and global. Politics of location, of representation, and of exclusion are addressed throughout this text, as Danticat explores the ways that artists do and can work to create communities that challenge the confines of national boundaries. Create Dangerously, developed out of Danticat’s lecture at The Toni Morrison Lecture Series, is personal to Danticat as a Haitian American author. It should be personal to us in increasingly diverse classrooms, and is deeply political in what it asks of artists and of scholars of literature and art: to participate in imaginative activities that challenge the nationalist paradigms shaping our canons and our daily lived experiences. Create Dangerously is an exemplary addition to any course devoted to migrations, borderlands, (trans- or post-)nationalisms, or Haitian, Caribbean, or Africana literature and culture. Teaching this text in the context of an American Literature syllabus and in light of our location, I took the approach of highlighting Louisiana’s geographical closeness to Haiti and our shared histories and cultures is evident in the architecture, languages, and ways of knowing and being of the people who live here. In the years that I have been teaching in Southwest Louisiana, I’ve come to believe the remarks that many people make about how we are, culturally and geographically the northernmost point of the ­Caribbean. I have grown accustomed to mindfully debunking attitudes about Southern exceptionalism prevalent in television, film, and literature in the form of stereotypical representations and to push beyond discourse about racism as a purely Southern phenomenon. This helps to make the slide to prefacing our readings with the same caution; we cannot assume that the representation the author has constructed is representative of his or her cultural or racial background. In a survey course, where we skim

The Immigrant Artist at Work  285 across a reading schedule of authors who are diverse in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, regional geography, and political ideas, I find it important to repeatedly underscore the fact that each author’s work does not carry the burden of being representative of others who share his or her background. In fact, Danticat expresses this in relation to her representation of Sophie’s sexual trauma in Breath, Eyes, Memory. She crafted a letter to accompany the second edition of that novel assuring her audience that Sophie’s situation is not meant to be taken to represent that of all young Haitian women. This letter is included in Create Dangerously’s “Walk Straight” chapter. 2 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted talk on the same subject can be a valuable classroom resource; “The Danger of a Single Story” warns against forming stereotypical ideas about people based on a singular narrative taken to be representative of the whole.3 This video might be shown in the first week of class to set the tone for the semester, or to accompany any readings, including Danticat’s. This excerpt from my course description should illuminate the ways that I have framed Create Dangerously in with our other readings: In this course, we will explore representations of place and space in modern American literature. American space has been defined, redefined, and contested from its beginnings; this fact informed Mary Louise Pratt’s conception of the “contact zone,” where Europeans encountered Native Americans who had populated the continent long before their arrival. The creation of colonial, regional, continental, and transnational borders and borderlands regions followed as Westward expansion gained steam and later the U.S. government annexed various territories. American literature is a ­reflection of the many cultures, histories, and people who live and move within and across the United States and its territories, and this semester, we will encounter fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction, including life w ­ riting and essays addressing contested space. We will consider spaces that range from the domestic, the private, to ­public city and natural locations, and places that range from local, to regional, to transnational, from the imagined to the real. We will think about places that are officially recognized and those that are ­“underground” and read old spaces in new ways. We will consider the future spaces that are in the making now. We have also read from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), a foundational text that theorizes the hybridity of the mestiza identity and challenges the Mexican American borders; selections from Brenda Marie Osbey’s volume of poetry All Saints (1997), which draws attention to the palimpsest of histories of New Orleans, spiritual, architectural, and national; the Fukú introduction to Junot Díaz’s The Brief

286  Maia L. Butler Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao (2007), which provides a counter ­narrative to the “discovery” of the “New World”; and an essay by Jamila Osman called “A Map of Lost Things: On Family, Grief, and the Meaning of Home,” which addresses the constructed nature of maps and memory in light of her family experiences in the Somalian diaspora.4 In light of the survey nature of the course, I chose three chapters of Create Dangerously to read: Chapter 1, “Create Dangerously;” Chapter 8, “Another Country;” and Chapter 9, “Flying Home.” This chapter will conclude with an appendix containing the reading guide that I designed for my students. For a 200 level survey course of mostly non-English majors, I found it beneficial to create a guide that would prime them for reading for the issues that our course takes up. I conceptualize American literature as inherently multicultural and transnational. Literatures of migration are a mainstay of the canon, and as such deserve our attention in the classroom. Create Dangerously represents migrations, conceptions of diaspora, and challenges national borders, and occupies a space at the nexus of (African) American and diasporic literary canons. It might be fruitful to preface the work of the semester with excerpts from foundational texts addressing the ubiquity of migration narratives. Stuart Hall situates, in “Subjects in History: Making Diasporic Identities,” the increasingly central discussions of cultural (racial, ethnic) difference as a product of the moment of world migrations, the greatest and most constitutive cultural fact of the late modern world. The planned and unplanned, forces and unforced m ­ ovements of peoples, taking up hundreds of years later after that first forced migration of slavery with which modernity began. . . . they are ­moving, moving, moving from their settled homes to somewhere else. . . . They’re moving like we have done before into the narratives, through which they will have to tell their history of migration, loss displacement, redefining themselves, of home, of another home, of the question of where is home, of all the images and metaphors of a perpetually unsettled people.5 Homi K. Bhabha, when discussing the prevalence of unhomeliness in literatures of migration in The Location of Culture, begs the question whether, “Where, once, the transmission of national traditions was the major theme of a world literature, perhaps we can now suggest that transnational histories of migrants, the colonized, or political r­ efugees— these border and frontier conditions—may be the terrain of a world literature.”6 Students will likely have seen images on the news of refugees crossing borders, or attempting to, in the United States, Africa and the Middle East and will no doubt be aware of anti-immigrant rhetoric, propelled by Donald Trump and those who share his views, resurging

The Immigrant Artist at Work  287 in contemporary politics. If we approach literature as a reflection of cultural moments, the timeliness of migration narratives such as Danticat’s is clear. The question must come up in class: “What is at stake with the ­postnational argument that Create Dangerously makes?” It will likely take some time to get there; I started the first day of discussion of this text with the question “What is diaspora?” and drew a crude globe on the blackboard, marking paths of dispersal from Africa to, well, almost everywhere. We started with foundational ideas such as this, and scaffolded our way to unpacking implications. There is emotional, political, and material value in the conception of floating homelands. The world is still watching to learn the fate of hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descents who have been rendered stateless by the country’s citizenship ruling, commonly referred to as La Sentencia, and are facing deportation from the Dominican Republic to a Haiti that many have never visited. La Sentencia refers to the September 2013 Constitutional Tribunal decision in the Dominican Republic that rendered hundreds of thousands of already marginalized Haitians living in the country stateless. Some resources on this ruling include Allyn Gaestel’s news article, “Stateless in the Dominican Republic: Residents Stripped of Citizenship” and Ella Mohony and Rachel Nolan’s Jacobin piece, “The Roots of La Sentencia” for more information about the ruling.7 Mohony and Nolan write: Anti-Haitian sentiment waxes and wanes in the Dominican ­Republic. La Sentencia was the most obvious expression of a recent crest in anti-Haitian feeling there. It was a decision of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court, on the case of Juliana Deguis Pierre. Juliana was born in the Dominican Republic to undocumented Haitian parents. The DR had a policy of jus soli, just like the United States. Because Juliana was born in the DR, she was a citizen. But when she went to a government office to request an ID called a cédula, Juliana was turned down because of her ­Haitian name and face. So she sued the government for discrimination. The court decided against her and expanded a loophole in Dominican law that denies citizenship to the children of those “in transit.” This legal provision was meant to apply to children of tourists and diplomats, but in September 2013 La Sentencia expanded it to cover the children of all undocumented Haitians. The Sentence was retroactive to 1929 and made an estimated 210,000 people stateless. This is as if the United States took away the citizenship of anyone born to undocumented Dominican parents in the US starting in 1929.8 For many Haitians, the Dominican Republic is their birthplace, and for many, their long term home. For these stateless subjects of the African

288  Maia L. Butler Diaspora, whose race complicates their national identity, a reconsideration of the way we currently construct and arbitrarily reconstruct the nature of home and belonging couldn’t be more pressing.

Thinking Through Diaspora, Conceptualizing the Floating Homeland I mentioned above opening discussion of this text with a gloss on diaspora, inviting students to offer their own definitions and for us to tease out various conceptions of diaspora. The concept of the floating homeland is grounded in the idea of diaspora. Edwidge Danticat writes, in the third chapter of her memoir, “I am Not a Journalist,” Danticat addresses the assassination of a friend, Jean Dominique, and reflects on the impact that their conversations about citizenship and exile continue to have on her conception of home. This chapter is the continuation of an essay she began to write on the morning of his death, upon hearing the news. She recalls a conversation in which she and Dominique discussed the state of their country, which was beset by political unrest, which had previously driven him to live in exile in New York. She told Dominique, before his death, “My country . . . is one of uncertainty. When I say ‘my country’ to some Haitians, they think I mean the United States. When I say ‘my country’ to some Americans, they think of Haiti,” revealing her struggle with reconstructing a sense of home after living in dyaspora.9 A discussion of the term and its multiple definitions may help ground thinking about dispersal and how rigid borders pose problems for people spread across them. A diaspora is a construct just like the nation is; it can be geographically defined and it can be performative, and the imagined nature of diaspora is suggested by Danticat’s use of the term “ideological” when she refers to this homeland. The early drafting of “I am Not a Journalist” is marked by Danticat’s struggle to explain the nuanced meaning of the Kreyol term dyaspora, which is used to identify the Haitian diaspora in particular, and which, she details through examples of her own experiences, can be used as a pejorative to alienate or ­marginalize one who lives outside of the geographical boundaries of Haiti, to mark them as “foreign.”10 Danticat continues with her recollection of Dominique’s words, “The Dyaspora are people with both their feet planted in both worlds . . . There’s no need to be ashamed of that. There are more than a million of you. You all are not alone.”11 Out of Danticat’s uneasy straddling of two worlds, that of Haiti, and that of dyaspora, in her case her other home of the United States, comes her embrace of a floating homeland, the tenth department in which she and the rest of the Haitian “exiles, émigrés, refugees, migrants, nomads, ­immigrants, naturalized citizens, half-generation, first-generation, American, ­Haitian, Haitian American, men, women, and children” reside.12 Danticat’s conception of a floating homeland is constructed

The Immigrant Artist at Work  289 throughout this text. She shares this cultural work with other immigrant artists the title of the memoir refers to, who undertake the work to imaginatively construct a postnational space of collectivity and belonging. In class, we discussed the above string of descriptors for people who move across borders. My students are highly aware of nativist political rhetoric about immigrants, and also vaguely aware of refugees fleeing war and terrorist violence in other regions of the world. But who are usually described as immigrants, and why aren’t they refugees? Unpacking some of the terms that Danticat uses in the passage to describe Haitians gave students an exercise in thinking about the histories and connotations of the words that we use to describe migratory subjects; the word choices are not natural and are not apolitical. For a passage like this, I ask students to make use of their smartphones and laptops to Google the terms and share and compare definitions with each other out loud as a whole group. Then I ask students if and where and when they have heard any of these terms before. What is an émigré, and why aren’t we more aware of the use of that word in popular discourse? Who gets naturalized, and how? Do all countries have a naturalization process? One ­student brought up the use of the term “illegal” to describe ­immigrants and said they had seen some consciousness raising posts on Facebook that argue people cannot be illegal. Discussing what it means to be ­undocumented and to be on a path to naturalization allows us to understand how long the process takes, the expenses involved, the b ­ arriers to entry, and to learn that not all countries establish the same rules laws about the process. It is my goal that during this exercise that it becomes clear many of the soundbites that we hear on the radio and see on the news with regards to immigrants, then, deserve nuanced unpacking. At a point in our history where there is virtually no recourse for ­reterritorialization of geopolitical boundaries defined by colonial-era mapping, Danticat explores new ways of affiliation and identification that resist these boundaries by conceptualizing an Africana migratory subjectivity that will engender belonging in communities unbounded by national borders and scripts. The floating homeland is tenuously grounded in a hemispheric notion of the Americas, and inflected by what Sandra Paquet notes, in Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation, to be the “transnational affiliations and ­hybrid cosmopolitan experiences that tend to blur, if not erase the boundaries of the nation-state in readings and representations of the literary culture of the [Caribbean] region.”13 Her thinking follows Alejandro Benítez-Rojo’s thinking in The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and The Postmodern Perspective, in which he discusses the fragmentary, heterogeneous, and syncretic nature of the Caribbean region, resulting in a fluid conception of the boundaries of nations and homes, and negotiations and movements, cultural and material, across and within those boundaries.14 Danticat undertakes this imaginative process, informed

290  Maia L. Butler by a cosmopolitan, fluid conception of national boundaries, by rejecting or reshaping narratives of origins and national mythologies. In the process of deconstructing and reconstructing conceptions of home and homelands, her aim is to create a space in which postcolonial subjects of the Haitian dyaspora can belong, even as they move through and reside in geopolitical spaces that would marginalize or exclude them. The transnational migrations in this text, real and imagined, are journeys to a construction of home that is ideological and unbounded. Danticat illuminates this ideological tenth department in Create ­Dangerously, and its potential for Haitians living in dyaspora, and I find it generative to consider the immense potential the floating homeland has for thinking about the literature of the broader African diaspora and the lived experiences of those it represents. It is difficult for students who don’t have practice with these ideas to push aside creeping thoughts like, “borders are ‘just the way things are;’ obviously we must need them!” I was so proud of my Sophomore-level class for grappling with pretty theoretical material. Postnationalism is a concept I was introduced to in my graduate program. In order to drive home the idea that borders are arbitrarily constructed and can and have changed over time, I asked the class which borders they know of that have changed at some point. Responses that a couple of students offered were the Louisiana territory and a question of whether Israel wasn’t involved in some “thing” happening at the Gaza Strip. Yes, the colonial changes to the shape of Louisiana are something that most of us in the class are aware of from high school history, and I tied the sale of the territory to the financial problems that arose for France after the enslaved Africans on Haiti successfully freed themselves and began their republic. I told my students I am not an expert on the history of the borderlands contentions in Israel, but that yes, we know that they have long existed. I also mentioned Westward expansion in the United States, and all of the cartography born out of that venture, and the partition between India and Pakistan. The class was spending some time mulling over the fact that borders are not a “given,” were vocalizing examples of this and discussing factors that impact the shaping and revising of borderlands regions. However, when the due date for the next reading response rolled around, I noted that four out of thirty-two students tackled Danticat’s text. Most students chose to write about other readings. Perhaps some found it less risky to talk out the imaginative work that Danticat asks us to do, than to put thoughts down in a more formal medium. Perhaps students were hesitant to address some of her discussion of marginalization based on race and class, which I discuss below, either in an effort to avoid meeting them head on or as a passive act of resistance to those ideas. At any rate, there are a couple of supplemental reading pieces that address borders in Danticat’s work that students might find illuminating. The works of two critics of Caribbean literature who expound on the significance of diaspora and the unstable nature of borders and nations

The Immigrant Artist at Work  291 for conceptualizing Haitian identity may prove fruitful supplementary material for students. Elizabeth Duchanaud, in “Finding Inspiration in Chaos,” discusses the potential of the liminal spaces that Edwidge ­Danticat’s Create Dangerously portrays, noting that, “life for the immigrant artist is a never-ending negotiation of borders and identities; and for Danticat, these liminal spaces are as concrete as they are i­ntellectual and emotional,” continuing on to argue that because of “such border ­crossing, this dyasporatic individual, floating in an ever changing third space, or ‘tenth department,’ becomes a perpetual adventurer and ­creator forging new routes and relations.”15 Duchanaud observes that the migratory subject, through the negotiation of tenuous belonging ­between or outside of domestic or national borders, creates new ways to find routes home, and to identify themselves in relation to it. In similar fashion, J. Michael Dash focuses on borders in “The Pregnant Widow: Negating Frontiers in Danticat’s Create Dangerously,” tracing the implications of post-dictatorship Haitian writing from the national sphere to the international, he argues: “Creating dangerously” can mean practicing a new ungrounded ­poetics for Haitian writing in which national and ethnic difference gives way to a collective, borderless identity that is increasingly ­hybrid and unstable. . . . Instead of seeing Haitian writing as the product of a uniquely Haitian space, the challenge is to inscribe the Haitian experience as more global and cosmopolitan in ­n ature. ­Rethinking Haitian identity as profoundly diasporic becomes ­­crucial to all writing in post-Duvalierist Haiti.16 His reference to ungrounded poetics is in response to a passage from Create Dangerously, in which Danticat expounds on the renewed ­exigence of the meaning of a Kreyol phrase: tè glise. Danticat writes: Haitians like to tell each other that Haiti is tè glise, slippery ground. Even under the best of circumstances, the country can be stable one moment and crumbling the next. Haiti has never been more slippery ground than after this earthquake, with bodies littering the streets, entire communities buried in rubble, homes pancaked to dust . . . Has two hundred and six years of existence finally reached its abyss? we wonder. But now even the ground is no more.17 If we consider, as Duchanaud and Dash urge us to, the impact that ­crossing borders has on the Haitian dyaspora, the conceptualization of the self as a transnational subject and the reconceptualization of home and homeland as an outcropping of that, Danticat’s treatment of the phrase slippery ground suddenly addresses more than the soil of the land. This concept tè glise illuminates the instability of the construct of

292  Maia L. Butler the nation and of the arbitrariness of borderlands and questions their relevance for contemporary migratory subjects. Other few readings to help students think through constructions of diaspora might be helpful. For upper level or graduate level courses, ­students might read these works in full and consider them alongside the text. For lower level undergraduate courses, students might be given ­important passages from these readings on a handout and close read and discuss these in class, perhaps breaking into discussion groups to relate the ideas of the scholars to specific passages in the text. These readings and discussions could inform or continue into a reading response assignment. Paul T. Zeleza argues, in “Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic,” that the concept of diaspora: simultaneously refers to a process, a condition, a space and a ­discourse: the continuous process by which a diaspora is made, ­unmade, and remade, the changing conditions in which it lives and expresses itself, the places where it is moulded and imagined, and the contentious ways in which it is studied and discussed. . . . ­Diaspora is simultaneously a state of being and a process of becoming, a kind of voyage that encompasses the possibility of never arriving or ­returning, a navigation of multiple belongings. It is a mode of ­naming, remembering, living and feeling group identity moulded out of experiences, positionings, struggles and imaginings of the past and present, and at times the unpredictable future, which are shared across the boundaries of space that frame “indigenous” identities in the contested and constructed locations of “there” and “here” and the passages and points in between.18 Zeleza highlights the continuous process of construction in this ­definition; the fabrication of a diaspora identity is undertaken in light of experiences, living, and feeling. The here and there are the nation of origin and the host nation, but the points in between are as important to consider. It is in those liminal spaces that identity is reconstituted in relation to home, as migratory subjectivity is continually constructed from a multiplicity of positionalities. Zeleza observes that diasporic subjects are always reconstituting the betweenness of “there” and “here”, and we can think about the way that the floating homeland is an imaginary where this can be done. James Clifford, in the article “Diasporas,” traces the evolution of the term, observing that, “Diasporas are caught up with and defined against (1) the norms of nation states and (2) indigenous, and especially autochthonus, claims by ‘tribal’ peoples”19 and arguing that diaspora also ­operates as a “signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement, but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical contexts of displacement.”20 His use of the phrase “diasporic

The Immigrant Artist at Work  293 consciousness” moves away from essentialist definitions of the African diaspora as grounded in an ethnic affiliation, a racialized heritage that is tied to a place of origin, and toward a consideration of the awareness of, or participation in, experiences of displacement and rearticulations of identity. He observes that diaspora consciousness is “about feeling global.”21 Clifford’s concern about diaspora discourse and the focus on dispersal, which presupposes a center, is the possibility that attention to origins would retain a primacy in the discourse at a point when we’re moving away from mythical conceptions of origins that are often bound up in the nation. He argues that, in terms of migration and exile, “dwelling here assumes a solidarity and connection to there, but there is not necessarily a single place or an exclusivist nation.”22 If the focus, in our conception of diaspora, remains on origin as a (national) home or point of return, “it may devalue what [he calls] the lateral axes of diaspora. These decentered, partially overlapping networks of communication, travel, trade, and kinship connecting the several communities of a transnational people.”23 These lateral axes are the spaces in between here and there—where one perhaps gets there and realizes that home is inaccessible. The host nation may circumscribe one’s belonging, forcing immigrants to forge communities through more creative ways of affiliation. Danticat’s conception of the floating homeland is one such attempt to imaginatively construct, in a similar vein of thinking as Clifford’s lateral axes, a community of people in diaspora. The floating homeland is a home loosened from the construct of the nation.

Form Follows Function: The Migrating, Collective Memoir Along with thinking through the way that Danticat’s concept of the floating homeland is situated in existing thinking about diaspora and home, we can also approach the text with an eye to genre and form. This text is a memoir, it includes multiple the essays within that container, and it includes storytelling (Danticat has been dubbed Haiti’s Storyteller) in a somewhat journalistic mode. Much ink has been spilled on the testimonio, or testimony, included in Danticat’s oeuvre, as she includes stories of others in with her own. This text in particular verges on the manifesto. Danticat writes: Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them. . . . Somewhere, if not now, then maybe years in the future, we may also save someone’s life, because they have given us a passport, making us honorary citizens of their culture. 24

294  Maia L. Butler There is an imperative to create imaginaries such as the floating ­homeland; the potential for communities that cross borders resides there. Further, his text is also a highly allusive text in the way of literary intertextuality that crosses canonical borders. The complexity and hybridity of the text deserves attention; in that way the formal construction of the text reflects its content. The introspective and reflective genre of the memoir is ripe for ­Edwidge Danticat’s explorations of the idea of home, the relationship between a conception of home and the role that writing plays in its ­construction, and the impact that exile has on literary representations of home. Danticat is concerned in this work with the central ­importance of home as a construction that informs both the lived experiences and the literary production of authors navigating transnational migrations in the ­Haitian dyaspora. For those moving within the dyaspora ­conditions of exile greatly impact the construction of home and the creation of literature. Reading for home in diaspora in the genre of memoir also provides insight into the ways that authors articulate their home within a literary lineage, a sense of belonging within a canonical tradition. The politics of canonicity is perhaps similar to those of belonging in a national community, especially so for postcolonial authors challenging so many of the national romances of colonialist narratives that precede them. It is no coincidence that while Danticat imagines new ways to construct a sense of home, her own migratory subjectivity in relation to it, and the precariousness of belonging in dyaspora, she also addresses her literary forebears, at times challenging canonical boundaries as well as geographical ones. She explores in this work new ways of affiliation and identification that resist being determined by colonial mapping, including a conceptualization of the self as belonging to communities that aren’t grounded within national boundaries and girded by national mythologies, colonial in origin. The transnational migrations in this text, real and imagined, are journeys to a construction of home that is ideological and unbounded. Danticat’s work urges us to consider creative transnationalism; Danticat’s conception of a floating homeland that necessitates rethinking the constructions of home, nationality, and belonging. Danticat’s memoir performs the deeply politico-cultural work of ­deconstructing and reconstructing, unfixing and reimagining of a conception of home in which black women as migratory subjects can belong to a diasporic community, and in so doing, also challenges the textual boundaries of the memoir genre. I borrow the concept of cultural work from Jane Tompkins, who argues in Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction that literary texts perform this function; they can be seen not as works of art embodying enduring themes in complex forms, but as attempts to redefine the social order. . . . they offer powerful

The Immigrant Artist at Work  295 examples of the way a culture thinks about itself, articulating and proposing solutions for the problems that shape a particular historical moment. 25 Danticat’s departure from a more traditionally chronological and ­teleological arrangement of a memoir, the commitment to gathering a multiplicity of reflections that meet around the conceptions of home, community, and nation, is at once a reflection of the hybrid and fluctuating identity of the author and also an attempt to create a form that fits her content, her work to imagine and advance the possibility of a home, in both ideological and literary spheres, that floats above the increasingly problematic geopolitical boundaries. Create Dangerously is organized as a series of essays. In these essays, Danticat often gestures to her location at the time of composition, and one is even crafted in the air. The patchwork of essays that make up the tapestry of her memoir are themselves traveling. As such, the work is fragmentary and meandering, as much as it is reflective and analytical, seeming to parallel the migratory nature of diasporic subjectivity. At work in Create Dangerously is the negotiation and performance of a migratory identity that shifts and develops in relation to migrations and experiences in new geographical and imagined home spaces. If “homes are always provisional,” as Edward Said writes in “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile,” they are like identity in that they are not fixed but continually mediated and negotiated in light of transnational migrations. 26 For Danticat, the marked departure from the traditional form of the memoir is as much related to the project of collecting and representing her own lived experiences impacted by migrations and a sense of home in flux, as well as addressing the global and national histories that press on the present attempts to re-envision new conceptions of home and homelands and ways to belong in and between them. One student’s reading response addressed form in the way of considering intertextuality in Danticat’s work; especially her “Flying Home” chapter. The airplane is a means of getting to different places quickly, and Danticat takes us to different texts quickly through her allusions. You will note that in the appended reading guide at the end of this chapter, allusions, allusiveness, and intertextuality are concepts that I asked students to look up while or before reading and to think about how they appear in her work. Intertextuality is a concept we had previously broached in class discussion, as highly intertextual artifice is common in postmodern texts. The student observed that Danticat’s inclusion of news footage in the “Another Country” chapter, both in the quotes from anchors and the video footage description, coupled with quoted material from Time Magazine worked to recreate an assault on multiple senses of the disaster footage the author was reliving on the page. The use of intertextuality brings us, the readers, right there.

296  Maia L. Butler There are some additional readings that might be of interest for classroom discussion groups or for further research on the matter of formal innovation in black women’s writing. In Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic, Sandra Pinto urges critics of Africana women’s writing to consider formal innovation as an exploration of difference that disorders representations of black women as some closed, stable, knowable subjectivity, arguing that the reading and critique of this work is difficult as a result, and necessitates letting go of the “romance” of enjoyable reading communities.27 Pinto writes that diaspora is characterized by the difficulty of establishing an order among things, noting that nothing is easy to create, define, fix, and that this fact can challenge our recognition of and interpretation of historical and social realities, the known and unknown, ways of knowing and being, which are continuously shifting. 28 She calls for an investigation of structure and form as black women writers’ method of disordering past and present conceptions of diaspora, suggesting that “a critical engagement with aesthetics, as not just a form but the form of politics” will help us to consider how gender and race operate through form and through the complex relationship between language and the order(s) of diaspora. 29 Pinto’s observance follows the same vein of Carol Boyce Davies’, who observes in Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the ­Subject, that, “If we see Black women’s subjectivity as a migratory ­subjectivity existing in multiple locations, then we can see how their work, their presences traverse all of the geographical/national boundaries instituted to keep our dislocations in place.”30 The work of setting identities and lives in order is a result of negotiations with self, place, and nation that occur as a result of migrations for diasporic subjects. Davies elaborates on a diasporic conception of Black women’s writing, ­theorizing the migrations of black women writers’ texts as a “slipperiness, elsewhereness,” which signifies a refusal to be dominated or held in place by colonial structures. She argues that the phrase, Migratory subjects suggests that Black women/’s writing cannot be located and framed in terms of one specific place, but exist/s in myriad places and times . . . In the same way as diaspora assumes expansiveness and elsewhereness, migrations of the Black female subject pursue the path of movement outside the terms of dominant discourses.31 Searching for and creating home outside the framework of nationalism is an endeavor black women writers have been engaged in as an imperative, Imperative, and that endeavor continues in Danticat’s continues this project in Create Dangerously. In much the way that Davies acknowledges the traveling nature of the work of black women writers, I see

The Immigrant Artist at Work  297 migrations at work in this memoir on two levels: Danticat’s discursive representation of migrations and the journeying structure of the narratives emblematic of Danticat’s postnational conception of the floating homeland in practice on the page. A helpful text for considering Create Dangerously in context of the memoir genre is Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Their definition of the term memoir describes various practices and genres of life writing, offers reflections on a period of time, rather than chronicling a lifetime of experiences, and reveals, through self-reflexivity, the significance of the author’s understanding of the writing process and of their own subjectivity.32 For Danticat’s memoir, the nature of the relationship between the writing process and form and the author’s subjectivity is informed by their reflections about constructing home in diaspora. Just as Davies recognizes the complexity of black women’s transnational subjectivities, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson observe, “autobiographical occasions [are] dynamic sites for the performance of identities that become constitutive of subjectivity,” noting that postmodern theory offers to the study of life writing a conception of the author’s identity that is not fixed or ­essentialized, but “reiterated through cultural norms and discourses, and thus remain provisional and unstable.”33 Further, Smith and ­Watson note the importance of considering the ways that authors’ positionality, “how speaking subjects take up, inhabit, and speak through certain discourses of identity that are culturally salient and available to them at a particular historical moment,” reveals the process at play in the deconstruction and reconstruction of their identities observing that, “positionality and the geographics of identity are especially complex in autobiographical narratives of de/colonization, immigration, displacement, and exile.”34 The memoir undertakes the project of challenging grand colonial and national narratives, historical and contemporary, through Danticat’s engagement with discourses of exile and migration, displacement, and hybridity. The cultural work that this memoir performs, the imagination of floating homelands, necessitates a reconstruction of conceptions of home and increasingly complex and fluid notions of belonging. This construction of a conception of home that is not tied to the idea of nation is carried out in the very personal genre of the memoir, but this memoir also gestures toward the collective, reaches to include the communities of Haitian artists and Haitians in general living in dyaspora.

The Immediacy of Immigration Issues, the Exigency of the Floating Homeland as Community I mentioned above that a student responded to how Danticat’s use of intertextuality brought the disaster footage home for her, a Louisianan who was here during Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. When I

298  Maia L. Butler assign texts that reference the storm, I tend to give students a heads up that they will be reading it and we will be discussing it. Much of our local population carries trauma from the devastation of the storm and lingering anger about the response debacle. The semester before teaching this text, we had historic devastating flooding in the Acadiana and Baton Rouge areas, and old feelings became fresh. Students are attuned to feeling that the rest of the country doesn’t know what is happening here, or really understand or even care when the water is rising and the help is slow to come. In the chapter of Create Dangerously entitled “Another Country,” Danticat recalls viewing the televised news of three major events: Tropical Storm Jeanne’s 2004 landfall in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina’s disastrous aftermath in 2005, and the terrorist attacks of ­September 11, 2001. She writes: I couldn’t help but think of the Bush administration’s initial response to the Haitian victims of Tropical Storm Jeanne the year before ­Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans: sixty thousand dollars in aid and the repatriation of Haitian refugees from the United States back to the devastated region even before the waters had subsided. New Orleans’ horrific tragedy had been foreshadowed in America’s so-called backyard.35 She recounts reliving the trauma of watching the Haitian tropical storm and reliving it through the viewing of the response to the category five hurricane that made landfall across several states on the Gulf of Mexico, what could be argued to be the North Caribbean, viewing the similar scenes of devastation and listening to the news pundits argue that what was happening in New Orleans usually happens in places like Haiti, but not here.36 The “other America,” then, refers to areas that appear to be “third world” within the first world country, and which many Americans forget exists until a highly televised mess of a political response to a disaster such as Katrina reveals the extent of impoverished and marginalized conditions in which our own citizens are living, and the lack of aid and services they receive when crisis impacts their already tenuous living ­situations. Danticat observes: For the poor and outcast everywhere dwell within their own ­country, where more often than not they must fend for themselves. That’s why one can so easily become a refugee within one’s own ­borders—because one’s perceived usefulness and precarious citizenship are ­always in question, whether in Haiti or in that other America, the one where people have no flood insurance. . . . The poor and ­displaces are indeed sometimes better off in places far from their impoverished homes. But in the end, must poverty also force us to live deprived of homestead, birthplace, history, memory?37

The Immigrant Artist at Work  299 She connects the living conditions of New Orleanians and Haitians, as the news repeatedly did during the coverage of the two storms she discusses, especially through the imagery showing communities of black people marginalized and in distress within their own countries. Years of intertwined political and institutional histories of these two countries were highlighted during the public discourse about these two storms, and Danticat shows that the similarities between their aftermath crosses national borders and muddies the waters between the political and the private, bringing transnational politics to bear on the domestic living situations of those stranded and those displaced. It took a long while for students to respond to my prodding about why Danticat argues that the video footage of both storms reveals the connections between the two countries. We had discussed at great length, when reading Brenda Marie Osbey’s All Saints poems, the Africanist presence in Haiti and New Orleans. We discussed the long history of the presence of Africans in this Caribbean region and the cosmologies, languages, architecture, and cultural practices, ways of being, that they brought with them here. Danitcat, though, is making an argument about structural inequality and racist exclusion. I intuited that this discussion felt, for students, political in an overt way, though Osbey’s poems surely make a political argument about the thoroughly African nature of New Orleans. In our area, high school teachers get parent complaints for broaching subjects such as this in the classroom. As I mentioned above, students often don’t get a lot of practices for thinking through concepts such as the workings of racism in communities. I have had students ­report that to discuss race feels impolite, it can be dangerous to word ideas or questions clumsily, and that keeping dialogues about race and racism open can be interpreted as “bringing up old stuff.” Some of the class discussion migrated toward viewing Danticat’s connection of these two locations as an example of natural disasters being a great equalizer. One written response focused on social class with no mention of race even though Danticat explicitly connected the two in this chapter. In our region, the narrative about natural disasters is that people pull together without regard to differences. The semester before, the ­“Cajun Navy” made national news; during the flooding, when the National Guard was overwhelmed, neighbors hopped in their boats and helped evacuate their own neighborhoods, rescuing families and pets. Danticat asks us to question the reasoning of why things “just are the way they are” when news pulls the veil back on disaster recovery and counters the heartwarming stories we tell ourselves as communities in crisis. Master and counter narratives are something we have discussed throughout the semester, and I made a point to connect the counter narrative in this chapter to the “what’s at stake” question that I had introduced when beginning our work on this text. My goal was to allow students to scaffold their thinking about the passages we encountered each day toward

300  Maia L. Butler answering the questions: why make an argument for floating homelands, who benefits from borders, and who is disempowered, marginalized in their shadow? It is important to note, also, that Danticat has written in The New Yorker about police violence against Haitians in New York, effectively connecting patterns of state violence across borders and linking it with the impetus of Black Lives Matter discourse and movement through ­connections she draws between the beating of Abner Louima and the killing of Michael Brown. Danticat’s piece “Enough is Enough” opens with her words, “I have seen police brutality up close. Both in Haiti, where I was born during a ruthless dictatorship, and in New York, where I migrated to a working-class, predominantly African-American and Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn at the age of twelve.”38 With her connections between Haiti and New Orleans and Haiti and New York, we can see how Danticat draws attention to race- and nationality-based marginalization. In this way, Create Dangerously hints at the exigency of her work to loosen home from its oft constructed ties to the nation; from the idea that home is the origin or that home is what the transnation becomes after migration. Danticat’s memoir advances a ­conception of the floating homeland as a community for those in dyaspora under conditions of exile and exclusion. Discussions of the Katrina response and of police brutality in the classroom usually lead to students asking about other examples of these occurrences (“are they really that common?”) and to me prodding us toward thinking about these events as moments on a long historical trajectory, and not as isolated instances. Thinking about systems and patterns at work drives home the structural nature of racial inequality. Rather than thinking about individual hearts and minds, we can see the system that Danticat and others are challenging. This brings the focus back to the why of her argument, the work to ensure that black people have a place to feel belonging and establish home within communities. The imaginative work of floating homelands can be thought of as a first step for creating inclusive communities for black immigrants. Danticat advances the notion that reading communities can, and perhaps should, serve as a model for the floating homeland. Her attention to reading communities provides another level on which to consider the impact of globalization on diasporic communities. She imagines that authors and their readership form global communities, implicitly undermining the importance of the nation’s role in a conception of diasporic identity that, for Haitians, is often marked by exilic journeying and fluctuating relationships with home. Danticat addresses the way the constructions of origins and nationalism impact her identity as a Haitian dyaspora, and her commitment to the ideological floating homeland is an indictment of the failure of the nation to offer belonging and home. She pushes for a reconsideration of the way we conceptualize borders at a time when postcolonial conceptions of community reveal the

The Immigrant Artist at Work  301 tension between essentialist ideas of diaspora and the actuality of the ­heterogeneous experiences of those living within it. Ultimately, ­Create Dangerously calls for a consideration of the role that reading and w ­ riting the Haitian, and perhaps by extension the African, diaspora play in the continuous reconstruction of home by transnational subjects. Danticat makes an argument against the idea of who an immigrant is being tied to geographical mobility, writing, there is probably no such thing as an immigrant artist in this globalized age, when Algeria and Haiti and even ancient Greece and Egypt are only a virtual visit away. Even without globalization, the writer bound to the reader, under diabolic, or even joyful, circumstances inevitably becomes a loyal citizen of the country of his readers.39 She suggests that home in another location and even in another time is accessible through visiting the internet, a location full of discursive constructions of places on the map. Danticat imagines that authors and their readership form global communities, implicitly undermining the importance of “origins” in a consideration of diasporic identity. So, what is at stake in arguing for a postnational imaginary such as the floating homeland? During class discussion, students offered ­responses that focused on consciousness raising, dismantling inequality, building inclusive communities, and allowing for the exposure to art and literature from other places. Some students raised concerns about what a world without borders would be like. How can we get along with peoples of different ideologies and values if it doesn’t seem to be going well already? I didn’t get very far into discussing the concept of cosmopolitanism before a student in the back wondered aloud who would be in charge if the world had no borders, and another student exclaimed in a panicked voice, “Not Trump?!” prompting a ripple of audible gasps around the room. A written response later imagined that without borders to keep things in order, a class of alien robots could assume control of communities. Encouraging imaginative work can have wildly differing results, and openly acknowledging the difficulty of the praxis is important, as well as the reasons for pushing to do the work. It is hard and valuable work to think about new ways of organizing ourselves. A ­ nother written response shared that the student’s biggest take-away from this reading is that art has the capacity to inform and persuade, circling back to the manifesto quality of Danticat’s work. Through works such as Create Dangerously we can get a glimpse into others’ experiences and imagine new ways of connecting across borders. It is my sincere hope that after grappling with the constructed nature of borders and the concept of postnationalism, making connections between ours and others’ experiences, students will approach culture and news with nuanced thinking about the millions of people on the move with whom we share our world.

302  Maia L. Butler

Notes 1 Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (New York: Vantage Books, 2010), 49. At the present time, there are ten geopolitical departments in Haiti, so the floating homeland that Danticat describes in Create Dangerously would now be the 11th department. 2 Ibid., 33. 3 Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Ted: Ideas Worth Spreading, recorded July 2009, accessed July 1, 2017, www.ted.com/ talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story 4 Jamila Osman, “A Map of Lost Things: On Family, Grief, and the Meaning of Home,” Catapult, Jan. 2017, accessed Jan. 20, 2017, https://catapult.co/ stories/a-map-of-lost-things 5 Stuart Hall, “Subjects in History: Making Diasporic Identities,” in The House that Race Built: Original Essays by Toni Morrison, Angela Y. ­Davis, Cornel West, and Others on Black Americans and Politics in America ­Today, ed. Wahneema Lubiano (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 295–296. 6 Homi K. Bhabba, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 17. 7 Allyn Gaestel, “Stateless in the Dominican Republic: Residents Stripped of Citizenship,” Al Jazeera, published May 2014, accessed Feb. 5, 2017, http:// america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/4/stateless-in-thedominicanrepublicresidentsstrippedofcitizenship.html; Ella Mohony and Rachel Nolan, “The Roots of La Sentencia,” Jacobin, published June 20, 2015, accessed Feb. 15, 2017, www. jacobinmag.com/2015/06/dominican-republic-haiti-immigration-harpers/ 8 Mohony and Nolan, “The Roots of La Sentencia,” n.p. 9 Danticat, Create Dangerously, 49. 10 Ibid., 50. 11 Ibid., 51. 12 Ibid. 13 Sandra Pouchet Paquet, Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation (Madison: Wisconsin UP, 2002), 5. 14 Antonio Benitez-Rojo, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the ­Postmodern Perspective (Durham: Duke UP, 1997), 1. 15 Elizabeth Duchanaud, “Finding Inspiration in Chaos,” sx salon, accessed April 2011, accessed June 1, 2016. http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/ finding-inspiration-chaos, 1. 16 J. Michael Dash, “The Pregnant Widow: Negating Frontiers in Danticat’s Create Dangerously.” sx salon, published April 2011, accessed June 1, 2016, http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/pregnant-widow-negating-­frontiersdanticats-create-dangerously, 1, italics mine. 17 Danticat, Create Dangerously, 157–158. 18 Paul Timbaye Zeleza, “Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic,” African Affairs 104 (2005), 35–68, 41. 19 James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994), ­302–338, 307. 20 Ibid., 308. 21 Ibid., 312. 2 2 Ibid., 322. 3 Ibid., 321–322. 2 2 4 Danticat, Create Dangerously, 10. 2 5 Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790–1860 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985), xii. 26 Edward Said, “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile,” Harper’s Magazine (September 1985), 49–55, 54.

The Immigrant Artist at Work  303 27 Sandra Pinto, Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic (New York: New York UP, 2013), 9. 28 Ibid., 7. 29 Ibid., 3. 30 Carol Boyce Davies, Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (New York: Routledge, 1994), 4. 31 Ibid., 36–37. 32 Sidonie Smith and Julie Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for ­Interpreting Life Narratives, 2nd edition (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010), 3–4. 33 Ibid., 214. 34 Ibid., 215. 35 Danticat, Create Dangerously, 108. 36 Ibid., 109. 37 Ibid., 111. 38 Edwidge Danticat, “Enough Is Enough,” The New Yorker, published November 26, 2014, accessed November 14, 2016, www.newyorker.com/culture/­culturalcomment/michael-brown-ferguson-abner-louima-police-brutality, n.p. 39 Danticat, Create Dangerously, 15.

Bibliography Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. (2009). “The Danger of a Single Story.” Ted: Ideas Worth Spreadin, www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_ of_a_single_story. Anzaldua, Gloria. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Benitez-Rojo, Antonio. (1997). The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Clifford, James. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology, 9 (3), 302–338. Danticat, Edwidge. (1994). Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage. ———. (2010). Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. ———. (2014). “Enough Is Enough.” The New Yorker, accessed Nov. 26, ­accessed Nov. 14, 2016, www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/ michael-brown-ferguson-abner-louima-police-brutality. Dash, J. Michael. (2011). “The Pregnant Widow: Negating Frontiers in Danticat’s Create Dangerously.” sx salon, published April, accessed June 1, 2016, http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/pregnant-widow-negating-frontiersdanticats-create-dangerously. Davies, Carol Boyce. (1994). Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. New York: Routledge. Diaz, Junot. (2007). The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao. New York: ­R iverhead Books. Duchanaud, Elizabeth. (2011). “Finding Inspiration in Chaos.” sx salon,­ published April, accessed June 1, 2016, http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/ discussions/finding-inspiration-chaos. Gaestel, Allyn. (2014). “Stateless in the Dominican Republic: Residents Stripped of Citizenship.” Al Jazeera, published May 4, accessed February 5, 2017,

304  Maia L. Butler http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/4/stateless-in-thedominicanrepublicresidentsstrippedofcitizenship.html. Hall, Stuart. (1998). “Subjects in History: Making Diasporic Identities.” In The House that Race Built: Original Essays by Toni Morrison, Angela Y. ­Davis, Cornel West, and Others on Black Americans and Politics in America T ­ oday, edited by Wahneema Lubiano, 289–299. New York: Vintage Books. Mohony, Ella and Rachel Nolan. (2015). “The Roots of La Sentencia.” ­Jacobin, published June 20, accessed February 15, 2017, www.jacobinmag. com/2015/06/dominican-republic-haiti-immigration-harpers/. Osbey, Brenda Marie. (1997). All Saints. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1997. Osman, Jamila. (2017). “A Map of Lost Things: On Family, Grief, and the Meaning of Home.” Catapult, published January 9, accessed January 20, 2017, https://catapult.co/stories/a-map-of-lost-things. Paquet, Sandra Pouchet. (2002). Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation. Madison: Wisconsin UP. Pinto, Sandra. (2013). Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist ­Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic. New York: New York UP. Said, Edward. (1984). “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile.” Harper’s Magazine, September: 49–55. Smith, Sidonie and Julie Watson. (2010). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, 2nd edition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Tompkins, Jane. (1985). Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790–1860. Oxford: Oxford UP. Zeleza, Paul Timbaye. (2005). Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic. African Affairs, 104, 35–68.

Appendix

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat

Reading Guide Chapter 1: “Create Dangerously” (1–20) Concepts/Issues to consider: Genre: Memoir (nonfiction) Form: Essays Allusions and allusiveness Intertextuality Literary history/tradition Family ancestry Reading and writing as political Connections (historical, political, geographical) between the United States and Haiti Nationalism and borders Citizenship in different forms Questions to guide reading: 1 This is a memoir, but whose memories are being represented in this essay? 2 How does Danticat represent the various ways that memories/stories are passed down in this essay? 3 What role does literature and the act of reading play in this essay? 4 What literary allusions does Danticat make in this chapter, and why do you think she chose these? 5 How does Danticat represent the connection between the United States and Haiti in this essay? 6 What are the various forms of citizenship that are represented in this essay? 7 How do literary communities resist borders/nationalisms, according to Danticat? 8 Does Danticat believe that artists have responsibilities about what sort of art to create?

306  Maia L. Butler Chapter 8: “Another Country” (107–113) Concepts/Issues to consider: Epigraph Nature vs. human made boundaries The news and national attitudes revealed Form: Essays, fragmentation and connection Questions to guide reading: 1 What is the purpose of an epigraph, what is the significance of this one? 2 How do you see Danticat picking up threads continued from C ­ hapter 1, and also foreshadowing to Chapter 9? 3 Why choose the hurricane as the organizing principle for this essay? 4 What is the significance of the quotations around “third world” on p. 109? 5 How does Danticat represent the connection between the United States and Haiti in this essay? 6 Danticat features the national televised news and print publications again in this essay. What seems to be their function, 1) for us as ­citizens, and 2) within the text of these chapters? 7 Can national events change our idea of citizenship? What does ­author Isabel Allende say about this, and what do her words reveal about the relationship between citizenship and belonging? Chapter 9: “Flying Home” (pp. 115–135) Concepts/Issues to consider: Allusions and allusiveness Intertextuality U.S. place in a global community Flying as metaphor and motif in literature Questions to guide reading: 1 In the first chapter, reading groups are considered communities. What group is used as an example of a community here, and how is her portrayal of this group similar to that of the reading groups she previously discussed? 2 What effect does Danticat seem to building up with her vignettes of airline travel that open this chapter? 3 How does Danticat represent the connection between the United States and several other nations in this essay? 4 How does Danticat represent the significance of flying in art and literature? 5 How are solitude and alienation represented in this and previous chapters? Does this seem to be a hallmark of an artist’s life? Is there a tension between solitude and community for artists, or for us all?

14 Creating Cultural Sensitivity in the Writing Classroom with Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously Camila Alvarez Nothing is as dangerous as writing. It can topple regimes and raise mindfulness. It can be ethically and transparently used or can be misappropriated and laden with falsehoods and propaganda. Yet, incoming college students often have a hard time grasping the power that is within their reach with writing—especially when it comes to environmental action. It is 2017 and the world teeters on the edge of simultaneous climate collapse and moral failure. Yet, very little is being addressed by accessible media or being presented to the average citizen. This leaves a vacuum of knowledge that becomes the moral imperative of scholars to fill. As instructors of introductory college writing courses, we have an opportunity to help college-level students learn how to use writing to enact their citizenship in a global community. Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously can create a dialogue for our students between writing and global citizenship. The artist’s life work is in many ways to bear witness to the world and what humanity is doing with it and to it—to find a truth that public spaces may strive to hide. The question at the heart of Danticat’s writing focuses on what people in power do to marginalized peoples and with marginalized things. What better way to do this than by using writing as a form of witnessing? One of the greatest concerns in the world for environmental activists is how to address the gulf between common beliefs and the scientific truth of global warming. It seems as if people are so much more apt to work against common care of each other and the planet in favor of the neoliberal principles of capitalism. Focusing on the marginalized and the marginalizing, this essay will include theorists such as Collins, Harraway, and Hesse-Biber with Text and Technology researchers: Ulmer, Hayles, Selfe, and Street—among others. Collins discussion of intersectionality motivates this research—especially in the ways that multiple identities can be manufactured through writing in online environments and the ways that those personalities create a distancing from modes of humane behavior. As college educators, we much begin to combat these failures of truth and emphasize caring relationships in writing. This leads me to my research question: how might a teacher use Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously to teach environmental writing in the college classroom as an activist practice?

308  Camila Alvarez

Introduction Create Dangerously invites the reader into an ocean of experiences both foreign and familiar. Edwidge Danticat chose twelve chapters and a postscript excerpted from her published works in order to reveal the truths behind being an immigrant and an artist—both a witness and a voice. This book navigates between blurry boundaries imposed on immigrants by the lands and people that they call home. Danticat provides rich themes for students to discover and connect with their own lives. While each chapter’s story flows through Haitian, American, immigrant, female, and artistic lenses, all of the stories are connected by universal human experiences. A close look at Create Dangerously suggests several dominant themes per chapter and potential questions for reflexive and academic student writing. “Chapter 1: The Immigrant Artist at Work” reveals the history of Haiti’s despotic government and the people’s reliance on literature for comfort and resistance.1 For Danticat, the 1964 assassination of Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin by “Papa Doc,” became a creation myth incipient to her artistic endeavors, “All artists, writers among them, have several stories—one might call them creation myths—that haunt and obsess them.”2 The assassination and Haitian covert literacy practices drive Danticat’s authorship, “The immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world.”3 Themes for Chapter 1 may identify witnessing, activism, and the difficulty of being an immigrant artist. Possible student prompts include (1) What is your creation myth? (2) What impact does the government have on people? (3) What impact does tragedy in one country have on people in other places? These questions can be used to begin discussion posts or create research questions for essay writing. “Chapter 2: Walk Straight” focuses on visiting an ancestral place where a mother has buried her daughter and will eventually be buried with her: It is the summer of 1999 and I have come to revisit these mountains from which our family has sprung and which have released us to different types of migrations. I have come to see just how far we have trekked in less than two generations. . . . I have come to see an aunt whom I have seen only once before in my life, when I was eight years old, because she has literally refused to come down from the mountain.4 Danticat explores the complexities of being an author and a representative of a culture in “Walk Straight;” “[a]nguished by my own sense of guilt, I often reply feebly that in writing what I do, I exploit no one more than myself. Besides, what is the alternative for me or anyone else who might not dare to offend? Self-censorship? Silence?”5 Themes for

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  309 Chapter 2 include education, ancestry, connection with the land, fiction and truth, distance, sexuality, shame, and death. Some potential student questions may ask: 1. Write a letter to a character in a story as Danticat does with Sophie. 2. Or, write a letter to an ancestor. (3.) How do our ancestors influence who we are today? Danticat continues to explore the complexities of being an author and an activist in “Chapter 3: I Am Not a Journalist.” This chapter focuses on the journalist Jean Dominique who was assassinated, and his wife Michèle who ends up taking up his position as a journalist in an attempt to find the murderers of her husband. Jean Dominique was thought of “as heroically invincible. After all, he had survived the Duvalier dictatorship, during which his older brother Philippe had been murdered.”6 Themes for Chapter 3 may be the journalist as witness and activist, legends, immigrants, truth, hope, being guapa, feminism, and living in two worlds. Student prompts include (1) What does it feel like to be hybrid? (2) What can be done about corruption? (3) Identify a situation in a country that needs to be addressed. What can you do to call attention to it? “Chapter 4: Daughters of Memory” continues the history of Haiti, emigrant artists, and female authors, focusing on Danticat’s first reading of female Haitian authors: Marie Vieux-Chauvet and Jan J. Dominique; “[b] eing new to a place where schoolmates felt free to call me a dirty Haitian or Frenchie or boat person, I hungered for words from home.”7 Memory plays an important role within the Hatian literary world and culture: Forgetting is a constant fear in any writer’s life. For the immigrant writer, far from home, memory becomes an even deeper abyss. It is as if we had been forced to step under the notorious forgetting trees, the sabliyes, that our slave ancestors were told would remove their past from their heads and dull their desire to return home. . . . But what happens when we cannot tell our own stories, when our memories have temporarily abandoned us? What is left is longing for something we are not even sure we ever had but are certain we will never experience again.8 Themes within this chapter include oppression of voice, memory, abuse of power, female authors, and the silencing of truth. Some student prompts may ask (1) What author and book have shaped how you think about the world? Or Film? Or Game? Or Show? (2) Are there things that we have forgotten as a culture that need to be remembered? Focusing on the violent injustice suffered by Alèrte Bélance and her subsequent transformative survival, “Chapter 5: I Speak Out” brings in themes of violence, oppression, witnessing, speaking, transformation, civil disobedience, strength, womanhood, and hope. Student writing prompts include (1) Has any experience by a family member changed your understanding of the world? (2) What experience has dramatically impacted your life?

310  Camila Alvarez “Chapter 6: The Other Side of the Water” tells the story of Danticat’s cousin—a deceased undocumented immigrant—who died from AIDS and reveals the difficulties of getting his body home to Haiti: [F]araway family members realize that they are discovering—or ­recovering—in death fragments of a life that had swirled in hidden stories. In Haiti the same expression, lòt bò dlo, the other side of the water, can be used to denote the eternal afterlife as well as an émigré’s eventual destination . . . “A person does not belong to a place until someone is dead under the ground.”9 Danticat evocatively asks, “Were we still aliens in death…our corpses unwanted visitors still?”10 Danticat also struggles with telling this story and honoring her aunt’s wishes for privacy. The struggle between the private and the public sphere is a running theme throughout the book. The artist uses all of their life experience to create and in many ways speak when others are silenced and to witness when others may be forced to look away. Themes discuss death, immigration, documentations, homeland, family, obligations to family and to witnessing, and distance. Student prompts can ask (1) In what ways does distance create loss? (2) Has someone’s death changed how you thought of them? Bridging major historical events in Haiti’s government and culture, Danticat selected her “Chapter 7: Bicentennial” to do more than catalogue events. Instead, she creates a chapter filled with magical realities and crying for freedom with many voices: The real marvelous, which we have come to know as magic realism, lives and thrives in past and present Haiti, just as Haiti’s revolution does. The real marvelous is in the extraordinary and the mundane, the beautiful and the repulsive, the spoken and the unspoken. It is in the enslaved African princes who believed they could fly and knew  the paths of the clouds and the language of the forests but could no longer recognize themselves in the so-called New World. It is in the elaborate vèvès, or cornmeal drawings, sketched in the soil at Vodou ceremonies to draw attention from the gods. It is in the thunderous response from gods such as Ogoun, the god of war, who speak in the hearts of men and women who, in spite of their slim odds, accept nothing less than total freedom.11 Danticat explains, “[t]he new republic, Haiti, had gained its independence through a bloody twelve-year slave uprising, the only time in the history of the world that bond servants successfully overthrew their masters and formed their own state.”12 Themes in this chapter include freedom, magical realism, symbols, legends, Vodou, and history. Several student prompts may be (1) How do revolutionary heroes impact a

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  311 country’s sense of self? (2) How does religion impact a country? (3) How does a country honor its past, and how does that past impact its future? “Chapter 8: Another Country” discusses the disasters and tragedies that have impacted Haiti and America. It also speaks to the American belief that such tragedies cannot occur in America. As Danticat observes, the suffering in New Orleans after Katrina “‘day by day left people everywhere stunned and angry and in ever greater pain,’ echoed Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs. ‘These things happened in Haiti, they said, but not here.’”13 Themes for this section reveal poverty, natural disasters, American illusions, government aid, and people helping people. This section is especially helpful for environmental issues. Student prompts may include (1) How do natural disasters impact a nation? (2) Why is global warming a hidden or ignored issue? (3) What is the impact of terrorism today? (4) How is poverty treated? Focusing on travel, a fear of flying, and moments of human connection and kindness on flights, Danticat uses the metaphor of flying to speak about imagination, art, and other types of flight in “Chapter 9: Flying Home.” She also looks at the work of Michael Richards a bronze and stone sculptor. Danticat says that, “[h]e was the sculptor of private spaces and public gardens, except his gardens were purposely filled with tar and ashes.”14 Richard’s work considered unrecognized and alienated men to explore his own feelings as an immigrant, an artist, and a black man.15 Themes can include flight, terror, art, death, connection, community, and imagination. Student prompts may be (1) What is a moment of human kindness that you have witnessed? What was its impact? (2) How do events of terrorism impact us? (3) Why is it important to remember past heroes? In “Chapter 10: Welcoming Ghosts,” Danticat explores the influences of vodou and Haiti on artists: Hector Hyppolite and Basquiat. In exploring the influences of Basquiat’s work in comparison to Hyppolite’s, Danticat explains: Like many other culturally mixed, first- or second-generation Americans, [Basquiat’s] collectivity was fluid. He was symbiotic and syncretic in the same way that Hector Hyppolite’s Vodou paintings were, mixing European Catholicism and African religious rites and adapting them to a world made new by the artist’s vision or, in both Hyppolite’s and Basquiat’s case, visions.16 Hyppolite saw his artistry as a “gift from the lwas and carefully tried to balance its demands and rewards.”17 Themes may be art, hybridity, mysticism, ghosts, religion, and influences of the past. Some potential student prompts include (1) What paintings do you feel connected to? Why? (2) How do symbols show up in art? What does that do to the meaning behind the art? What does that do to the symbols? (3) How can art represent a culture or people?

312  Camila Alvarez Looking at photography and life, “Chapter 11: Acheiropoietos” focuses on the photographer Daniel Morel and his record of Haiti’s destruction, beauty, and people. Danticat explains the mythos of the eye in Haitian culture, “Often in Haiti, the eyes of murder victims are gouged out by their murderers because it is believed that even after death, the last image a person sees remains imprinted on his or her cornea, as clearly as a photograph.”18 The themes in this chapter review life, death, art as memory, image as representation, time, history, beauty, and destruction. Student prompts may include (1) Do you believe that acheiropoietos or icons made by god are similar to art made by man? If so, in what ways? (2) Is all art inspired by the supernatural or muses? “Chapter 12: Our Guernica” focuses on the horrors of the earthquake in Haiti, the burial of the dead, and the beliefs of the living. Danticat poignantly shares a phone conversation with her cousin, “‘Don’t cry,’ she says. ‘That’s life.’ ‘No, it’s not life,’ I say. ‘Or it shouldn’t be.’ ‘It is,’ she insists. ‘That’s what it is. And life, like death, lasts only yon ti moman.’ Only a little while.”19 Reflecting on her experience during the aftermath of the earthquake, Danticat says, Haitians like to tell each other that Haiti is tè glise, slippery ground. Even under the best of circumstances, the country can be stable one moment and crumbling the next. . . . With thousands hastily and superficially buried or lodged in miles and miles of rubble, I said, Haiti is no longer just slippery ground, but also sacred ground. 20 Themes for this chapter include death, natural disasters, hope, laughter, burial, and belief. Student prompts may be (1) If you were to pick a natural disaster to create art about, what would you pick? What kind of art would you create? (2) What are the effects of disasters on the mental health of a nation? (3) How does personal loss during a natural disaster contrast with the national experience of loss? Danticat’s last chapter serves to link all the chapters with the common metaphor of water. Each chapter runs into each other pooling into the oceans that both separate and unite the immigrant’s homes. In “Postscript: A Year and a Day,” Danticat pulls the chapters together into the water metaphor by connecting to the Vodou tradition “it is believed by some that the souls of the newly dead slip into rivers and streams and remain there, under the water, for a year and a day. Then, lured by ritual prayer and song, the souls emerge from the water and the spirits are reborn.”21 Potential themes for this chapter are death, religious practice, ancestors, heritage, culture, and traditions. Some student prompts may be (1) What religious traditions anchor you to your ancestors? (2) Are there any religious traditions in other belief systems than your own that you would like to celebrate?

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  313 Theoretical Background It seems as if people are so much more apt to work against common care of each other and our planet in favor of the neoliberal principles of capitalism. The Feminist Ethics of Care “emphasizes responsibility and caring relationships, rather than more abstract ideas about rights, justice, virtues or outcomes.”22 The broad topic for this chapter is writing curriculum in the college classroom. The writing prompts used specifically focus on personal connections to others, nature, culture, and nations using Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously. The research question becomes: How might a teacher use Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously to teach college writing in the classroom as an activist and connecting practice? Intersectionality potentially illuminates connections between marginalized people and environments, with the concept of femininity. The marginalization of people and the marginalization of the environment connect in unexpected ways under neoliberal principles—with higher marginalization connecting to feminizations of both repressed peoples and the environment. This coincides with higher rates of gender bias directly correlating with an acceptance of environmental damage and reduction of environmental protections. In essence, Global Warming and ecological destruction are acceptable losses within a financially focused culture—this destruction becomes negligible as it indirectly impacts financial incomes. The focus on finances and the excessive objectification of the planet and people create a culture of disregard in the West. In order to combat this disregard in the classroom, educators need to create spaces where students can find the other within themselves. Using a book like Create Dangerously in the classroom allows educators to create those spaces for discovery in student writing. This topic is intensely feminist and womanist. It focuses on the interstices of power, marginalization, socio-cultural influence, and ecology. While ecofeminist theory plays a dominant role in the theoretical background, a major focus for this chapter’s pedagogical practices will be the blurring of lines and transnational connections—a simultaneous celebration of difference centered on the communal experiences and value of living. Robert Yagleski argues in Writing as a Way of Being that traditional methods of teaching writing supports Cartesian duality and dominant hegemonic beliefs that are destroying the planet.23 This works with the feminist ethnographic attempt to resist hegemonic influences. Christine Mason Sutherland’s suggests that autobiographical content, “though inappropriate in traditional scholarship, is quite consistent with feminist practice, so no apologies are necessary.”24 Karen Keifer-Boyd’s art based research deliberately blurs lines for art and makes it more activist and therefore feminist. Art-research includes several practices: (1) Research before the construction of an art project, (2) Research into an artist’s process, (3) The process of art as a way to understand, (4) Art itself as knowledge, and (5) A/r/tography. A/r/tography is one of the more

314  Camila Alvarez interesting concepts in this article as it includes life as art or including one’s life into the art.25 Danticat uses both these feminist practices—the autobiographical and art connection—in her work Create Dangerously. There is much to be said about this concept as human beings are complex and interconnected with each other and different aspects of their lives often merge or blend including their professional work, their academic or scholarly interests, and their personal lives. The complex interconnection of human lives often makes people less likely to critically investigate concepts that might seem familiar or well understood. Leila ChouKroune introduces the video interview of academic, critic, poet, and artist Prof. Dr. Sukrita Paul Kumar by asking the questions: “What’s a woman? What’s feminism? What’s gender?” Referring to Dr. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and quoting Simone de Beauvoir’s “One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman,” ChouKroune situates Kumar’s work within the feminist framework. 26 She uses these questions to create an othering or an outside perspective. This othering allows the questioning of well-known concepts. For example, the well-known aphorism “whoever discovered the water, it wasn’t the fish” suggests that it is difficult to observe the truth of the world around you when you are immersed within it. This in many ways lies at the heart of global problems like prejudice and environmental disaster. Thus, the feminist mixture of art, writing, and personal contexts that Danticat uses may also provide options for cultural connections in academic pedagogy. Nollaig Frost and Frauke Elichaoff discuss the dangers of “one essential truth” based off of shared “cultural, societal, and class distinctions.”27 If we, as feminist researchers, keep in mind our preferred lenses and reflexively recognize the biases that we bring into our research that create our lenses, then we are able to appreciate differences rather than group people into the basic social constructs of gender, race, etc. Reflexivity therefore can address the allure of one “Truth.” The problematizing element with “Truth” with a capital T is its centrality to patriarchal thought. Scientific reasoning is based off the “Truth” or search for the real—often at the exclusion of the marginalized. I believe that we can find a “truth” with the understanding that it is a shared “truth” that requires multiple perspectives to legitimize and may change with the addition of new knowledge. Scientific research focuses on the positivistic attitudes of a universal “Truth” and emotion-free research. Scientifically objective research was to only rely upon what the senses observed and must be replicable. The replicability of objective research became its driving force. It must replicate for it to be valid, and it must replicate with other subjects. This helped to create the separation between the known and the knower—the experienced and the experiencer. It is still the dominant theory today in science fields.28 Feminist Empiricism deviated from these attitudes by exploring a gender-based experience of reality, which conflicted with positivistic

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  315 attitudes in valuing emotion and multiple lived experiences or “truths.” Initially, feminist researchers merely sought to include women within positivistic research but eventually moved away from the positivistic view of objectivity toward a “feminist objectivity” where perspectives create multiple truths form lived experiences or “situated knowledges.”29 Danticat also creates works that promote a lived experience by using both autobiographical and biographical essays in Create Dangerously’s chapters. A more unique aspect of feminist theory is a drive for social justice and social change. This is also in direct opposition of a positivistic objective goal where the scientist or observer attempts to place little to no value judgment on the goals of the scientific experiment. The dichotomy of subjective vs objective is considered false. And, Cartesian duality is also called into question when a plurality of “truths” exists. As Naples and Gur state: [I]t is the very assumption that an objectivity which is free of social context can be achieved that both privileges a certain way of conducting research— primarily through a positivist, empirical frame reliant on replicability and a Cartesian split between knower and known— and discredits other ways of learning and knowing, which may rely upon or conjure networks of relationship, community knowledges, and subjective experiences.30 This idea directly addresses power structures dominant in research and in Western hegemonies. Strong objectivity becomes a dominant driver in feminist standpoint theory in that the lives of subjects are taken into account, but it is thought that these truths can be separated from the knower. It is the interconnection of single experience in multiple social contexts that situates this view as feminist. The idea of intersectionality motivates my research—especially in the ways that multiple identities can be manufactured through writing in online environments and the ways that those personalities create a distancing from modes of humane behavior. The themes of activism and humane behavior can be found in all of Danticat’s chapters. Mary Queen focuses on transnational work and criticizes a trend in American Feminism saying, “we shift our own vulnerability to and culpability in the violence of U.S. patriarchal and capitalist practices onto the backs of two-thirds world women, and claim agency and self-­ representation for ourselves while denying this same capacity to them.”31 Queen continues with The complex relationship between digital technology and transnational feminist activism must become a central point of inquiry for feminist rhetoricians because Internet technology is profoundly implicated in globalized capitalist practices and integral to the resistance of local, regional, and transnational social movements to these practices.32

316  Camila Alvarez As Sumi Madhok and Shirin M. Rai work toward an analysis of a state-sponsored initiative in Northwest India—the Women’s Development Programme—the authors label the outcomes at catastrophic to both the women and the programs involved.33 Madhok and Rai critique the feminist concept of autonomy by stating, From a transnationalist feminist perspective, not only is this construction of the autonomous subject a gendered construction, it is also an ethnocentric one. It does not travel well and leads to serious misdescriptions and misrecognition of gendered sociality in non-Western contexts.34 This is a highly significant concept and one that especially pertains to my work on Danticat as a transnational author and environmental destruction as a transnational problem. The autonomous subject indeed does not travel well and many critics of Western thought believe that it may be at the heart of the problem. Yagleski focuses on this problem as engendered through Western writing practices. He suggests that academic writing practice promotes the attitudes that have endangered the world through its continuous consumption and disposal of limited resources, consequently the global warming crisis is intrinsically related to writing, reading, and education.35 Current definitions of writing and schooling are characterized by disconnection from each other and the earth. The disconnection naturally follows from Cartesian duality. Duality focuses on difference and separation: if I am distinct from other, then I am individual from the earth and everyone and everything on it; therefore, I am separate. In 1958, Hannah Arendt also discussed this separation stating that we are different from animals because we can express distinctions: an “othering.”36 It is this distinction which Yagleski blames for the environmental dangers that we face. He argues that the more connected we feel through writing, the more connection we find with each other and the earth. Yagleski states that truth is created from a connected introspection — the kind of introspection that writing provides. His focus is on the pedagogy of experiential writing. This allows writing to become part of the larger experience of inquiry into self, the world, and its interconnection. The purpose of this writing is simply to write—“for it opens up possibilities for reflection and awareness.”37 Yagleski’s experiential focus would allow the exploration of the transformative power of writing by creating a pedagogy of community rather than separation—one with the goals of exploration and transformation. Moving away from writing as a product to the momentary experience of writing allows writing about writing, about readings, about concerns, about experiences, about moments of truth in the natural, about destruction. It is this type of writing that engenders connection.

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  317 In order to assist in the creation of this connection, it is imperative that scholars and educators begin considering the student as an entire person. The concept of a whole person needs to include the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of people. Karen Keifer-Boyd and Carol P. Christ discuss an entire person as inclusive of differentiated genders, religious beliefs, and artistic sensibilities. Christ includes literature within her concept of art and insists that all of these literary works have some dimension of religious or spiritual content. 38 In addition to the idea behind treating a student as a whole person with a whole research theory, students need the practice of thinking of themselves within the context of their entirety. As Barbara A. Cleary and Mary C. Whittemore found in their classrooms, gender studies allow “the students’ increased awareness of the language of gender . . . and their awareness of gender roles-even gender dominance-in class discussions. They had, for the most part, not noticed the subtleties of this expression previously.”39 Even within scholarly research and writing the idea of unification and cooperation among scholars is a very feminist concept. According to Christine Mason Sutherland, “feminist research . . . is typically not competitive but cooperative, in a number of many ways.”40 Feminist research becomes a fully rhetorical process by including pathos, ethos, and logos. Not only does feminist research work to cooperatively build on other scholars’ works, it rejects the notion that innovative ideas occur in singular isolation. This suggests that the same idea may spontaneously occur in multiple minds. Feminism should be at the forefront of this movement toward unification and acceptance of difference. This requires that the Feminist scholarly approach be holistic, as well. However, this is not always the case within Feminist camps. This history of feminist inquiry may be somewhat disconcerting when looked at through the ideals of unification and cooperation especially in connection to environmental issues. Ecofeminism has multiple definitions ranging from activist action to women’s earth wisdom.41 There is little agreement among the feminist community as to “what it is, what its import is, and what its future is.”42 One of the dangers of ecofeminist theory is that the feminine connection to the earth is overstressed and begins to rely on Cartesian dualities. This neglects the human connection to the earth in favor of false dichotomies and marginalizing Western thought. Additional problems include the distancing from spiritualty and the complete absorption into the spiritual that seems to polarize ecofeminists.43 Balance and acceptance are key components toward a holistic feminist theory. Previously, I mentioned the three aspects of a person—physical, mental, and spiritual. Some people might presume that I have left out the emotional aspect of human experience. This type of thinking circles back to the Cartesian dualities so embedded in Western philosophical thought. Scientifically, we now know that the brain feels emotions from the body’s reactions. It would be more accurate to state that the body reacts and the

318  Camila Alvarez brain interprets emotions. There is no separation. Spirituality is also a process of the brain and body connection. The spirit lives in both. We are a whole creature. As such, we need to push for a whole feminist theory— one that embodies a connection to all life. Methodology This work functions as a pedagogical feminist practice. This chapter is also predominantly a feminist ethnography; ethnographers gain their knowledge by ‘using the self’ as much as possible. Ethnography rests upon the assumption that researchers can come to have a productive understanding of lived realities very different from their own through careful participation and observation of daily life.44 Ethnography is both a fascinating concept and an activist act as it is counter to common practice in scientific and academic fields. The self is supposed to be inconsequential in the pursuit of the “Truth.” The truth often thought of in these fields with a capital T refers to a central reality. A life that can be experienced by the senses and understood by the brain in the same manner by all people. This reality is supposed to be objective and free of all cultural, social, religious, political, etc. biases. Yet, I have often wondered—how it would be possible for any human being to connect to this “Truth” when we are all so laden with biases. These biases are often so hidden that we don’t understand them or recognize what they are when they come up. They simply merge with the hegemonic concept of “Truth.” This work will serve to question these concepts by promoting different voices and encouraging the multiverse of lived experiences, which is what feminist ethnography attempts to open up the “Truth” to the multiverse of fluid realities and potentials that is lived experience. Part of the process of feminist qualitative methodology is to find a domain of interest that allows for long-term exposure to the research environment with the potential of engaging with research subjects and developing relationships with them. “Ethnographic research can be distinguished from most other forms of research by the presence of longterm engagements and relationships between the researcher and those being studied.”45 As I am a college writing teacher, I already have access to the domain that I am interested in studying. I also already have the potential to form relationships with my students and other faculty. Informally, I need to draw from my personal experience. This may be the most difficult aspect of the work. Another part of feminist ethnography relies upon the understanding that “that traditional methods [tend] to benefit powerful and privileged academics rather than those they studied.”46 This suggests that my desire to enact social change and environmental activism will not benefit from previous traditional academic methods.

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  319 The project itself will take place in an introductory college writing class. Students will be asked to read from Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously. After reading a selected essay, students will work on a rhetorical activist writing assignment. This writing assignment’s primary focus is displaying or witnessing the destruction and beauty of the natural world. The mini essays are personal and interconnected. As such, they will include links, images in img and png format, videos, and text. This project would be interdisciplinary in that it connects writing, education, technology, and environmentalism. It is collaborative in nature as it includes Danticat’s work, other feminist scholars’ theories, and student work. It would be self-­ reflexive on several levels: students are invited to reflect on their influences, I will share reflections on my influences online and in my scholarship, and viewers will be able to post comments on the stories and art pieces. And finally, it would be politically engaged as it is an attempt to call attention to environmental destruction and hegemonic influences that are perpetuated in academic writing practices. Finally, “[f]eminist media research focuses on muted voices and stories, bringing into focus those character types, generic forms, and characterizations that do not receive attention in other forums.”47 The voices of global warming scientists, researchers, and environmentalists have been dramatically silenced by capitalistic practices. This is a very important area of study for women especially as we are marginalized in similar ways as the Earth is under neo-liberal priorities. After reading Keifer-Boyd’s art based research, I’ve thought about expanding my students’ potential responses to the Create Dangerously readings. My original concept was to have my students write about their experiences with nature—a kind of MeMorial a la Ulmer. This is my initial concept: http://whospeaksforthetrees.weebly.com/. I created this website as part of a previous class. But the concept here explores my own personal connections to nature. I wanted to expand this for my students and perhaps even open it up for anyone to comment on. I also wanted to include sections of Danticat’s Create Dangerously as inspiration for my students to write environmental activism pieces. I was originally thinking of paragraphs and stories similar to the ones that I have included on that website—revealing my personal experiences of the loss of nature. Each of the videos and links would have a personal element—only two are somewhat set up “Where Are the Fireflies?” and “Parking Lot.” Now, I am thinking that art pieces could work for this, as well—especially with the a/r/tography concept. I also understand that writing is art as Christ says, “There is a relation between literature and life.”48 This is exactly the symbiosis of art—creating the experience of life through symbolic representation. But now, I can imagine a painting of nature melting across a canvas, an art installation entitled trees that has a bulldozer covered in the pungent scents of earth and sap, poems, sculptures, songs etc. Then, I would love to have the students write about their experiences putting the art together. Did they do research? Why did they choose to use what they did? What did they hope to represent?

320  Camila Alvarez Maybe, other students could choose to write about those artistic representations and connect them to their own experience of nature. Students will then have the opportunity to share this work on the website “Who Speaks for the Trees?” which hosts an interactive online collection of websites, images, text, and videos focusing on nature. Inspired by Robert Yagleski’s (2011) Writing as a Way of Being and Gregory Ulmer’s (2005) Electronic Monuments, this site will serve as an archive and memorial of the natural world and its destruction. The website itself functions as both a Memorial—a remembrance of what once was—and an archive of what has been lost or may soon be. While the goal of this site is not to leave visitors in a state of depression, it does serve to release emotions of anger, sadness, and loss. Part of the purpose of this site is therapeutic and motivational. The hope being that it may serve as a way to work through negative emotions, remember that the natural world does still exist, and motivate the visitor to help protect it. Therefore, this digital collection serves as both a potential locus of change and a monument to the destruction of the natural. Yagleski believes that writing inspires connection and may serve to mitigate the dangers of ecological destruction. As such, in addition to meta-tagging and rating the collected media, visitors will be encouraged to write comments. While the site encourages visitor interaction through tagging and commenting. It will also encourage the creation of and submission of written work, videos, and images. Quantitative analysis of the student works merge with the ethnographic process. Data sets consist of previous assignment scores in comparison with scores on this assignment. My analysis of their class work would determine which assignments better crossed the boundaries between world, work, author, and reader that academic writing practices establish and that Danticat blurs in her work. The number of students that actively participate in the assignment out of the total population of approximately thirty students per class. And out of that number, the number of students that choose to voluntarily publish their work without it being part of their grade. In terms of gathering data, the written responses act as a self-interview process where students write out their thoughts and experiences with the loss of nature. Students would also self-select by voluntarily posting on the “Who Speaks for the Trees?” website. This would provide documentation of individual experiences of loss and would also be ethnographical in nature. The website will also host an anonymous survey asking a variety of questions: •

Did you contribute a story or art project to the “Who Speaks for the Trees?” website? • Please rate your experience writing your story or viewing an art project?

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  321 •

How many stories have you read on the “Who Speaks for the Trees?” website? • Please rate your experience reading a story or viewing an art project?

•

How many stories have you commented on the “Who Speaks for the Trees?” website? • Please rate your experience commenting on a story or viewing an art project?

As McIntosh and Cuklanz discuss feminist methodology, they list four main foci for the research: Interdisciplinary means that they work across different disciplines, such as sociology and communication. Collaborative means that researchers work together to engage and develop these ideas. Self-­ reflexive means that researchers maintain an awareness of their own influences in the research process, as described in the section below. Last, politically engaged means that researchers undertake research for motivations other than just personal ones, sometimes seeking to raise awareness about particular issues or even to bring about policy changes.49 Based on these foci, this project would connect with all four items. The politically engaged aspect of feminist methodology also has ethical connections. One problem with this work is that I am dealing with online environments. Ethical considerations in online environmental research are an important consideration, yet as Heidi McKee and James E. Porter state, ethical scholarly research discussions surrounding online media is commonplace outside of rhetorical studies but not within them.50 As this project is rhetorical in nature, I must be very careful about how much of my student work I refer to and what parts I am free to mention. One consideration is to add a disclaimer to my website that mentions this is part of a larger project. Another consideration is to require students to sign a permission to post their work on the website, acknowledging that it is a public spectrum and that it may be used within research. Another complication for my work came up from part of Carol P. Christ’s article: I recognize that a sex-differentiated model of humanity has been used in androcentric culture to denigrate women’s experience. But I nonetheless find a sex-differentiated model important and healing for women. Finally, the sex-differentiated model is useful for bringing to light modes of perception and action which can provide alternatives to the destructive aspects of androcentric culture.51

322  Camila Alvarez Do I want to focus on a sex-neutral/androgynous model for my research? Or on a sex-differentiated model of humanity? Is gender important when speaking about nature? I think so, but not in a binary sense. I obviously have male and female students, but I also have transsexual, two soul, gender neutral, gender fluid, and a variety of other identifications on a spectrum of individuality. While an androcentric focus would minimize the richness of my work, I don’t think a binary sex-differentiated model suffices. This bothers me. How can I include the diversity of genders within this work? I am honestly not certain, but perhaps I don’t need to be as long as I make space for it within the classroom. Marginalization is strongly connected to our treatment of the earth. We marginalize people, difference, nature, and in this way nature and people with non-binary genders and cis females are connected. Culture, race, and socio-economic class also connect with this marginalization. In essence, privileged white males dominate the neoliberal hegemony. All others are marginalized to different degrees—much as nature is marginalized and consumed as product. An example of this concept can be found in Danticat’s “­Chapter 8: Another Country.” In this chapter, Danticat discusses the American belief that natural disasters only occur in foreign countries. Thus nature is marginalized just as foreign people are marginalized. Data Analysis Several ethnographic and quantitative data sources are involved in this project. Ethnographic sources include: (1) The creation of a written response to the experience of putting this work together. This response would answer questions including “Did they do research?” “Why did they choose to use what they did?” and “What did they hope to represent?” (2) The written responses act as a self-interview process where students write out their thoughts and experiences with the loss of nature. (3) The anonymous survey on the website itself. And, (4) the comments on the stories posted on the website. Quantitative sources include: (1)  The scores on previous written assignments in comparison with scores on this assignment. (2) My analysis of their class work would determine which assignments better crossed the boundaries between world, work, author, and reader that academic writing practices establish and that Danticat blurs in her work. (3) The number of students that actively participate in the assignment out of the total population of approximately thirty students per class. (4) The number of students that choose to voluntarily publish their work without it being part of their grade. And, (5) the ratings of the stories posted on the website. The evaluation of these data sources will mostly involve first-hand coding and self-evaluation by the students. The evaluation will continue the reflective nature of feminist scholarly work in that the students, and I will think about the nature of the project and evaluate perceived outcomes. The students will partially report through a survey designed in

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  323 Survey Monkey. Survey Monkey does provide some basic data analytics which will compile the results into easy-to-read graphics. General scores will be evaluated within the grade book. An average score on this assignment will be compared with other assignment scores. Scores and participation rates will be collected in the hopes that higher scores and participation rates will emerge for this assignment indicating a greater interest from the student and a greater affective response. Reflexive Statement Students in an ENC 1101: Introduction to College Writing or Introductory College Writing class would benefit from working on reflexive assignments that deal with issues of marginalization, feminism, and ecology as a critical thought project. This project is focused on marginalization of individuals and by extension the marginalization of nature. The marginalization experience is an important standpoint. As one is pushed to the margins, one becomes more aware of the hegemonic influences acting upon one’s life. These influences are socially pressured and the marginalized individual feels these pressures to “fit in” or to conform. If one does not conform within the capitalistic hegemonic, then one has less value and their voice becomes muted. Our students often experience multiple marginalizing traits. Reflexive writing as an academic practice would help to explore these personal aspects and allow students to experience Create Dangerously as a connecting literacy. Danticat’s work may help inspire students to work on environmental writing and social activism. Reflexive writing done well reviews the complexities of student’s experiences and allows serious examination of their cultural wealth. The reflexive statement is a complex and a highly rewarding thought experiment that should be included in academic writing assignments.

Notes 1 Danticat, Edwidge. Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. (Vintage Contemporaries, Knopf Doubleday, 2011), 10. 2 Ibid., 5. 3 Ibid., 18. 4 Ibid., 22. 5 Ibid., 33. 6 Ibid., 41–42. 7 Ibid., 59. 8 Ibid., 65. 9 Ibid., 94. 10 Ibid., 91. 11 Ibid., 103. 12 Ibid., 97. 13 Ibid., 109. 14 Ibid., 124. 15 Ibid., 125–126.

324  Camila Alvarez 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26 27 28

29 30

31

32 33 3 4 35 36 37 38

Ibid., 133. Ibid., 131. Ibid., 137–138. Ibid., 157. Ibid., 157–158. Ibid., 173. Bell, Linda. “Chapter 4: Ethics and Feminist Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2014), 80. Yagleski, R. P. Writing as a Way of Being: Writing Instruction, Nonduality, and the Crisis of Sustainability. (Hampton Press, 2011), 29. Sutherland, Christine Mason. “Feminist Historiography: Research Methods in Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, Feminist Historiography in Rhetoric. (Winter, 2002), pp. 109–122. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/3886309, 109–110. Keifer-Boyd, Ph.D., Karen. “Arts-based Research as Social Justice Activism Insight, Inquiry, Imagination, Embodiment, Relationality.” International Review of Qualitative Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, (Spring 2011), U of California P. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ irqr.2011.4.1.3. Kumar, Sukrita Paul. “Feminism, Poetry, Social Sciences, and Humanities.” YouTube, (8 April 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXAy9Crp1GI). Frost, Nollaig and Frauke Elichaoff. “Feminist Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Critical Theory.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2014), 43. Naples, Nancy A. and Barbara Gurr. “Chapter 2: Feminist Empiricism and Standpoint Theory Approaches to Understanding the Social World.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2013), 15–16. Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy. “Chapter 1: A Re-Invitation to Feminist Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2013), 4. Naples, Nancy A. and Barbara Gurr. “Chapter 2: Feminist Empiricism and Standpoint Theory Approaches to Understanding the Social World.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2013), 18. Queen, Mary. “Transnational Feminist Rhetorics in a Digital World.” College English, Vol. 70, No. 5, Special Topic: Transnational Feminist Rhetorics. (May, 2008), pp. 471–489: NCTE. Accessed 03 December 2017. www. jstor.org/stable/25472284, 472. Ibid. Madhok, Sumi, and Shirin M. Rai. “Agency, Injury, and Transgressive Politics in Neoliberal Times.” Signs, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2012, pp. 645–669. www. jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662939, 646. Ibid., 649. Yagleski, R. P. Writing as a Way of Being: Writing Instruction, Nonduality, and the Crisis of Sustainability. (Hampton Press, 2011), 29. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. (2nd ed., U of Chicago P, 1958), 176. Yagleski, R. P. Writing as a Way of Being: Writing Instruction, Nonduality, and the Crisis of Sustainability. (Hampton Press, 2011), 139. Keifer-Boyd, Ph.D., Karen. “Arts-based Research as Social Justice Activism Insight, Inquiry, Imagination, Embodiment, Relationality.” International Review of Qualitative Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, (Spring 2011), pp. 3–19. U of California P. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ irqr.2011.4.1.3, 318–320.

Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously  325 39 Cleary, Barbara A., and Mary C. Whittemore. “Gender Study Enriches Students’ Lives.” The English Journal, Vol. 88, No. 3, 1999, pp. 86–90. www. jstor.org/stable/821585, 89. 40 Sutherland, Christine Mason. “Feminist Historiography: Research Methods in Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, Feminist Historiography in Rhetoric. (Winter, 2002), pp. 109–122. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/3886309, 112. 41 Seager, Joni. “Rachel Carson Died of Breast Cancer: The Coming of Age of Feminist Environmentalism.” Signs, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2003, pp. 945–972. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/345456, 945. 42 Ibid., 946. 43 Ibid., 948. 4 4 Buch, Elana D. and Karen M. Staller. “Chapter 5: Feminist Ethnography.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy HesseBiber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2014), pp. 107–144, 108. 45 Ibid. 46 Buch, Elana D. and Karen M. Staller. “Chapter 5: Feminist Ethnography.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy HesseBiber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2014), pp. 107–144, 111. 47 McIntosh, Heather and Lisa Cuklanz. “Chapter 9: Feminist Media Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications), 2014, pp. 264–295, 290. 48 Christ, Carol P. “Feminist Studies in Religion and Literature: A Methodological Reflection.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 44, No. 2, (Jun., 1976), pp. 317–325. Oxford UP. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/1462344, 319. 49 McIntosh, Heather and Lisa Cuklanz. “Chapter 9: Feminist Media Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, (Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications), 2014, pp. 264–295, 265. 50 McKee, Heidi, and James E. Porter. “The Ethics of Digital Writing Research: A Rhetorical Approach.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 59, No. 4, 2008, pp. 711–749. www.jstor.org/stable/20457031, 217. 51 Christ, Carol P. “Feminist Studies in Religion and Literature: A Methodological Reflection.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 44, No. 2, (Jun., 1976), pp. 317–325. Oxford UP. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/1462344, 324.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed., U Chicago P, 1958. Bell, Linda. “Chapter 4: Ethics and Feminist Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Hesse-Biber, Sharlene J. Nagy. 2nd ed., Sage Publications, 2014, pp. 73–106. Buch, Elana D. and Karen M. Staller. “Chapter 5: Feminist Ethnography.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Hesse-Biber, Sharlene J. Nagy. 2nd ed., Sage Publications, 2014, pp. 107–144. Christ, Carol P. “Feminist Studies in Religion and Literature: A Methodological Reflection.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 44, no. 2, Jun., 1976, pp. 317–325. Oxford UP. Accessed 03 December 2017. www. jstor.org/stable/1462344. Cleary, Barbara A. and Mary C. Whittemore. “Gender Study Enriches Students’ Lives.” The English Journal, vol. 88, no. 3, 1999, pp.  86–90. www. jstor.org/stable/821585.

326  Camila Alvarez Danticat, Edwidge. Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. Vintage Contemporaries, Knopf Doubleday, 2011. Frost, Nollaig and Frauke Elichaoff. “Feminist Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Critical Theory.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., Sage Publications, 2014, pp. 42–72. Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy. “Chapter 1: A Re-Invitation to Feminist Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2013, pp. 1–13. ———. “Feminist Approaches to In-Depth Interviewing.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2014, pp. 182–232. Keifer-Boyd, Ph.D., Karen. “Arts-based Research as Social Justice Activism Insight, Inquiry, Imagination, Embodiment, Relationality.” International Review of Qualitative Research, vol. 4, no. 1, Spring 2011, pp. 3–19. U of California P. Accessed 03 December 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ irqr.2011.4.1.3. Kumar, Sukrita Paul. “Feminism, Poetry, Social Sciences, and Humanities.” YouTube, 8 Apr. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXAy9Crp1GI. Madhok, Sumi and Shirin M. Rai. “Agency, Injury, and Transgressive Politics in Neoliberal Times.” Signs, vol. 37, no. 3, 2012, pp. 645–669. www.jstor.org/ stable/10.1086/662939. McIntosh, Heather and Lisa Cuklanz. “Chapter 9: Feminist Media Research.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy HesseBiber. 2nd ed., Sage Publications, 2014, pp. 264–295. McKee, Heidi and James E. Porter. “The Ethics of Digital Writing Research: A Rhetorical Approach.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 59, no. 4, 2008, pp. 711–749. www.jstor.org/stable/20457031. Naples, Nancy A. and Barbara Gurr. “Chapter 2: Feminist Empiricism and Standpoint Theory Approaches to Understanding the Social World.” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, Edited by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber. 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, 2013, pp. 14–41. Queen, Mary. “Transnational Feminist Rhetorics in a Digital World.” College English, vol. 70, no. 5, Special Topic: Transnational Feminist Rhetorics, May 2008, pp.  471–489. NCTE. Accessed 03 Dec. 2017. www.jstor.org/ stable/25472284. Seager, Joni. “Rachel Carson Died of Breast Cancer: The Coming of Age of Feminist Environmentalism.” Signs, vol. 28, no. 3, 2003, pp. 945–972. www. jstor.org/stable/10.1086/345456. Sutherland, Christine Mason. “Feminist Historiography: Research Methods in Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, Feminist Historiography in Rhetoric. Winter, 2002, pp. 109–122. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Accessed 03 Dec. 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/3886309. Ulmer, Gregory. Electronic Monuments. U of Minnesota P, 2005. Yagleski, Robert P. Writing as a Way of Being: Writing Instruction, Nonduality, and the Crisis of Sustainability. Hampton Press, 2011.

15 When the Periphery Comes to the Center From Writing across the Curriculum to Public Sphere Pedagogy Marvin E. Hobson This paper will highlight the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) activities and Public Sphere Pedagogy (PSP) practices implemented in my college-level English courses while teaching Brother, I’m Dying (BID). The overarching research question is, how can educators innovatively teach reading, writing, and research in light of fake news, alternative truth, misinformation, dehumanization, and fear in the 21st century? I suggest that the answer lies between exploring WAC and PSP, which demands both a political and a social awakening. As a result, when cultures and literatures on the periphery come to the center, learning can become more real and relevant.

Overview Taking on Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying as a college-wide, Big Read Initiative is an ambitious endeavor for any institution, yet alone one in a small, rural town in South Florida. And even though the institution may have a significant Haitian (Haitian American) student body and surrounding population, the classrooms reflect great diversity in socio-economic, cultural, religious, and political affiliations. With direct access by sea, migratory overflow from the south, and migrations from all directions, the Treasure Coast of Florida and its quaint, rural, and developing atmosphere offer a wonderful place to teach this transnational text. Although the Haitian and Haitian American presence is visible in the community, the plight and vibrant history of Haiti and its resilient people have much less of a presence. A more prevalent and pervasive ideology among most who have never traveled to Haiti primarily consists of labeling Haiti as a center for hurricane relief, earthquake disasters, vicious dictators, and the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. These thoughts and perceptions of Haiti often eclipse the country’s amazing and vibrant culture. Haiti’s embedded African traditions, victorious, and historical revolution that crippled the French economy, and diasporic narratives of exile, resilience, and fortitude rarely become the topic of discussion about this

328  Marvin E. Hobson Caribbean nation. These ideologies, concepts, and metanarratives are often relegated to the fringes of culture under normal circumstances, but even more so when highly charged conservative spaces and canonical literature take precedent. To clarify, author of Peripheral Modernisms, Marc Caplan, asserts, “By contrast, peripheral cultures—cultures neither defined nor limited by national boundaries—experience difficulty in gaining access to resources or even obtaining recognition of their legitimacy as modes of being and fields of study.”1 Although Danticat’s works are published in the United States, they harken back to the peripheral space of Haiti and demonstrate how individuals who migrate from those spaces interact, endure, and remember their past spaces while living in the United States’ dominant culture. Danticat’s BID follows suit and forces the reader to address human rights, immigration, assimilation, and global perspectives of the Other; it provides an opportunity to bring the margins to the center. When this occurs, the center can be challenged to reconsider and rethink the systematic methods and ways of being and knowing, which makes this text a wonderful candidate to include within introductory English composition courses. While teaching BID in ENC 1102—English Composition, I delivered direct instruction in WAC, which allows students not only to make the obvious cultural connections, but to relate the text to their disciplines or meta majors, making students’ reading experiences more relevant and real. As a result, exploring BID through WAC assignments not only makes literature real and relevant, but the text also allows students to meaningfully engage in the public sphere. According to Chico State University’s website, Public Sphere Pedagogy (PSP) embeds a “public sphere” in firstyear courses, moving students from a typical classroom setting to a dialogue-­rich environment. It focuses students’ course reading, class discussion, and research efforts on contemporary public issues and places students in dialogue with diverse campus and community members . . . PSP aims to increase students’ sense of civic efficacy and personal responsibility. PSP students are more likely to persist to graduation than non-PSP students. 2 PSP allows them to discuss key topics and involves them civically. Not only did BID enrich our classroom discussions, but it also encouraged students to think more critically about their contemporary conditions and situations. However, providing an opportunity for students to demonstrate and exercise their civic efficacy has been a challenge because, typically, the English classroom has become rather insular. Perhaps, this is a problem that is unique to community colleges and state colleges without English or Humanities majors. When general education

When Periphery Comes to the Center  329 courses are solely viewed as gateway courses to the disciplines, the courses may become less connected to the community’s relevant issues and concerns. Nevertheless, the work exhibited in this semester’s long event of scaffolding the use of BID has provided multiple opportunities for Indian River State College students to participate in critical discussions about various topics of interest and concern. Renowned professor, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, acknowledges the fact that African American students who are pushed to the margins of American society are lacking some basic and foundational acceptances and validations. He calls on the work of Professor Kiese Laymon and his three essential elements of education to emphasize the importance of what is needed to “Save Our Tomorrow.” Laymon states, “good love, healthy choices and second chances.”3 In other words, our schools and classrooms should make all students feel “valued, . . . cared about, and invest[ed] in.”4 With BID as a central text in the classroom and recognized on all of our campuses, marginalized cultures and individuals will not only feel affirmed and appreciated, but thoroughly informed and engaged. Some of the most marginalized groups that would benefit from the teaching of BID are, of course, Haitian Americans, undocumented immigrants, immigrants in seek of asylum, immigrants in need of healthcare, the persecuted, and those who have been Othered by dominant culture and political circumstances.

The Local Picture/Perspective The background information about the location serves several purposes: 1 to debunk the overgeneralizations about rural peripheral spaces. The peripheral space, typically, can be identified by its distance from a major industrialized, cosmopolitan, and urbanized area; therefore, peripheral spaces tend to be rural spaces or less developed, sometimes economically challenged municipalities that depend on outside sources or resources for economic growth, maintenance, and improvement. These aspects flow into various aspects of everyday life. This work seeks to highlight the value of the rural peripheral space and show the benefits that students gain through researching these spaces. 2 to articulate the complexity of the rural space when faced with larger, more global, international, and critical issues. Geographically, the Treasure Coast is a four-county area, located in a very unique space, nestled between West Palm Beach, Florida less than an hour south and Orlando, Florida just under two hours north west. With that in mind, the Treasure Coast appears to be caught between the extreme wealth of the Palm Beaches, the second home of the 45th President of the United States and extreme examples of the American economic capitalist dream—manifested in the Disney Empire. However, one

330  Marvin E. Hobson needs not look that far to see great diversity of this area. Within the Treasure Coast, each county is different from the other as well. Indian River, the most northern county, is predominantly Republican; therefore, it is one of the most conservative and very wealthy sections in the area with a large number of retirees. Just due south of Indian River is St. Lucie County, which is the most populated county with a population of about 300,000, according to the U.S. Census.5 Also, St. Lucie has the most diverse population along with the most liberals and Democrats. Continuing South, Martin County is one of the most cosmopolitan areas as a result of its direct juxtaposition to Palm Beach County and strong coastal county seat, Stuart, known for its trendy restaurants, beaches, boating, and fishing. And last but not least, Okeechobee County is the only county without direct Atlantic Ocean access, but their claim to fame is Lake Okeechobee and other agricultural businesses, ranchers, and even equestrian lifestyles. As a result, Okeechobee has one of the largest migrant worker populations in the four-county area. So even though the Treasure Coast is a unified space, sharing common waterways, beaches, and other geographical attributes, each county has its own identity, which is rewarding on one hand, but complex when one tries to introduce, teach, and unpack a text that has come to the forefront, like Danticat’s BID. Aside from the normal challenges of living on the Atlantic Coast, such as hurricanes, beach erosion, and water contamination, the Treasure Coast area benefits from the migration of diverse individuals from points South, like Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and beyond. As a result, Caribbean, Hispanics, South Americans, and a large number of Northerners have relocated to this area for job opportunities, a more affordable standard of living, and a slower pace. The cultural diversity in the Treasure Coast area is in direct relationship with its geographical placement. Most locations have multifaceted and overlapping aspects of their community, and the Treasure Coast of Florida and Indian River State College are certainly no different. Although the Treasure Coast is known as a more rural and agricultural location, it has advanced and developed tremendously over the years while still maintaining a considerable amount of agricultural industries. Therefore, on any given day, Treasure Coast residents might be en route to one of our beautiful beaches or one of the many franchise restaurants while passing several hundreds of acres filled with grazing cows and horses. In many ways this sleepy, bedroom community has been devoted to its modest transformation, growth, and redevelopment. However, a lag in physical development is indicative of its peripherality and the influence of those who live within and have arrived on its borders. Through the exploration of historical moments, one can see that the Treasure Coast has endured some difficult times over the decades, from a declining citrus industry, extreme segregation, desegregation, the

When Periphery Comes to the Center  331 crack epidemic, and gang activity. However, this very resilient community has endured these darker moments, and produced wonderful artists, entrepreneurs, educators, and real estate developers, such as the Highwaymen, Waldo Sexton, and Zora Neale Hurston, just to name a few. Moreover, the leadership of this initiative to include Danticat’s BID into our curriculum came from the work of a wonderful cadre of librarians, administrators, and faculty; it was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts—Big Read Program.

From Hurston to Danticat and the Periphery Some may ask, why is the periphery of importance to those who are in the center or the core of society? Well, the core or center of American culture may not see the impact of the periphery on the border states, such as Florida which has large populations of individuals from peripheral nations. The economic stability and demands of these areas call for a more nuanced approach to addressing migration, immigration, humane treatment of foreigners who pass through their borders, both documented and undocumented. For decades, the Civil Rights and the Affirmative Action Movements sought to equitably include African Americans and underrepresented classes into the mainstream workforce, but business sectors, corporations, and even the local, state, and federal governments have turned a blind-eye to the influx of immigrants seeking to replace the African American workforce. As a result, in many key areas through the American landscape, the exploitation of labor has shifted in the past sixty years from the African American workforce to the Hispanic/ Central American, South American, and the Caribbean Americans, flocking to the United States for a “better life.” Just as Danticat’s work highlights how a denigrated and demonized space like Haiti can be humanized and casted in a different light, very few American authors can highlight the existence of the periphery in the United States like the quintessential authorial icon, Zora Neale Hurston. Nothing highlights Hurston’s recognition of global labor issues as much as her interviews with Oluale Kossoula (Cudjoe Lewis), an African who was ripped from his village by fellow-Africans and illegally trafficked into the United States by Americans after the abolition of slavery. This proves how valuable African labor was toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century that Americans would go to such great lengths to resort to human trafficking to bring slave-labor into the country. In her recently published text, Barracoon, where she interviews Kossoula, Hurston exclaims, “But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory.”6 Here, Hurston tries to reconcile the reasoning why Africans would sell their own race and why Europeans would purchase Africans, only to dehumanize them through the horrific process of chattel slavery? She resolves

332  Marvin E. Hobson the conundrum with a reasonable reflection on the reality and base, negative human pursuit of greed and glory. Hurston was well-traveled throughout parts of the western Hemisphere, but she had not crossed the Atlantic—physically, although she had crossed it several times, metaphorically, as she aligned herself with African traditions maintained throughout the African diaspora. Also, African literature and culture were not widely taught in the United States until after the Civil Rights Movement, so although Hurston had immersed herself in African culture, the American mainstream culture was not ready to take responsibility for its acts of greed and glory. Therefore, she may not have received favorable feedback or criticism about Barracoon had she delivered that scathing comparison between internal slavery within Africa and the chattel slavery of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Nevertheless, she leaves readers with a text that universalizes and forces both the periphery and the center to reflect upon and question his or her own individual contributions and complicity of inhumane treatment toward the Other. Ulf Hannerz’s abstract from his article, “Culture between center and periphery: Toward a macroanthropology” states, “The twentieth century has come to witness the growth of a global ecumene of culture, an organization of diversity structured by center-periphery relationships.”7 Since, for the most part, colonizers have declined in the 20th and 21st centuries, the center of power has slightly shifted. This is certainly the case with a space such as Haiti, whose colonial ties were aligned to France; however, since its independence and the American military occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934, the United States has played a major role in Haitian politics, economics, and security. And just as Haitians were primarily seen as slaves, producing the most economic wealth for France during colonialism, America and certain Americans have developed a global view of Haiti, reducing it solely to a third-world country with dependent, nationals incapable of self-governance. Contrarily, Haiti was the first African-descendent nation to gain its independence from its colonizers. Clearly, the circumstances of BID are the result of a center-periphery relationship between the U.S. and Haiti where the Haitian culture and race are not valued. Throughout the book, BID, Danticat briefly recounts the history of Haiti’s victorious revolution, its tumultuous political history, and its U.S. Occupation, just to name a few. These, of course, are all very vivid and recurring images and narratives circulating throughout the Haitian landscape and the diaspora. Now, these events are not as well known or common knowledge on the American home front. Most Americans are not as knowledgeable about Haitian history or America’s connection to it. Nevertheless, Edwidge Danticat’s epigraph to her book, BID encapsulates her thoughts about immigration and treatment of the Other. She quotes Genesis 20:13, which states, “This is how you can show your love for me: Everywhere you go, say of me, ‘He is my brother.’”8 This passage is not as popular as others, but it is the response that Abraham

When Periphery Comes to the Center  333 recounts to Abimelek as a way of assuring him that he would be kind to Abimelek and his people. Therefore, Abraham assures Abimelek by telling him the words above, which he shared with Sarah, both his wife and half-sister, who happens to be a descendant of the same location as Abimelek. Therefore, Abraham attempts to logically appeal to Abimelek by letting him know that he, Abraham, would always be fair and equitable to him because of his relationship, both through marriage and blood to Sarah. However, Abimelek does not accept this, and he asks or requests a treaty, something in writing to verify and officially establish Abraham’s allegiance. In the subsequent chapter, the passage has been referred to as “The Beersheba Treaty,” which is negotiated by Abraham and Abimelek.9 The negotiation results by Abraham giving up several sheep (indicators of wealth) as a way of proving to Abimelek that he, Abraham, indeed, vows to keep his promise to the foreign people. By drawing this comparison, Danticat seems to be guiding the Christian and American readership into making a similar comparison between American and Haitian relations, one where the Haitian can be treated as a human with dignity in a foreign land. Where can the Haitian go and be treated humanely? Certainly, this passage highlights Danticat’s views about how the center and people in power should treat those from the periphery. Maybe she is not requesting a treaty as Abimelek did, but she is certainly using this memoir, recreation of Joseph’s exit from this world and into the next, as a discussion starter for the center to consider its actions, notions, and pronouncements about the periphery. In BID Uncle Joseph came to the United States legally in search of political asylum, but it appears as though he was treated inhumanely while under the custody of the Kromes Detention Center in Miami. According to a report conducted by Homeland Security, Joseph Danticat died while in their custody at Kromes, a holding facility for undocumented immigrants entering the United States.10 However, Edwidge and her family, at least one who was there during her uncle’s last breath, tell a very different story than the one void of error, maltreatment, and compassion delivered by the Homeland Security report. In her testimony delivered to the House Immigration Subcommittee Hearing, Edwidge wrote: He had with him a passport and a valid multiple-entry visa, which would have expired in 2008. However, because he requested what he termed “temporary” asylum, he was immediately arrested and taken to the Kromes Detention Center in Miami, where the medications he was taking for his high blood pressure and inflamed prostate were taken away from him. He made this known as much as he could, to his son, to his lawyer, and to me on the phone, and to the medical staff at Kromes where he was held in the short stay medical unit. However, his pleas were ignored by those who had taken his medication away.11

334  Marvin E. Hobson Danticat aptly describes in this passage how her Uncle Joseph had traveled freely to the United State legally for over thirty years, but as soon as he indicated that he was filing for temporary asylum, he was, of course, treated very differently than past visits to the United States. Moreover, this statement shows how detrimental it is to escape political unrest in your own country and then to reach a safe place only to be treated as a criminal. This may be a result of overgeneralizations about Haitians migrating and traveling outside of the Haitian borders. The periphery and the center can exist on various fronts, and the relationship between individuals and systems within the periphery and the center can be a life or death situation.

Before Reading Before students in my ENC 1102, which is a subsequent English composition course that college students can take after successfully completing ENC 1101, we, as a class, read a diverse amount of literature, as outlined in the Schedule of Activities Spring 2018 (see Appendix 1). This starts with the discussion of short stories, such as “The Prodigal Son” in the Bible, “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner, “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, and “Spunk” by Zora Neale Hurston. After we take a few weeks to analyze and discuss these texts through group activities, open discussions, and relevant exchanges, the students end this unit by choosing two characters from either one of the texts mentioned above, and they write a compare and contrast essay, where they have to thoroughly analyze the intentions, motivations, and actions of two characters in the texts. Since this is an intensive writing research course, the students are also required to research peer-reviewed articles related to the short stories and/or major themes and topics directly related to the characters. This assignment allows students to review the motivations of characters in fictional texts; however, through the relevant journal-writing assignments, the students are able to see how the conditions and situation which the fictional characters faced may just be hyperbolic or even very similar situations as the reality that individuals may have faced during the time of the author. This allows students to consider different lenses through which to discuss and understand literature and life, some biographical, historical, psychological, and even economical or Marxist views as well. After the short story unit, the students receive an introduction to Haitian culture as a way of extending their knowledge and scope about the culture and the country. Until I, myself, moved to South Florida, met and heard the stories of several Haitians and Haitian Americans, and eventually traveled to Haiti on an ethnographic expedition; I, too, had a very limited and skewed view of the small country. As a multi-generational African American and the only member of my immediate and distant family who has lived in another country, I understand the reality of the fact that most Americans receive their knowledge about other countries

When Periphery Comes to the Center  335 form the news, and that information, especially with the emergence of fake news, can significantly misinform the general public. Therefore, I thought that it was important for me to share the experiences that I have had through the years, which have all helped to shape my perspective of Haiti. I created a PowerPoint, entitled “Literature Matters,” which highlights the most important moments of my introduction to Haitian culture. Now, I totally understand that PowerPoint is not the best method to engage students, but since this was a quick turnaround time with the creation of viable materials for the Big Read Program, this seemed to work. The first section, entitled, “Haitian Indoctrination” is where I discuss former Haitian and Haitian American students who have come to Indian River State College over my ten plus years of teaching. These are students who have come to the United States via various methods, some documented and others not, but they were all successful students (of course, I have had some unsuccessful ones as well, but I wanted to be very positive with these new students). Nevertheless, I begin to share some of the plights of these students who have come here with varying degrees of difficulty from issues of poverty, language barriers, and the loss of loved-ones through natural disaster. However, their successes range from continuing on to higher education, serving in the United States military, starting small businesses, and the list goes on and on. They are testaments to the fact that if anyone receives an equal opportunity in a socio-economic system, he or she can perform and excel. Another one of my indoctrinations into Haitian culture has been through reading the works of Zora Neale Hurston. To know that she wrote her most beloved text, Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti, forever links that small and potent island nation to Florida and African American culture. Also, it is imperative for anyone who plans to introduce a text like BID to American students to at least provide a brief overview of key elements from Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse, where Hurston documents and photographs a zombie in Haiti in 1936.12 This text almost reads like a travelogue of Hurston’s exploits while in Haiti and Jamaica during the 1930s. Since it is written for an American audience and delves deep into the machinations of Haitian culture, often closed off to those who gaze from the American shores. The mainstream American gaze of Haitian culture tends to reduce Haitian culture to Vodun, which is an interesting place to start, but it is certainly not the place to end. The Haitian cultural identity is indeed wrapped up in Vodun, but these are human beings who love, live, eat, breath, innovate, evolve, and have endured so much over the past two centuries since its independence. Although Hurston’s gaze is Americanized because she seems to be in support of the U.S. Occupation, she does capture the life and the ways of the Haitian people. Through the unpacking of just a few of Hurston’s findings, students can see what Haitian lives may have been like during the 1930s and the power or significance of periphery thinking

336  Marvin E. Hobson or thought. Hurston’s explanation of her fieldwork involving zombies demonstrates her prowess as an ethnographer: Now why have these dead folks not been allowed to remain in their graves? . . . A was awakened because somebody required his body as a beast of burden. In his natural state he could never have been hired to work with is hands, so he was made into a Zombie because they wanted his service as a laborer. B was summoned to labor also, but he is reduced to the level of a beast as an act of revenge. C was the culmination of a “Ba’ Moun” ceremony and pledge. That is, he was given as a sacrifice to pay off a debt to a spirit for the benefits received.13 A refers to the abuse of labor in Haiti and the Americas after the abolition of slavery in the Western Hemisphere. Although slave labor was not legal, countries and people in power found other methods to re-enslave poor and vulnerable individuals while B does the same, but as a way of inflicting punishment or revenge for some act. In this way, individuals, rendered powerless through societal means, resort to religion and Zombification as a weapon of defense and diplomatic leverage. Finally, C showcases the significance of Vodun as a religion, replete with various ceremonies, rights, songs, hierarchies, etc., which debunks the mainstream American gaze of Haitian Vodun as evil. In Hurston’s interview with Margaret Meade, she further clarifies: I do know that people have been resurrected in Haiti. I do not believe they were actually dead. I believe that it was suspended animation. I believe it was suspended animation. And since there is no embalming there, it’s possible, and people are not buried below ground . . . They have brought drugs from Africa which the socalled civilized world does not know about . . . and which produce certain effects . . . (The Margaret Meade Show).14 In this passage, Hurston draws the comparison between the peripheral space and the central spaces or “so-called civilized world.” It appears as though the peripheral space reminds the occupants and the participant observers of the existence of the unknown, the unexplainable spirits, objects, and accoutrements of the other world. Hurston, as a resident of both the logical world of letters and the magical realism of the other world, reconciles the two. These are just some of the conversations that might occur BEFORE ENC 1102 classes begin reading BID. As a result, the most important things to consider before reading the text is as the instructor, to critically engage in the history of Haitian culture, not just from the Westernized, American view, but from the Haitian peasant and the educated Haitian. Then, share with the students the experience of learning about Haiti from another perspective, not just the Americanized, Hollywood version.

When Periphery Comes to the Center  337

During BID is a lengthy text with twenty-four chapters. However, the chapters are generally not that long for the average college student, but the text in its entirety may appear to be a little daunting to read. To allow for the critical, close reading of the text to occur, students were asked to search for connections to their meta-majors in addition to addressing some of the basic English concepts of setting, characters, timeline, historical connections and such, this non-fiction, memoir also makes ample room for the exploration of themes such as death, birth, familial relationships, transnational narratives, political and natural disasters, and a variety of meta-majors. Rachel Baker states, Concerns about low college completion rates have led policy makers and administrators to examine interventions that aim to increase persistence by making colleges easier to navigate for students. Guided pathways reforms, which aim to simplify decisions for students, are one popular approach. An important component of the guided pathways intervention is meta majors, which entails grouping all available majors into a handful of major “buckets” to reduce the number of choices initially, but not eventually, available to students.15 These low college completion rates are definitely a concern for most community colleges or state colleges, and Indian River State College is certainly no different. Most educators would agree that students need fewer choices to clearly identify areas of interest, so they can more directly move into more self-sufficient job markets as opposed to wasting time meandering between competing interests and disciplines. On the contrary, this more supposedly efficient guided pathway and meta-major method should also foster lifelong learning, especially in the world’s rapidly changing technological age. Since most of the students in this course had already taken an introductory ENC 1101 course, this ENC 1102 course required extension of their knowledge through the exploration of research and the text. As a way to introduce students to their meta-majors, a career cluster sheet was provided to the students. This document shows all of the meta-majors on one page and helps students to recognize the interconnectedness between their meta-majors and other sub-areas within that meta-major. This exploration reveals that a substantial number of students at this level in their post-secondary education not only have difficulties recognizing the demands and requirements to successfully complete intended degrees in their areas of interest, but they have limited knowledge about related areas of study. For example, students who intended to become Nursing majors do not fully understand the requirements for selective entry or related situations or scenarios that a nurse may have to face while in practice. Their perceptions of what it takes to become a nurse were very superficial. To clarify, even as an open-entry institution,

338  Marvin E. Hobson Indian River State College and other community and state colleges have selective programs where students need to complete a vast number of prerequisites before even applying to certain programs. Moreover, the reading material in English classes can convey in-depth psychological, descriptive, and critical understanding of health-related issues. However, if English and literature classes only focus on grammar, literary devices, and critical analysis in the introductory English course, many students will have difficulty making very obvious connections between the literature that they read and their meta-majors. Although these conversations take place in the English class, students are always directed to their counselors for further and more detailed discussions about these programs. In my English Composition classes, students are encouraged to choose some aspect of health sciences, for example, even if they plan to apply to the Nursing Program. By taking a look at the career cluster document, students are able to explore other aspects of the health sciences field that (1) may spark their individual interests and (2) may directly connect to the situation, incidents, or moments occurring within the text. During free-writing assignments, chapter reflections, group analysis sections, and other activities, students are asked to find these sections of the text and to discuss them through close reading and several other ways. Also, these low-stakes writing assignments provide multiple opportunities for students to synthesize and reinforce these connections along with further understanding the ways in which their meta-majors connect with the text. According to an article in Writing Across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook, Linton, Madigan, and Johnson who researched the pros and cons of explicitly teaching disciplinary genres share in the belief: That explicit teaching is beneficial, and we argue that it is particularly so for undergraduates, who are just in the thresholds of their disciplines. Most undergraduate writers lack contextualized knowledge of their disciplines to which they are being introduced. For them, the generative potential of disciplinary forms is especially important: When students try to practice the linguistic features of disciplinary genres, they must seek at the same time the kinds of substantive information those genres convey.16 Because I concur with this belief, I pre-identified passages, sections, and chapters of the BID text for direct and tangential relationships to the meta-­majors. Furthermore, I provided students with a document listing the themes and topics that I found underneath the eight meta-majors, which are: (1) Arts, Humanities, Communication and Design, (2) Business, (3) Education, (4) Health Sciences, (5) Industry, Manufacturing, and Construction, (6) Public Safety, (7) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and (8) Social and Behavioral Science and Human Services. All of the meta-majors are presented to students on one document, named the “Points of Entry” (Appendix 2). In this document,

When Periphery Comes to the Center  339 students find a list of potential topics related to BID and organized based on the meta-majors. I created it to help students who might be reluctant readers or just not familiar with the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) connections between Literature and various meta-majors. While students read the text, they are encouraged to seek for obvious, less obvious, and even hidden aspects of their meta-major. With this in mind, students do not just read for comprehension. However, they are asked to have multi-layered readings of the text. The first level, of course, is just for information, taking into consideration the who, what, where, why, when, and how of the text. This stage or level is very important because the text is not presented in a linear fashion. Danticat presents m ­ oment from different areas of Haiti, Miami, and New York within different chapters as she reflects, remembers, and stitches together this memoir. As a result, some of the text reads as a travelogue. This has led into discussions about the geography of Haiti; albeit a small country, it still has great deal of diversity among its people, landscape, etc. For this reason, parts of the text read as a cultural and historical manifesto, filled with comparisons between the urban and rural spaces and explanations of Haitian cuisine, language, and even political issues. Still, other sections, of course, focus more on descriptions of medical symptoms of Danticat’s uncle, Joseph Danticat and father, André Miracin Danticat along with others. Considering all, this text is necessarily a difficult text in terms of grammar and lexicon, but it throws students into a multifaceted American migration story with the ability to mentally awaken and intellectually stimulate students on the following levels: to understand and comprehend the Haitian experience and its universal appeal, to identify obvious connections to their intended meta-major, to explore the less obvious and hidden aspects of the meta-major, which are indicative of this non-fiction text—not written for an academic audience. The opening passage from BID is an example of such aspects. Danticat states: I found out I was pregnant the same day that my father’s rapid weight loss and chronic shortness of breath were positively diagnosed as end-stage pulmonary fibrosis. It was a hot morning in early July 2003. I took a six thirty a.m. flight from Miami to accompany my father on a visit to the pulmonologist at Brooklyn’s Coney Island Hospital that afternoon. (3)17 In this opening passage, Danticat places life and death in juxtaposition. She has to address the extreme aspects of living on earth, where she has to simultaneously navigate through the processes of bringing forth life and watching a loved-one slip-away into mortality. Danticat shows in the very beginning how one can live in a liminal space between two opposing or very different worlds, on the one hand, she embraces a very rewarding time in a woman’s life, while, on the other hand, she addresses one of the most devastating times, the loss of a good father. Danticat

340  Marvin E. Hobson does not end there; she also shows us how the Haitian diaspora lives within and across multiple spaces. She captures the reality of Haitian condition for those who live between Haiti, Miami (South Florida), New York (Northeast United States), and points in between. Also, during this reading project, the Indian River State College librarians played a significant role in providing texts to students through the Big Read Initiative. They conducted two library sessions with all of my classes for students to have hands-on computer lab sessions. During these sessions, students learned and developed their knowledge of APA style and research methods. Moreover, the librarians specifically tailored their instruction to the students’ research interests and meta-majors. Within these sessions, both the librarian and I, as the instructor, would assist students one-on-one with finding the appropriate sources to help provide adequate evidence of the connections between the text and the meta-major.

After After our classes finished reading BID, we continued our class with additional readings and in-depth discussions about literature and criticism. Some of the texts that we read after BID were Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus,” Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles,” and some other poetry. In these texts, the class explored and compared and contrasted similar themes present in BID. With that in mind, the major focus of the course shifts to the oral presentation section of the course. Remember, students have been presenting information in groups and in peer-groups throughout the semester. This culminating oral presentation, however, is the students’ opportunity to show how they can present their individual and unique research topic, which should be related to BID. For the oral presentation, students are given several guidelines, such as having to present for five to seven minutes, providing a visual element to their presentation, and organizing their presentation into a beginning, middle, and end, almost as one would in an essay. This way, students critically think about the information that they have collected for their research paper, and how that information can best be delivered within the timeframe they are given. They are, of course, encouraged to share in their research findings and to show what they have learned from exploring and navigating the text through the lens of their chosen meta-major and sub-topic.

Research Papers Student A Student A comes to mind because she completed another course with me, and I was well-aware of her career goals and desires to become a Nurse. She was a non-traditional student who had two young children, was working in the healthcare field, and had a husband serving in the military. Moreover,

When Periphery Comes to the Center  341 this student was born in the Dominican Republic and was familiar with Haitian culture and the tumultuous history between the two countries who share Hispaniola. This student took most assignments very seriously, and genuinely wanted to learn and felt self-motivated to make connections between the text and her meta-major. These qualities are crucial and mandatory prerequisites for students to produce quality work. In addition to just reading the text with students, I assist them in the process of making those connections by providing my rubric and detailed information about my assignment to librarians who have knowledge across the disciplines. This way, the librarians are able to find appropriate articles for students in advance, not as an exhaustive display where students are not left with their own research to conduct, but as an example of the fact that the connections can be made when one implores the correct research methods and approaches. Student A was able to produce a research project where she explored the connections between Danticat’s father, Mira, his exposure to environmental toxins as a New York City cab driver, and his Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. This way, she conducted a close reading of most of the moments where his disease is mentioned in the text, and then analyzed his potential causes, conditions, and symptoms as they relate to her research findings. This approach allowed student A to explore new and creative ways of understanding the intersectionality between Literature and her intended major and a low stakes opportunity to engage in research and discussions about her meta-major, Health Sciences. Student B Another student also seeks to work in the health-related field, but because of his predisposed and unilateral view of health-related issues, he was encouraged and challenged to explore not only the health issues in Haiti, but also the nuanced complexities of health-related issues in Haiti. Student B’s thesis allowed him to engage with the text and to encounter the complexities of global health issues; he states, In the book, Brother I’m Dying the author clearly brings to light the oppression brought on the communities by the UN forces and the fatalities they have caused, clearly putting the medical expertise to the test; however, they seem to triumph as people continue to seek medical treatment. The complexity that student B reveals the complexity of negative media representation of Haiti, which has been marred by negative publicity about its internal issues, but those same media outlets seem to overlook the outside forces, such as Interreference of foreign outside governments, NGOs, and other institutions benefit from and negatively affect the country’s volatile condition. Danticat and other first-generation Americans

342  Marvin E. Hobson who still maintain strong ties with their countries of origin and their new-found American homes are the best suited to criticize both worlds. Student C This student entitled her paper, “Making It in America” because she addresses the challenges of making it to America and living the “American Dream” after they have arrived in the country. This essay seeks to demystify the myth that life in America is always and automatically better for the immigrant, whether he is documented or undocumented. Although this particular student decided on this topic, she is a Biology major who plans to be a marine biologist one day. However, she chose this topic because of her personal connection to the topic matter as an American who has to constantly defend her choice to have close relationships with immigrants, against the will of her family. She was able to find anecdotes, ethnographic, and anthropological research that documents the challenges of living in America as an immigrant. Student D Another Biology major, student D wanted to deeply delve into the condition of agriculture in the Haitian landscape. His essay entitled “The Ecological Effects of Deforestation in Haiti” not only researches the physical spaces mentioned in BID, but he tries to address the causes of the horrible deforestation that has occurred in Haiti. Not only does he address the everyday activities of Haitians and how deforestation takes place, but he also includes historical internal and external forces that have helped to destroy and dismantle peasant farmers and the agricultural industry. Moreover, he includes some of the technological advancements that have been developed to help rectify the deforestation in Haiti. Student E This student was pursuing a career in criminology or the police academy. He found it very difficult to make connections between BID and his career choice until we read sections about the Tonton Macoutes. Most students, except those of Haitian decent, knew very little or nothing about the Tonton Macoutes or the overflow of Caribbean or Haitian gangs into American cities, such as Miami and New York. Once this connection was made within a very short discussion and a YouTube video keep explaining who the Tonton Macoutes were, this student began to see the connections between criminal justice and the text. He also found that “Reports show that a significant number of children in Haiti are forced into becoming members of the gang, making them to view it as a source of the basic necessities” (Munro, 2008). Although this student did not complete an exhaustive study of recommendations for confronting this

When Periphery Comes to the Center  343 issue, he was able to draw connections between the issue of gangs in Haiti and those mentioned in Danticat’s work.

Conclusion: The Need for Public Discourse Edwidge Danticat’s texts and especially BID challenge American students’ perceptions about Haiti and Haitian American culture in general. Her texts help students to humanize and to relate to Haitian and Caribbean culture in ways that social media and other mainstream forms of media have not been able to deliver. Danticat’s ability to abound in two, sometimes, opposing worlds, one at the center and the other on the periphery, allows her to produce texts that deliver highly nuanced Haitian experiences. Moreover, while students learn about these highly nuanced moments, not only do they need to make connections to their intended majors, but they also need to have a forum for discussing, unpacking, and engaging with their community. While my courses handled the first two items well, we did not address the latter as well as we should have. In Ajay Heble’s article, “Re-ethicizing the Classroom: Pedagogy, The Public Sphere, and Postcolonial Condition,” he states, indeed, if, with Mary Louise Pratt, we agree, (as I do) that “three historical processes . . . transforming the way literature and culture are conceived and studied in the academy” are “globalization, democratization, and colonialization (1995: 59)” then we need, in light of these processes and institutional consequences, to think anew about what we do in the classroom, and, perhaps more suggestively, about how and why we do it.18 As administrators and educators, we should definitely recognize and take action to teach those texts that challenge our practices and students’ perceptions as well. Access should not only be given to a select few texts, viewpoints, or interests; however, systematic, humane, and fair methodologies should be put in place to ensure that these initiatives thrive. The hope is that through the public sphere pedagogy (PSP), students will find and develop more informed voices as they grapple with the problems of others and the complexities of the society around them. When individuals from the mainstream engage with texts from authors who bring light to the periphery, students are forced to rethink their preconceived notions and previously adopted forms of othering. In addition, individuals and students from the periphery who study other peripheral spaces are able to find value in their peripheral origins, and they are able to see how the academic space can directly contribute to the communities in which they live. Nevertheless, the discussion should not stop there, and PSP is a wonderful tool for students to discuss, reason, critically analyze, and devise ways to solve societal and community-related problems, not in a vacuum, but among multiple community constituents.

344  Marvin E. Hobson

Notes 1 Caplan, Marc. How Strange the Change Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms. Stanford UP. Stanford. 2011. Print. 2 “California State University – Chico and Public Sphere Pedagogy.” Last modified 2019. 018 www.csuchico.edu/3.0/public-sphere-pedagogy.shtml 3 Davis, Charles. Saving Tomorrow Today, video file, 21:27, YouTube, posted 2016. https://youtu.be/slwQ-oYB5xU 4 Ibid. 5 U.S. Census, “Quick Facts, St. Lucie County, Florida. Population Tables: Calendar Year 2018,” Population Tables, 2010–2018, table 1, accessed Dec. 6, 2018, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/stluciecountyflorida/ PST045218 6 Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” Harper Collins. New York. 2018. 7 Hannerz, Ulf. “Culture between Center and Periphery: Toward a Macroanthropology,” Ethnos 54 (1989): 200–216. EBSCO. 8 Danticat, Edwidge. Brother I’m Dying. Vintage Books. New York. 2007. Print. 9 Genesis 20:1–17 (NIV). 10 U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Office of Inspector General. Joseph Nozius Dantica: Report of Investigation. (31 Mar. 2005), Danticat epigraph. file:///C:/Users/mhobs/Downloads/16641.pdf 11 Written Testimony for the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. (4 Oct. 2007), Statement of Edwidge Danticat, author and family member. Hearing on Detention and Removal: Immigration Detainee Medical Care. Washington, D.C. www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/images/asset_upload_ file782_32063.pdf 12 Zora, Neale Hurston. Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. Harper Collins. New York. 1938. Print. 13 Ibid. 14 Mary Margaret McBride Show, video file, 5:16, YouTube, posted 2010. https://youtu.be/YmKPjh5RX6c 15 Baker, Rachel. “Understanding College Students’ Major Choices Using Social Network Analysis,” Research in Higher Education 59:2 (2018): ­198–225. EBSCO. 16 Myers Zacwacki, Terry and Paul M. Rogers. Writing across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin. Boston. 2012. 17 Danticat, Edwidge. Brother I’m Dying. Vintage Books. New York. 2007. 18 Heble, Ajay. “Re-ethicizing the Classroom: Pedagogy, The Public Sphere, and Postcolonial Condition,” College Literature 29:1 (2002): 143–160. EBSCO.

Bibliography Baker, Rachel. “Understanding College Students’ Major Choices Using Social Network Analysis,” Research in Higher Education 59:2 (2018): 198–225. EBSCO. “California State University – Chico and Public Sphere Pedagogy,” Last modified 2019. 018. www.csuchico.edu/3.0/public-sphere-pedagogy.shtml Caplan, Marc. How Strange the Change Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms. Stanford UP. Stanford. 2011. Print.

When Periphery Comes to the Center  345 Danticat, Edwidge. Brother I’m Dying. Vintage Books. New York. 2007. Print. Davis, Charles. Saving Tomorrow Today, video file, 21:27, YouTube, posted 2016. https://youtu.be/slwQ-oYB5xU Genesis 20: 1–17 (NIV). Hannerz, Ulf. “Culture Between Center and Periphery: Toward a Macroanthropology,” Ethnos 54 (1989): 200–216. EBSCO. Heble, Ajay. “Re-ethicizing the Classroom: Pedagogy, The Public Sphere, and Postcolonial Condition,” College Literature 29:1 (2002): 143–160. EBSCO. Hurston, Z. Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” Harper Collins. New York. 2018. ———. Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. Harper Collins. New York. 1938. Print. Mary Margaret McBride Show, video file, 5:16, YouTube, posted 2010. https:// youtu.be/YmKPjh5RX6c Myers Zacwacki, Terry and Paul M. Rogers. Writing across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin. Boston. 2012. U.S. Census, “Quick Facts, St. Lucie County, Florida. Population Tables: Calendar Year 2018,” Population Tables, 2010–2018, table 1, accessed Dec. 6, 2018, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/stluciecountyflorida/PST045218 U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Office of Inspector General. Joseph Nozius Dantica: Report of Investigation. (31 Mar. 2005), Danticat epigraph. file:///C:/Users/mhobs/Downloads/16641.pdf Written Testimony for the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. (4 Oct. 2007), Statement of Edwidge Danticat, author and family member. Hearing on Detention and Removal: Immigration Detainee Medical Care. Washington, D.C. www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/images/asset_upload_ file782_32063.pdf

Appendix 1

ENC 1102 Schedule of Activities Spring 2018

Assignment Schedule (Monday & Wednesday) Assignments from Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama will be indicated by Literature. Finally, assignments from Brother, I’m Dying will be indicated by BID. With the exception of in-class writing or testing assignments, you should complete the reading assignments before the date indicated and be prepared in that class to discuss the material. WEEK 1 (January 8 & 10) MONDAY Course Overview Reading Assignments Reading Fiction “Introduction” (Literature 1–19) WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments “Reading Stories” (Literature 27–32) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Diagnostic Essay WEEK 2 (January 15 & 17) MONDAY NO SCHOOL—MLK DAY WEDNESDAY “Questions for Writing about Fiction” (Literature 125–127) “Elements of Fiction” (Literature 43–51; 49–51; 59–62; 66–67; 77–78; 85–86)

When Periphery Comes to the Center  347 WEEK 3 (January 22 & 24) MONDAY Reading Assignments William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” (Literature 78–86) “The Canon and the Curriculum” (Literature 2156–2161) “Formalist Perspectives,” “Biographical Perspectives,” and “Historical Perspectives,” “The Canon and the Curriculum” (Literature 2161–2169) “Documenting Sources: MLA Style” Handout: MLA Handout Exercise WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (Literature 611–642) Handout: Literary Analysis Handout Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Quiz # 1 2 Complete Discussion # 1 3 MLA Group Work WEEK 4 (January 29 & 31) MONDAY Reading Assignments Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (Literature 743–750) Zora Neale Hurston, “Spunk” (Literature 567–572) “How It Feels To Be Colored Me” WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments “Writing with Sources” (Literature 2119–2131) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: •

MLA Handout Exercise 1 Essay#1 In-Class

WEEK 5 (February 5 & 7) MONDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, Brother I’m Dying (BID)—Part I: Ch. 1 & 2 WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments “Using Information and Avoiding Plagiarism”

348  Marvin E. Hobson Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part I: Ch. 3 & 4 Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Quiz # 2 WEEK 6 (February 12 & 14) MONDAY Reading Assignments “Psychological Perspectives,” and “Sociological Perspectives” (Literature 2169–2174) Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part I: Ch. 5, 6, & 7 WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part I: Ch. 8, 9, & 10 Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Discussion # 2 2 Complete Quiz # 3 WEEK 7 (February 19 & 21) MONDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part II:—Ch. 1, 2 & 3 Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Essay #2 Short Fiction/Compare/Contrast WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part II:—Ch. 4, 5 & 6 Handout: Research Proposal Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Quiz # 4 2 Complete Discussion # 3 on Drama WEEK 8 (February 26 & 28) MONDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part II:—Ch. 7, 8, & 9

When Periphery Comes to the Center  349 WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part II:—Ch. 10 & 11 Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Quiz # 4 WEEK 9 (March 5 & 7) MONDAY Reading Assignments Edwidge Danticat, BID—Part II:—Ch. 12, 13 & 14 WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Drama “Reading Plays” (Literature 1247–1249) “The Interpretation of Drama” (Literature 1260–1264) Susan Glaspell Trifles (Literature 1858–1869) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Research Proposal, Outline, and Thesis: DUE (03/11) by 11:59 on Blackboard • 1–2 pages WEEK 10 (March 12–14) NO SCHOOL—SPRING BREAK WEEK 11 (March 19 & 21) MONDAY Reading Assignments “Types of Drama” (Literature 1265–1267) “Elements of Drama” (Literature 1268–1283) Watch, Read, and Discuss August Wilson’s Fences (Literature 2063– 2092) WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Watch, Read, and Discuss August Wilson’s Fences (Literature 2093–2115) Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Discussion # 4 2 Annotated Bibliography: Due (03/25) by 11:59 on Blackboard

350  Marvin E. Hobson WEEK 12 (March 26 & 28) MONDAY Reading Assignments Introduction to Shakespeare and Rap Watch, Read, and Discuss Titus Andronicus—Act I WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Watch, Read, and Discuss Titus Andronicus—Act II WEEK 13 (April 2 & 4) MONDAY Reading Assignments Watch, Read, and Discuss Titus Andronicus—Act III & IV WEDNESDAY Reading Assignments Watch, Read, and Discuss Titus Andronicus—Act V Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Complete Quiz # 5 • Covers all textbook readings 2 Literary Research Portfolio Rough Drafts • Bring hard copy to class WEEK 14 (April 9 & 11) MONDAY Reading Assignments Selected Poems Shakespeare, “Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day?” (874) Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” (844); Soyinka, “Hamlet” (1052); Walcott, “House of Umbrage” (1053); Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask” (1101) Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death” (Literature 810, 951), and “Faith is a fine invention” (915) “Langston Hughes in Context” (Literature 989–1026) WEDNESDAY ORAL PRESENTATIONS Essays, Exams, and Discussions: 1 Final (Literary) Research Portfolio Due 4/15 @ 11:59 in Blackboard • Bring Hardcopy to Class on Wednesday

When Periphery Comes to the Center  351 WEEK 15 (April 16 & 18) MONDAY ORAL PRESENTATIONS WEDNESDAY ORAL PRESENTATIONS WEEK 16 (April 23 & 25) MONDAY WEDNESDAY *The instructor reserves the right to change or modify due dates, assignments, to accommodate students and enhance their learning.

Appendix 2

Points of Entry

Suggested Themes and Meta-Majors related-to Brother I’m Dying

Arts, Humanities, Communication & Design: Story Telling, Haitian Art, Music, Dance, French, Creole, Haitian cuisine

Business NGOs, Non-profits, Faith-based organizations, Economics, Debt to France, Economics of Colonialism, Imperialism, and Liberation

Education: Language, Literacy, History, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Haitian Revolution, West African Traditions, Geography, Caribbean, Hispaniola, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, French Revolution

Health Sciences: Public Health, Nutrition, Mortality, HIV, Alternative medicine, Hougans, medicine doctors, Cholera

Industry, Manufacturing & Construction: Architecture, Rebuilding, Water Treatment, Sanitation, Monuments Construction

Public Safety, Fire Science & Law: Emergency Preparedness, Immigration, Violence, Gangs

Social Sciences, Human Services, Government: Politics, US Global Influence, Armed Forces, Dictatorships, US Occupation of Haiti, Leadership, Coup D’Etat, Religion, Ethics, Voodoo, Christianity, Catholicism, Children of Immigrants, Child Development and Behavior

STEM: Geology, Earth Science, Deforestation, Earthquake, Ecology

Contributors

Camila Alvarez is a Professor of English at Indian River State College. Her teaching and research interests include American Literature, Gender, Ecology, Text and Technology, Social Media, Rhetoric, Power Dynamics, and Marginalization. Kendra Auberry is the STEM Librarian/Instructor at Indian River State College. Her research focuses on collective impact, which refers to a collaborative, inter-organizational effort to effect social change. In addition to assisting students with research projects, Auberry also researches and supports faculty who are teaching service learning courses. Anita Baksh is Assistant Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College at the City University of New York (CUNY). She obtained her Ph.D. in English literature from University of Maryland, College Park. Her teaching and publications focus on Caribbean literature, South Asian diasporic literatures, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, and composition. Her essays on Indo-Caribbean women’s writing and feminist thought have been published in Bindi: The Multifaceted Lives of Indo-Caribbean Women (2011), Defying the Global Language: Perspectives in Ethnic Studies (2013), Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments ( 2016), and online in sx salon:  A Small Axe Literary Platform. Her current research examines how Indo-­Caribbean writers utilize indentureship as a way to understand the history of colonial domination and to negotiate dominant models of postcolonial Caribbean citizenship. Suchismita Banerjee is an English Professor at Indian River State College (IRSC) and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her dissertation is titled “Orphaned at Midnight: ‘Colonial Christians,’ Caste, and the Politics of Minoritization in Postcolonial Literature.” She received her MA in Literature from the University of Calcutta, India and a second Masters in Literary Studies from Wright State University, Ohio. She has a Bachelor of Education degree from

354 Contributors the University of Calcutta, India. Her teaching and research interests include Postcolonial literature and film, World literature with an emphasis on South Asian Diaspora, British Literature, Marxist Literary theory, Transnational Feminism and Cyber-feminism, and Introductory College Composition and research. She is a manuscript reviewer for the International Journal of English and Literature. Her current publication includes, “Betraying the Holy Wedlock: Imagining the Fate of Satyajit Ray’s Charulata or The Lonely Wife” in a special issue of the South Asian Review (2015). She has published in literary journals like Asiatic, The Fogdog Review, and the Journal of the Department of English of the University of Calcutta, India. She is the coordinator of the Creative Writing competition for Indian River State College and is the advisor of IRSC’s Creative Writing club. Maia Butler is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Culture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the co-founding Vice President of the Edwidge Danticat Society. Her research interests include Africana women writers, black and transnational feminisms, and Anglophone postcolonial literature and theory. She has presented research on the works of Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and William Faulkner at several conferences, including the South Atlantic MLA conference and the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, at which she was awarded the Hunt/ Faulkner Journal Scholarship. Dr. Charlene Desir  is an Associate Professor of Education at Nova Southeastern University. She received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has presented papers and presentations on immigrant students and their adjustment to the U.S. She has also published on the topic of immigrant identity and becoming a reflective researcher. She was the 2012 president of the Haitian Studies Association, and also appointed by Governor Rick Scott to serve on the Children’s Services Council in Broward County, FL. Dr. Desir has worked as a school psychologist, K-12 school counselor, school administrator in Massachusetts, and an academic advisor and professor. Schuyler Esprit is a scholar of Caribbean literature and cultural studies, and postcolonial theory. Dr. Esprit holds a Ph.D. in English literature from University of Maryland – College Park. She is the Founding Director of Create Caribbean Inc., Research Institute at Dominica State College. The Research Institute supports students and scholars to use digital technologies for research, teaching and learning in areas of Caribbean development, especially its culture, history and heritage. She currently works as Dean of Academic Affairs at Dominica State College. Dr. Esprit has also taught and held professional positions at

Contributors  355 a number of universities in the United States. She is now completing her book entitled West Indian Readers: A Social History and its digital companion, both of which are historical explorations of reading culture in the Caribbean. She has also written the introduction to the 2016 Papillote Press edition of The Orchid House, the 1953 novel by Dominican writer Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Jonathan Glover  earned his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Florida in 2011. His research foci include postcolonial literature and theory, literature of the Americas and Caribbean, and rhetoric and composition. He is an Associate Professor of English at Indian River State College in Vero Beach/Ft. Pierce, Florida, where he teaches courses in composition and American literature. Dr. Pamela D. Hall  is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Barry University. Dr. Hall is actively involved in projects throughout South Florida involving the empowerment of children and families, particularly Haitian adolescents. In 2013–2014, she served as a Fellow at Barry University’s Center for Community Service Initiatives. For six years she has served as the Program Director for a summer program funded by the Children’s Trust. The program’s mission is to improve literacy and social skills development of Haitian adolescents by using Haitian culture, education, history and various art mediums. Her research interests include ethnic identity, the effects of music on adolescents, and the benefits of service-learning. Marvin E. Hobson has been an educator since 2002 with experience in teaching English and Reading at the middle- and high-school levels. He started at IRSC in 2007 as an adjunct, and in 2008 he became an instructor of Developmental English in the Learning Assistance Department. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2011 and Associate Professor in 2014. In addition to enthusiastically teaching Developmental English, he has also taught Developmental Reading and Student Success. Most recently, Hobson has been added to the English, Communications, and Modern Languages Department, were he teaches English Composition and American Literature. On August 15, 2012, Mr. Hobson was awarded IRSC’s coveted Endowed Teacher Chair. He is extremely elated about his project that created and established the Zora Neale Hurston (ZNH) Center for Writing across the Curriculum, which introduces students to job-specific writing opportunities while preserving the ZNH legacy of ethnographic writing. Mr. Hobson began his studies at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Farmingdale, where he received his AS in Business Administration while working for Chase Bank. Then, he transferred to the SUNY—University at Albany. He went on to earn a BA in English

356 Contributors Literature and a MS in Reading Education while working as an intern for the New York State Education Department and a grants administrator for the New York Health Department. Currently, he is working toward a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where his triangulated dissertation will focus on the ethnographic and biblical representations in the dramas of ZNH, S. Ansky, and Tyler Perry. Mr. Hobson serves on various committees at IRSC such as the Academic Review Committee, the Honors Program Committee, and the Institute for Academic Excellence—Reading Committee. Most recently, he served as President of the Florida College English Association, a statewide organization which unites college and university faculty and graduate students in an annual conference, which Mr. Hobson and IRSC hosted in October of 2014. Danny M. Hoey Jr., an Associate Professor of English, joined IRSC in 2011 as an Assistant Professor of English. He most recently served as the Administrative Director of Minority Affairs and English Department Chair in addition to his professorship. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree and a Master of Arts degree in English and Creative Writing, along with a Master of Arts degree in Africana Studies and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He actively participates in the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, the Modern Language Association and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. His stories have appeared in WarpLand, Women in REDzine, Mandala Journal, Connotation Press, African Voices Magazine, SnReview, The Writer’s Bloc, and The Hampton University First-Year Writing Textbook. His pedagogical essay entitled “Dutchman, The Black body, and The Law” is forthcoming from the Modern Language Association’s Series Approaches to Teaching Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman. The Butterfly Lady, his first novel, won the ForeWord Firsts’ Winter 2013 debut fiction award and the Bronze Award in the IndiFab Book of the Year Award. Currently he is at work on his second novel. Celucien L. Joseph (Ph.D., University of Texas at Dallas; Ph.D., University of Pretoria) is an Associate Professor of English at IRSC. He is the Lead Editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat. He is the author and editor of many academic books and an interdisciplinary scholar whose work engages history, anthropology, literature, race, religion, and history of ideas. His most recent book includes Between Two Worlds: Jean Price-Mars, Haiti, and Africa (2018). His forthcoming books include Haiti: An Intellectual History (2020), Aristide: A Political and Theological Introduction to His Life and Thought (2020), and Jean Price-Mars: An Intellectual and Religious Biography (2020).

Contributors  357 Nathan Jung received his Ph.D. in English from Loyola University Chicago, where he specialized in global Anglophone literature, diaspora studies, media theory, and globalization. His current book project Public Relations: Diaspora, Media, and the State(s) of American Literature explores diasporic theories of media in relation to emerging transnational public sphere. His work has appeared in publications including the Journal of the Midwestern Modern Language Association and the International Journal of the Book. Rob Kenagy is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing at Hope College. His writing has appeared in the Best of the Net Anthology, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Hobart, and elsewhere. Tammie Jenkins holds a doctorate degree from Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the area of Curriculum and Instruction. Her publications includes edited book chapters, a journal article, and several book reviews. She is an editor for Hope Outreach Productions and serves as a contributor for the Haiti: Then and Now blog spot. She is a book reviewer for the following journals: Haiti: Then and Now, the Journal of Popular Culture, the American Studies Journal, the Journal of Haitian Studies, the Nonfiction Book Awards, the Popular Culture Studies Journal, the Journal of African American History, and the European Journal of American Culture. Although she enjoys the world of academia and her life as a “public intellectual,” Dr. Jenkins is employed as an Special Education with a local charter school system. She resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with her two sons, where she enjoys reading, cooking, writing, and traveling. Lisa Muir  has taught Danticat’s Krik? Krak! an uncountable number of times as well as presented and published on her works. She lives at the top of a mountain in Boone, NC, and teach American and Ethnic literatures, composition, and research at the bottom of the mountain.  Her publications include those dealing with Ethnic and American literatures, especially the varyingly autobiographical works of Eastern European immigrant women.  She is also the author of the short story collection Taking Down the Moon.  Angie Neely-Sardon  earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Florida. She earned a Master of Library Science degree from Florida State University. Before joining the great team at Indian River State College in Fall 2015, she worked in public and academic libraries in the Tampa Bay area. Her areas of interest include reference, information literacy, digital literacy, online learning, blended learning, and chat reference. She co-chairs the statewide LIS2004 Curriculum Committee to update the course’s content and assessments to align with the new ACRL Framework.

358 Contributors Wideline Seraphin is a Ph.D. candidate at The Pennsylvania State University studying Language, Culture and Society within the department of Curriculum and Instruction. She holds an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University and has worked as a teacher and out-of-school literacy instructor for the last five years. Wideline is a critical literacy theorist studying Haitian youth literacies, literacy education, and curriculum theory. Moussa Traore (Ph.D.) is a Senior Lecturer at the English Department of the University of Cape Coast (Ghana), where he teaches Literature; he also teaches Translation at the French Department of the same university. Dr. Traore holds a Ph.D. in World Literature from Illinois State University and he is the author of several articles which appeared in journals of high caliber; he also presented papers at several international conferences. He is currently co-editing a book titled Fight for Freedom: Black Resistance and Identity, forthcoming in Sub Saharan Publishers (January 2017). His research interest areas are Diasporan Studies, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, and Ecocriticism. Deborah Vriend Van Duinen, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Education and a Towsley Research Scholar at Hope College in Holland, MI where she teaches and does research in English Education. She is the program director of The Big Read Holland Area. Stan West  was a former foreign correspondent for the San Francisco-­ based Pacific News Service, Stan West remains a working journalist, reporting for the Wednesday Journal. He’s been a conflict journalist and culture reporter most of his career. A documentarian who co-­coordinates the Oak Park International Film Festival, West has written and co-authored several award-winning nonfiction books including Suburban Promised Land, which won the 2010 Illinois State Historical Society Award for Excellence. He’s worked for decades in broadcast and print journalism. He teaches writing, television and media literacy. Stan West received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. His thesis was on American expatriate writers in Paris and Madrid. His form was creative nonfiction. West holds a Master’s in the Teaching of Writing from DePaul University and a Bachelor’s in Rhetoric from University of Illinois-Champaign/ Urbana. He’s studied French, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish and Zulu. He has bilingual twin sons and a daughter who are all college grads and a psychiatrist-wife.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. active learning 62, 81 active listening 73, 74, 81 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 285 Affirmative Action Movement 331, 332 African Americans 9 The African: A triple Heritage (Mazrui) 157 Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Hooks) 94 Alexander, Leslie 147 Alexis, Jacques Stephen: General Sun, My Brother 210 Al Jazeera America (O’Brien) 45 Alvarez, Camila 4 American anti-immigrant political climate 10 American Civil War 10 American cultural value-system 9 American imperialism, in Haiti 239 The American Occupation of Haiti (1915–34) 187 “The Angel of Death and Father God” 204–5 Anzaldúa, Gloria 109; Borderlands/La Frontera 285 Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat (Joseph) 1, 2 Arendt, Hannah 316 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand 13, 15, 182, 185, 186, 191; administration 188 The Art of Death (Danticat) 235 a/r/tography 313–14 Avril, Matthieu Prosper 185 Baby Doc see Duvalier, Jean-Claude Baby Doc despotic government 6

Baker, Rachel 337 Baksh, Anita 4 Baldwin, James 283 de Beauvoir, Simone 314 “The Beersheba Treaty” 333 Bélance, Alèrte 309 Bemelman, Ludwig 246 Benabé, Jean: In Praise of Creoleness 160 Benítez-Rojo, Alejandro 289 Bennett, Ian 181, 196, 247 Berger, Peter L. 199 Berry, John W. 34 “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” 107–10, 112, 113, 120 Bhabha, Homi K.: The Location of Culture 286 Big Read Holland Area 130 Big Read Initiative 327, 340 Big Read Program 335 The Big Sea (Hughes) 155 Black feminist literacy scholars 40 “black historical experiences” 96 Black immigrants 42; communities for 300; marginalization 280, 282; youth 30, 31, 51 The Black Jacobins (James) 156–7 Black literacy 40 black literary bilingual/multilingual aesthetics 210–11, 211–13 “Black Lives Matter” movement 265 black-white conflict 142 Black women’s literary tradition 93, 101 Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Davies) 296

360 Index The Book of Miracles 21, 22 The Book of the Dead 15–17, 21, 22 Borderlands/La Frontera (Anzaldúa) 285 Breath, Eyes, Memory (Danticat) 56, 57, 93, 103, 285; cultural scripting, remembering, healing 99–101; labyrinths, old death, symbolic rootedness, new life 101–2; testing, sexual assault and multigenerational transgressions 94–6; (re) writing past as present 96–9 The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao (Díaz) 285–6 Brother, I’m Dying (BID) (Danticat) 3–5, 75, 76, 88, 127–9, 129, 132–40, 150, 158, 165, 180–2, 196–8, 217, 248n2, 327, 341; black literary multilingual aesthetics and memoir’s linguistic hybridity 210–12; constructing and reconstructing hope and redemption 246–8; eight-week teaching model to 257–62; engaging Haiti’s national history 182–8; function and role of religion 238–45; homelessness and unhomeliness 144–7; human condition, in Haiti 188–92; immigrant experience in United States 228–34; importance and meaning of family 218–24; literariness and fictional aspects of memoir 198–202; meaning of United States 226–8; metaphors and symbolism/figures of speech 208–9; predicament of death and fear 234–8; reading and teaching 192–5; reading, writing, and teaching 212–16; reality vs. fiction, truth vs. folktales 203–8; representation of women 224–6; resources 130, 131; sample class activities on 250–6; teaching of 152, 160–1 Butler, Judith 314 Butler, Maia 4 The Butterfly’s Way (Danticat) 109 Canal, Boisrond 182, 183 Caplan, Marc 328 Caribbean Discourse (Glissant) 158–9 Caselli, Francesco 140–3, 149; The Theory of Ethnic Conflict 155–6 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 7

Césaire, Aimé: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land 157 Chamoiseau, Patrick: In Praise of Creoleness 160 Chauvet, Marie Vieux 283 Chávez, Denise: Loving Pedro Infante 106 Children of the Sea (Danticat) 30, 31, 35, 42–8, 51, 107, 115–18, 122, 168, 171, 172 ChouKroune, Leila 314 Christ, Carol P. 317, 319, 321 Christie, John S. 122 Christopher, Warren 28n2 citizen-artist curriculum 265–6; pedagogy and observation 266–7; teaching methods and planning 267–9; weekly lesson plan for moodle 270–8 Civil Rights Movement 331, 332 Claire of the Sea Light (2013) (Danticat) 56 Cleary, Barbara A. 317 Clifford, James 292 Cohen, Robin: Global Diasporas: An Introduction 66 COIL see Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Coleman, Wilbur: The Theory of Ethnic Conflict 155–6 collaborative learning model 170 Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) 4, 168–9, 177; project 171, 172 “common denominator” 61 community-wide reading program 127, 128, 130–2, 134, 136, 138 Condé, Maryse: Heremakhonon 159 Confiant, Raphaël: In Praise of Creoleness 160 Conseil National D’Action JeanClaudiste (CONAJEC) 185 Creagh, Anna 269 Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (Danticat) 4, 135, 137, 175, 280–7, 290–1, 295, 296, 307–12; collective memoir 293–7; data analysis 322–3; floating homeland 288–93, 297–301; methodology 318–22; reflexive statement 323; theoretical background 313–18 crimes against humanity 45, 151 Cuban immigrants 7

Index  361 Cuklanz, Lisa 321 cultural heritage 5, 9, 99 Dallaire, Roméo 150 Daniels, Kyrah Malika 38 Dantica, Joseph 227 Dash, J. Michael 14, 25, 229, 291 Davies, Carol Boyce: Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject 296 dechoukaj 27 Desir, Charlene 31–5, 38, 39 The Dew Breaker (Danticat) 4, 56–7, 265, 269, 270; exercise 69–70; frame of evil 13–15; genre as method 59–65; genres of migration 65–8; justice, retribution, or revenge 23–8; Macoute 15–23; theme and form in 57–9 The Dew Breaker: Circa 1967 21 Dewey, John 266 diasporan migration 144 diasporic community 294 diasporic migration 66 Díaz, Junot 277; The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao 285–6 Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic (Pinto) 296 Domingue, Michel 183 Dominique, Jean J. 283, 284, 309 Douglass, Fredrick 147 Drouin, Louis 308 dual-immersion program 33 Dubois, Laurent 184 Du Bois, W. E. B. 140, 283; The Souls of Black Folk 144, 154, 229 Duchanaud, Elizabeth 291 Dufualt, Roseanna L. 128 Dunbar, Paul 210 Dunn, Maggie 63, 67, 68 Duvalier, François 6, 13, 15, 44, 97, 132, 183, 184 Duvalierism 27; and Macoutism 43; systemic violence of 25; violence and depravity of 14 Duvalier, Jean-Claude 6, 13, 15, 26, 27, 43–5, 97, 132, 182, 185 Duvalier Regime 6, 184, 186, 187 Duval, Robert 45 Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) 173

ecofeminism 317 ecofeminist theory 313 ecological destruction 313 “economic refugees” 7 ECTEL see Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) Electronic Monuments (Ulmer) 320 Elichaoff, Frauke 314 ENC 1102 Schedule of Activities Spring (2018) 346–51 English as a Second Language (ESOL) classroom 79 enslaved Africans 5 “Epilogue: Women Like Us” 111, 118, 122 Erzulie Dantor 95, 99 Esprit, Schuyler 4 Estime, Dumarsais 183 ethnic communities of Haitian American 6 ethnography 4, 318 Falquina, Silvia Martínez 64, 65 The Farming of Bones (Danticat) 4, 57, 139, 140, 147–52, 158, 166 female eroticism 116 female-to-female mentorship 113–20 feminism 317 feminist empiricism 314 Feminist Ethics of Care 313 feminist objectivity 315 feminist qualitative methodology 318 “fight AIDS, not nationality” 7 Fignole, Daniel 183, 184, 239 Fisher, Maisha T. 40 Freire, Paulo 4, 140; Pedagogy of the Oppressed 152, 162 “From Duvalierism to Dechoukal in The Dew Breaker: The Frame of Evil” (Glover) 3 Frost, Nollaig 314 Gaestel, Allyn 287 Gee, John P. 40 Gendler, Annette 197 General Sun, My Brother (Alexis) 210 genre theory 61 Gerber, Nancy F. 97 Glaspell, Susan 340 Glissant, Edouard 107, 112, 114–16; Caribbean Discourse 158–9; “The Novel of the Americas” 109 Global Classroom exercise 168

362 Index Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Cohen) 66 Globalization and its Discontents (Sassen) 143 global learning classrooms 167–8; Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) 168–9; faculty reflection and recommendations 173–5; institutional profiles and course descriptions 169–71; method 171–3; students’ reflections 175–7 global warming 313, 319 Glover, Jonathan: From Duvalierism to Dechoukal in The Dew Breaker: The Frame of Evil 3 Goldblatt, Patricia 122 González, Susana Vega 17, 18 Gottman, Ronald 59 Gouverneurs de la Rosée (Roumain) 148 grass-root movements 7 Greene, Graham 14, 20, 23; ‘Impossible to deepen that night’ 15 Gurr, Barbara 315 Haiti 14; American imperialism in 239; human condition in 188–92; human suffering in 191; imperialism in 187; national history 182–8 Haitian Americans 5–9; diaspora 8; ethnic communities 8; integration and assimilation, and impact on 9–10; religious services 8 Haitian art community 266 Haitian boat people 6–7 Haitian community 3, 9, 10, 168 Haitian Creole 8, 33 Haitian cultural identity 335 Haitian cultural realities 37 Haitian cultural tradition 220 Haitian culture 39, 334–6 Haitian diasporic life 5 Haitian Empowerment Literary Project (HELP) 3, 30; community psychology 35–6; ecological perspective 36; Empowerment of Individuals 37–8; Haitian Lakou 38–9; Influence of Context on Individual Action 37; literacy in 31; program 31–5; respect for diversity 36–7; socioculturally embedded literacies 39–40 Haitian ethnic communities 6

Haitian immigrants 6, 9, 32, 232 Haitian immigration 5, 6 Haitian Indoctrination 335 Haitian media outlets 8 Haitian political violence 15 Haitian program 33 Haitian refugees 10 Haitian religious epistemology 32 Haitian Revolution 5, 6, 269, 284 “Haitian Think Tank” 42; “Children of the Sea” 43–8; “Night Women” 48–50 Haitian violence 58 Haitian Vodou 8, 32, 99, 103 Hall, Pamela D. 34, 35 Hall, Stuart 286 Hannerz, Ulf 332 Harper, Francis 93 Heble, Ajay 342 HELP see Haitian Empowerment Literary Project (HELP) Heremakhonon (Condé) 159 Hernandez, Elsie 267 Hewett, Heather 97 Hill, Marc Lamont 329 historic oral storytelling 74 History of the Russian Revolution (Trotsky) 156 Hobson, Marvin 5 holistic feminist theory 317 Hooks, Bell 140, 152; Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism 94; Teaching to Transgress 162 Howard, Jeffrey 267 Hughes, Langston 140, 210; The Big Sea 155 human condition, in Haiti 188–92 human rights activism 2, 265 human suffering, in Haiti 191 Hurston, Zora N. 331, 332; Tell My Horse 335; Their Eyes Were Watching God 154–5 Illuminata: A Return to Prayer (Williamson) 37 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) 7 imperialism, in Haiti 187 ‘Impossible to deepen that night’ (Greene) 15 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs) 101 Ingram, Forrest 62, 63

Index  363 In Praise of Creoleness (Benabé, Chamoiseau & Confiant) 160 INS see Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Institute for International Education 169 Institutional Review Boards (IRB) 74 internet-based tools 169 internship colloquium 170–1 intertextuality 295, 297 “Inventing Community” 268, 269 Jacobs, Harriet 93; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 101 James, C.L.R.: The Black Jacobins 156–7 Jazz (Morrison) 196 Joseph, Celucien 4; Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat 1, 2 Jour des Aieux Oral History Project 72–3, 87–9; goals 76–7; incorporation into IRSC courses 79–80; learning objectives 77–9; lesson plan 77; oral history and libraries 80; project description 75–6; results 80–2; StoryCorps 73–5 Keifer-Boyd, Karen 313, 317 Kenagy, Rob 4 Kennedy, J. Gerald 63, 68 Kissel-Ito, Cindy 103 Kolb, David 266 Kossoula, Oluale 331 “KreyEnglish” 210–12 Krik? Krak! (Danticat) 30, 52, 57, 121–2, 167; female mentorship in 106–10; female-to-female mentorship 113–20; global learning classrooms (see global learning classrooms); “Haitian Think Tank” 43–50; HELP Program 31–43; women solidarity and Caribbean aesthetics 110–13 Kumar, Sukrita Paul 314 La Belle Vie: The Good Life 134 Laguerre, Michel S. 7 Lakou 30, 31, 35, 38–9 “land of afflictions” 226–7 La Sentencia 287 Lavaud, Franck 183 Laymon, Kiese 329

learning objectives of learning 81 “Le Parti liberal” 183 “Le Parti national” 183 letter-writing process 199–202 Levelt, Antoine 183 Lewin, Kurt 37 Lincoln and the Negro (Quarles) 147 “lived modernity” 112, 116 The Location of Culture (Bhabha) 286 Loving Pedro Infante (Chávez) 106 Lwas 38, 39 McIntosh, Heather 321 McKee, Heidi 321 Madhok, Sumi 316 Magloire, Paul Eugene 183 Manichean moral schema 15 Manigat, Leslie 185 Masters of the Dew (Roumain) 210 “Matrix 3d Learning Strategies and Assessment Methods” 268 “matured modernity” 116 Mazrui, Ali: The African: A triple Heritage 157 Mein Kampf 151 Mesirow, Jack 269 Michel, Claudine 38 Micheline, Marie 228 “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile” (Said) 295 “The Missing Peace” 110, 115, 121 Mohony, Ella 287 “Monkey Tails” 26, 27 Morris, Ann 63, 67, 68 Morrison, Toni 210; Jazz 196 Nagel, James 64, 68 Naples, Nancy A. 315 national immigration issues 129 National Progressive Democratic Party 185 National Public Radio (NPR) 73 NEA Big Read grant program 77, 78 New Deal Federal Writer’s Project 74 The New Yorker (Danticat) 280, 300 New York, meaning and characterization of 227–8 Night Women (Danticat) 30, 31, 42, 116, 119, 167 “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” 120, 168, 172 Nolan, Rachel 287

364 Index non-chronological events to BID 213, 215–16 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Césaire) 157 “The Novel of the Americas” (Glissant) 109 NPR see National Public Radio (NPR) Numa, Marcel 308 O’Brien, Soledad: Al Jazeera America 45 Ong, Walter J. 210 Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry (Laraque & Jack) 47 oral history interviews 73 Oral History Project Goal and Purpose 77 Osbey, Brenda Marie 285, 299 Osman, Jamila 286 Paquet, Sandra Pouchet 289 “pedagogical consciousness” 2 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire) 152, 162 Peripheral Modernisms 328 Pinto, Sandra: Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic 296 “political refugees” 7 Portelli, Alessandro 74, 84n12 Porter, James E. 321 positive psychology model of intervention 36 postnationalism 290, 301 Préval, René 13, 15 Price-Mars, Jean: So Spoke the Uncle 156 public sphere pedagogy (PSP) 327, 328, 342 Pulitano, Elvira 93 Queen, Mary 315 Rai, Shirin M. 316 Rappaport, Julian 38 “Rapunzel-Like Snake” 203–4 Raymond, Janine 267 Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Smith & Watson) 297 “reciprocal learning” 269 reflexive writing 323 Renick, Ralph 44 Reno, Janet 28n2

Research and Service Learning Colloquium 176 Research and Service Learning Internship Program 170 retributive violence 26–8 return narratives 66 Roumain, Jacques 210; Gouverneurs de la Rosée 148 The Rwandan Genocide (Haperen) 150 Said, Edward: “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile” 295 Saint-Domingue-Haiti 5 Salomon, Lysius 183 Sam, David L. 34 Sassen, Saskia: Globalization and its Discontents 143 “Seeing Things Simply” 110–11, 119 self-vampirism 28 Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction (Tompkins) 294 Seraphin, Wideline 41, 43, 45, 46, 48–50 sexual assault 50, 94–6 “shared literary devices” 61 “short story cycles” 62–5 Smith, Nicole 267 Smith, Sidonie: Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 297 “social responsibility learning” 268 So Spoke the Uncle (Price-Mars) 156 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois) 144, 154, 229 spirituality 318 Stefanko, Jacqueline 122 StoryCorps 72–4; Jour des Aieux Oral History Project (see Jour des Aieux Oral History Project) students in Dominica 176 students’ investment 174–5 Survey Monkey 323 Sutherland, Christine Mason 313, 317 Teaching to Transgress (Hooks) 162 Tell My Horse (Hurston) 335 Terry, Lucy 93 Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston) 154–5 The Theory of Ethnic Conflict (Caselli & Coleman) 139, 140–2, 155–6 Ti Legliz (little church) 186

Index  365 Tomlinson, John 60 Tompkins, Jane: Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 294 tonton macoutes 3, 13–15, 18, 19, 23, 27, 28, 45, 97, 98, 118, 342 traditional class group 176 transformational learning 267 Traore, Moussa 4 traumatic violence 67 Trotsky, Leon: History of the Russian Revolution 156 Trujillo, Rafael 148, 158 Trump, Donald 286 Ulmer, Gregory: Electronic Monuments 320 “Upward Bound” project 266 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 7 U.S. Immigration System 128, 132, 137 Van Duinen, Deborah 4 Van Haperen, Maria: The Rwandan Genocide 150 Vieux-Chauvet, Marie 309 Vodou principles 39 Volontaires de la Securite Nationalite (VSN) 184 Voltaire, Carolle 265–6

Walcott-Hackshaw, Elizabeth 25 Walker, Alice 210 “A Wall of Fire Rising” 117, 118 Warre, Austin 61 Watson, Julia: Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 297 Wellek, Rene 61 West, Stan 4 Whittemore, Mary C. 317 Wiesel, Elie 197 Wilbur, Coleman 140–3, 149 Williamson, Marianne: Illuminata: A Return to Prayer 37 Willis, Susan 96 Wright, Janet 94 Wright, Richard 210 Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) 327, 339 Writing as a Way of Being (Yagleski) 313, 320 Yagleski, Robert 316; Writing as a Way of Being 313, 320 Yung, Nathan A. 3 Zeleza, Paul T. 292 Zephir, Flore 8, 9