Edwidge Danticat - The Butterfly's Way - Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States

Before Jean's death, I had been hopeful that this book would give voice to some singular experiences of an admittedly small but wide- ranging fragment of the Haitian dyaspora in the United States. After his death, I find myself cherishing the fact that the people whose lives are detailed and represented here do travel between many worlds. This book for me now represents both a way to recount our silences-as in Leslie Casimir's "Reporting Silence"-and to say good-bye-as in Patrick Sylvain's "Adieu Miles and Good-bye Democracy." However, we are not saying good-bye to a country, but to a notion that as "Dyaspora" we do not own it and it does not own us. At the same time, we are also saying, in the words of Dany Laferriere's essay, "America, We Are Here." And we are not, as Joel Dreyfuss reminds the world in his essay, "A Cage of Words," just people from "the Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere," but also people who "have produced great art like that of Ireland and Portugal… great writers and scholars like those of Russia and Brazil." And great heroes like Jean Dominique.

A few weeks before Jean's death, Patrick Dorismond, a Haitian-American man, was gunned down by a New York City police officer in a Manhattan street across the bridge from where another Haitian man, Abner Louima, was beaten, then sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn precinct by a police officer. I ask myself now what Jean- as he inevitably would have had to report these events on his radio program-must have said about these incidents, which so closely resemble the atrocities that Haitians over the years have fled Haiti to escape. It has not been lost on us that of three black men tortured and killed by police in New York in the past two years, two were Haitian. Reading the essays in this book again after these events impels me to think of the many more pages that could be-and will be written-about our experiences as people belonging to the Haitian dyaspora in the United States. But anyone who has ever witnessed a gathering of the likes described by Jean-Pierre Benoit in "Bonne Annee" or Barbara Sanon in "Black Crows and Zombie Girls" knows our voices will not be silenced, our stories will be told.

In her essay, poet and painter Marilene Phipps writes, "Painting and Poetry are my battlefields… Living in another country, I use my pen or my brush to voice incantations to a particular world that has created me and, to a certain extent, now uses me to re-create itself." In this collection, the writers define themselves as well as the worlds that define them, through tragedies, like the deaths of Jean Dominique and Patrick Dorismond, but also through celebrations like the New York, Boston, and Miami street parades that followed the end of the Duvalier regime in 1986. Or through voices like that of Joanne Hyppolite turning a sometimes dreaded word in her favor, celebrating her "dyaspora" status, reminding us that we are not alone.

"When you are in Haiti, they call you Dyaspora ," writes Hyppolite. "… you are used to it. You get so you can jump between worlds with the same ease that you slide on your nightgown every evening."

Guapa !

What will I tell you, my son?

What will I say to you, my daughter?

You for whom the tropics

Are a marvelous paradise

A blooming garden of islands floating

In the blue box

Of the Caribbean sea

What will I tell you

When you ask me

Father, speak to us of Haiti?

Then my eyes sparkling with pride

I would love to tell you

Of the blue mornings of my country

When the mountains stretch out

Lazily

In the predawn light

The waterfalls flowing

With freshness

The fragrance of molasses-filled coffee

In the courtyards

The fields of sugar cane

Racing

In cloudy waves

Towards the horizon

The heated voices of peasant men

Who caress the earth

With their fertile hands

The supple steps of peasant women

On top of the dew

The morning clamor

In the plains the small valleys

And the lost hamlets

Which cloak the true heart

Of Haiti.

I would also tell you

Of the tin huts

Slumbering beneath the moon

In the milky warmth

Of spirit-filled

Summer nights

And the countryside cemeteries

Where the ancestors rest

In graves ornate

With purple seashells

And the sweet and heady perfumes

Of basilique lemongrass

I would love to tell you

Of the colonial elegance of the villas

Hidden in the bougainvilleas

And the beds of azaleas

And the vast paved trails

Behind dense walls

The verandahs with princely mosaics

Embellished

With large vases of clay

Covered

With sheets of ferns

Pink cretonnes

Verandahs where one catches

A breath of fresh air

During nights

Of staggering heat

By listening to

The sounds of the city

Rising up to the foothills

I would love to recite for you

The great history

Of the peoples of my country

Their daily struggles

For food and drink

Tireless people

Hardworking people

Whose lives are a struggle

With no end

Against misery

Fatigue

Dust

In the open markets

Under the sun's blazing breath

I would want to make you see

The clean unbroken streets

Straight as arrows

Bordered by the green

Of royal palms and date palms in bloom

I would love to make you admire

The shadowed dwellings

The oasis of green

Of my Eden

I would carry you

On my shivering wings

To the top of Croix D'Haiti

And from there

Your gaze would travel over

These mountains

These plains

These valleys

These towns

These schools

These orphanages

These studios

These churches

These factories

These hounforts

These prayer houses

These universities

These art houses

Conceived by our genius

Where hope never dies.

When you are in Haiti they call you Dyaspora . This word, which connotes both connection and disconnection, accurately describes your condition as a Haitian American. Disconnected from the physical landscape of the homeland, you don't grow up with a mango tree in your yard, you don't suck keneps in the summer, or sit in the dark listening to stories of Konpe Bouki and Malis. The bleat of vaksins or the beating of a Yanvalou on Rada drums are neither in the background or the foreground of your life. Your French is nonexistent. Haiti is not where you live.

Your house in Boston is your island. As the only Haitian family on the hillside street you grow up on, it represents Haiti to you. It was where your granmk refused to learn English, where goods like ripe mangoes, plantains, djondjon , and hard white blobs of mints come to you in boxes through the mail. At your communion and birthday parties, all of Boston Haiti seems to gather in your house to eat griyo and sip kremas . It takes forever for you to kiss every cheek, some of them heavy with face powder, some of them damp with perspiration, some of them with scratchy face hair, and some of them giving you a perfume head-rush as you swoop in. You are grateful for every smooth, dry cheek you encounter. In your house, the dreaded matinet which your parents imported from Haiti just to keep you, your brother, and your sister in line sits threateningly on top of the wardrobe. It is where your mother's andeyb Kreyol accent and your father's lavil French accent make sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible music together. On Sundays in your house, "Dominika-anik-anik" floats from the speakers of the record player early in the morning and you are made to put on one of your frilly dresses, your matching lace-edged socks, and black shoes. Your mother ties long ribbons into a bow at the root of each braid. She warns you, your brother and your sister to "respect your heads" as you drive to St. Angela's, never missing a Sunday service in fourteen years. In your island house, everyone has two names. The name they were given and the nickname they have been granted so that your mother is Gisou, your father is Popo, your brother is Claudy, your sister is Tinou, you are Jojo, and your grandmother is Manchoun. Every day your mother serves rice and beans and you methodically pick out all the beans because you don't like pwa . You think they are ugly and why does all the rice have to have beans anyway? Even with the white rice or the mayi moulen, your mother makes sbspwa - bean sauce. You develop the idea that Haitians are obsessed with beans. In your house there is a mortar and a pestle as well as five pictures of Jesus, your parents drink Cafe Bustelo every morning, your father wears gwayabel shirts and smokes cigarettes, and you are beaten when you don't get good grades at school. You learn about the infidelities of husbands from conversations your aunts have. You are dragged to Haitian plays, Haitian bah, and Haitian concerts where in spite of yourself konpa rhythms make you sway. You know the names of Haitian presidents and military leaders because political discussions inevitably erupt whenever there are more than three Haitian men together in the same place. Every time you are sick, your mother rubs you down with a foul-smelling liquid that she keeps in an old Barbancourt rum bottle under her bed. You splash yourself with Bien-etre after every bath. Your parents speak to you in Kreyol , you respond in English, and somehow this works and feels natural. But when your mother speaks English, things seem to go wrong. She makes no distinction between he and she, and you become the pronoun police. Every day you get a visit from some matant or monnonk or kouzen who is also a tnarenn or parenn of someone in the house. In your house, your grandmother has a porcelain kivet she keeps under her bed to relieve herself at night. You pore over photograph albums where there are pictures of you going to school in Haiti, in the yard in Haiti, under the white Christmas tree in Haiti, and you marvel because you do not remember anything that you see. You do not remember Haiti because you left there too young but it does not matter because it is as if Haiti has lassoed your house with an invisible rope.