Essay: Looking for Leaders on a Day of Chaos in Haiti

Emily Troutman Contributor

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"As soon as you think you understand Haiti, that's the moment you can be sure you don't understand anything."

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Nov. 29) -- That Haitian proverb never seemed more true than today. There is so much to understand here, and so little to know.

Most of the 19 candidates running for president came together this weekend to denounce the election after reports of widespread fraud. Sunday was an exhausting day that left the country even more confused. It's not clear how the Haitian government, or the international community, will take action to respect their stance.

Some in Haiti believe ballots cast in the election will be counted and announced without the evidence of widespread fraud. Others think President Rene Preval has rigged the elections, and his candidate, Jude Celestin, will prevail against the sentiment of the people. Some wonder whether Preval will still be in power by Tuesday.

Over the past few days and weeks, with the support of local journalist Roxane Ledan, I was able to meet 15 of the 19 candidates. They are all different, all dedicated in their own ways, for their own reasons, to Haiti's future. And they struggle to keep that focus when, this week, no one can predict what will happen next.

 

 

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Election Chaos in Haiti

Group Grows Quickly From 3 to 13

Sunday began with a news conference. Three candidates -- Charles Baker, the apparel industrialist and farmer; Jean Henry Ceant, an attorney; and musician Michel Martelly -- made a decision to denounce the elections. They started as three candidates and through phone calls and discussion with others, they ended up at a table of 13. As a group, they took some time to decide what to say.

People in the room told me it was calm. There was a consensus. For everyone, it was a powerful decision. To conclude that the election was a sham meant that each candidate risked his or her own reputation and, for some, a sense of safety.

I asked Baker, a popular opposition candidate, if he feared that the announcement would cause insecurity in Haiti.

"I'm already dead," he said. He told me he isn't afraid, but simply that he's decided. He has committed himself, in his mind, to being part of this opposition, to changing other Haitians' lives.

During his campaign, Baker traveled to the Artibonite region of Haiti nine days after the first outbreak of cholera. There was no government presence, he said. No ambulances, nothing. His campaign truck became a taxi for the dying.

Yvon Neptune, who was once prime minister and spent two years as a political prisoner here, initially left the back-room conversations discouraged, he said, by the other 12 candidates' message.

"I was president of the senate," Neptune said. "I was prime minister. I won't make decisions of the state based on impulse."

Like other candidates, including, perhaps, the few who weren't present, Neptune wondered about the motivation of the group. Was this a legitimate denouncement of illegitimate elections? Or, as Neptune told me, an attempt to "settle scores"?

"We cancel the elections, then what?" he said. "When are the new elections? Preval stays in power?" On Sunday evening, he rejoined the others' position, as did two others today.

Anne Marie Josette Bijou, a physician and candidate for president, was also with the group. This month she told me she has one dream for Haiti: "A new country, democratic, with respect for human rights."

The 12 candidates -- minus Neptune -- finally descended to a conference room at the Hotel Karibe to make their announcement.

They were greeted with wild cheers and applause. They said the elections were meaningless. People went to polling stations and could not vote, they said, which is also what I saw in the few I visited that morning.

One man, at a school in the suburb of Petionville, became furious. He almost cried, or maybe he did cry. And me, along with him. Others were nonplussed. People came into the polling station, could not find their names on the registry and went home. The few who did vote told me they had little faith that their votes would be counted.

"Change. I want change." That's what everyone told me.

Voting in the Streets

After the news conference, Michel Martelly and Charles Baker made plans to visit the office of the provisional electoral council, which manages and will eventually certify the results of this election.

But when Martelly left the hotel, another musician, one-time presidential hopeful Wyclef Jean, met Martelly's crowd. He got swept up and decided to join the entourage, sitting on top of a pickup truck as Martelly rode up the hill to the election office.

For the first 40 minutes, Jean sat on the roof of the truck, furiously concentrated on his cell phone. He seemed so disengaged that I asked him, "Are you endorsing Sweet Micky?"

The crowd was pink, pink and more pink -- Martelly's signature color. Jean told me, "Do you see me on top of any other trucks with other candidates?"

Sometimes it seems to me like everyone is here, but no one wants to be here. The crowd, almost entirely in support of Martelly, was joyful, angry, peaceful, determined, unsure, perhaps like Jean, of what would happen the next few days.

The only thing he's sure of, Jean's representatives told me, is that he wants free and fair elections for Haiti.

A United Nations helicopter circled, and Haitian police forces eventually broke up the parade, which had swelled to 10,000, then 20,000, then more, all over the streets of Port-au-Prince.

I went to meet with Garaudy Laguerre at his house. He is a young presidential candidate who is little-known but was one of the group who called for the election annulment. He was upset and wanted to talk.

Laguerre said that when he joined the opposition to call for an annulment of the election, "I did so with great pain." He said he saw Martelly, along with Baker and Jean, in what seemed to be a celebration through the streets. He said any day there is a fraudulent election in Haiti is a very sad day.

He denounced the actions of the others, saying, "I would hate for people to think this is something to be jubilant about."

Out of curiosity, I called Bijou, the physician, to ask what she thought. She said people were protesting and defending their own rights. To her, the actions of thousands in the streets, happy or not, seemed appropriate.

And other people told me some version of the same sentiment: This is how people vote in Haiti when they cannot vote by other means. They vote in the streets.

A Day of Triumph for Martelly

At the end of the evening, I went to visit Martelly. In many respects, he emerged a victor from the days' events. The crowds along the roads in Port-au-Prince cheered for him and few others. According to polls in Haiti, Martelly was in third place this week.

Earlier in the evening, when Baker joined Martelly and Jean on the truck, I asked if he too was endorsing "Sweet Micky."

"No," Baker said with a smile. "We are [all] endorsing Haiti. It's [Martelly's] crowd, but I'm happy to be here." And he meant it.

As the evening wore on, at Martelly's house, a small group of friends and family surrounded the candidate. For hours, they sat in near-silence, listening to radio reports of the day's events and looking at their phones for news. When the radio reported something positive, they rose into a careful cheer. When it reported fraud, they argued with the radio DJ and turned to each other in disgust.

But eventually, the silence of the night turned to business. Martelly's political consultant, the clever and successful Antonio Sola from the communications group OstosSola, convened several conversations.

Sola is credited with helping Mexican President Felipe Calderon take office there in 2006. He told me Martelly's campaign has been very different, partially because everything -- every meeting, every conversation -- takes place at Martelly's house, somewhere between the kittens in the garden, the women in the kitchen and the empty pool.

As associates -- and sometimes, celebrities -- made their way in and out of the house throughout the evening, his family carried on, as usual. "Sweet Micky," the musical persona of Michel Martelly, has been an enormous figure in Haiti for years, and celebrity and politics converge at his house in a way that everyone is comfortable with already.

Life was like this, his family tells me. A life on the road, a life with intermittent gunfire. Last week, Martelly believes someone tried to kill him in Les Cayes. In the garden of his house, kids run around between the conversations of adults. Life is often about keeping up with, and watching, "Michel." He says whatever he wants to, and he always manages to draw a crowd.

Lessons to Be Learned

If Martelly or the other candidates have a story to tell, or a lesson to teach, it is about perseverance in chaos. This month they taught me that if you want to become the president of Haiti, there are some unwritten rules.

The first rule is that you have to want to be president. You have to want it beyond reason, beyond reward. You have to want it because you have a dream of Haiti as it once was, or perhaps as it should be. And sometimes, when you look out into the crowds, or knock on doors, you have to allow yourself to see that Haiti, inside of this one.

The second rule to becoming president of Haiti is that you must be fearless. Because with all these foreigners around, and celebrities stopping by, it's easy to forget that Haiti makes her own decisions. When political change happens here, it's often by coups.

It may not be al-Qaida, but some second-rate terrorist is always ready to help a weak state fail. The Haitian Coast Guard has one boat, or maybe a few. Drug dealers love that.

The third, and final rule, is that you must win. And here, the ground shifts. Because winning in Haiti is often not about your dreams and strength alone. Winning is where politics and press conferences and posturing will fail. Winning is the purview of the few, and the very clever.

If you want to be president of Haiti, you have to shout and be quiet all at once. You have to become a hero to some, and an enemy to everyone else. This week will be unusual in Haiti, even for its veterans and purveyors of the unexpected.

You want to be president, that's one thing. To win? That's something else. To change Haiti? To make amends for the past? To give Haiti its future back?

For that, someone will have to fight.

Cholera Reaches Port-au-Prince as Victims Are Left In Mass Graves

November 22, 2010 by Frank

The cholera epidemic that has killed over 1,300 people and left tens of thousands sick has reached the capital city of Port-au-Prince, and is quietly taking it toll on a population that lack proper access to sanitation and hygiene.  Aid workers are not concerned so much with the disease reaching the larger tent camps, as many are provided clean drinking water and have such a heavy NGO presence that the necessary aid would likely be provided in the event of an outbreak.  They are more worried about it spreading in the slums, especially in places like Cite Soleil, where shanty towns lack access to clean water, and where the sanitation infrastructure is non-existent.

From our perspective, it wasn’t clear that cholera had hit the city, even though news reports were claiming otherwise.  You just don’t see it.  Living in our house in a relatively nice part of town, the presence of cholera was not obvious, which stresses that this is not a disease that people who have the proper resources get.  It’s a disease that affects the poor, but with the vast majority of people in this country living on less than $2 a day, almost everyone is vulnerable.  All we needed to do was travel downtown last Thursday and the toll of this cholera epidemic slapped us in the face.

Ben and I were driving around PAP Thursday looking for protests when we drove by a man who looked like he was dead on the side of the road.  We pulled over and looked down, “Yeah, he’s dead,” I said just as the man moved his head back and forth lethargically.  We were shocked, so we asked people who were standing close-by how long he had been laying there.  They explained that the man had cholera and that he had been there for a couple hours.  Soon after his mother came and began to wail, saying that he was her only child and asking “Why is this happening?” in Kreyol.

NOTE: The following pictures are graphic.  If you would like to continue reading please click “continue reading”.

 

It turned out that there was a Cholera Treatment Center just 200 feet from where this man was dying, so we ran to the center and asked the staff to come and help this man who was fighting for his life.  They delayed, and by the time they came to check on the man he had died.  The mother wailed, stomping her feet and crying into her hands, and then a large truck with an open back pulled up carrying men draped in yellow rain coats and facemasks.  They jumped off the truck and began spraying the body with a bleach-water mixture to disinfect the body and the surrounding area (including the mother).

The team wrapped the body in a white body bag and put it into the bed of the truck they had arrived in.  They got back in the truck, drove to the cholera treatment center 200 feet away, picked up another 7 bodies, and then headed out.  They told us they were heading to a mass grave that had been prepared, somewhere out in the mountains, and that we should follow.  “You need to see how many bodies we have,” explained one of them.

The team is a rag-tag group of young Haitian men who have been tasked with the job of collecting those in the city who have died from cholera.  There is a phone number that people can call when someone has died from the disease, and these are the guys that come to pick up your loved ones.  They don’t ask for a name, they don’t ask for a phone number or any information about the victim, they just spray down the body, put them in body bags, and then load them in the car.  The family members or friends will never know where the body is laid to rest, they will never be able to pay their respects.

Ben and I were following the truck as it pulled away from the cholera treatment center on its way to burial site when we were stopped by a crowd of people gathered around what looked like a pile of clothes surrounded by ‘Caution’ tape.  We stopped with the truck, and were told that it was the body of a 10 year-old boy.  He had died of cholera and they had put his body in the street so that someone would pick it up.

The crowd surrounding the body grew bigger, and the boy’s mother appeared amongst the throngs of people.  According to her, her son had been in school just yesterday.  “He got sick in the middle of the night, around 1am, and then around 10am he died,” she explained with her arm around her daughter, “I didn’t think he was that sick.”

And this case is a perfect example of why the cholera outbreak is hitting Haiti so hard.  The lack of eduction amongst the people in regards to the disease is resulting in hundreds of people dying when it’s completely preventable.  Severe diarrhea is prevalent here anyways, especially in the slums, so when people get the symptoms of cholera they don’t react much differently because Haiti hasn’t seen a disease like this in over 50 years.   I’ve said in the past that cholera is 100% treatable as long as you get to the hospital in time, and it’s still true.  Unfortunately, people wait too long to bring their loved ones to the hospital, and once they arrive it’s too late, OR they just don’t have the means to transport them, and they don’t make it to the hospital at all.

The team bagged the body of the 10 year-old boy and then jumped back in the truck on their way to the mass grave.  Ben and I followed them the next day to the grave which is located just 30 minutes outside the city at the base of the mountains to the north.  The truck barreled down the roads, leaving the scent of death behind it, and effortlessly passing through police checkpoints as just the mention of cholera gets you a free pass.  They drove down a long gravel road off the highway, and behind a large hill sat a towering pile of dirt next to a hole large enough to fit at least 3 large SUVs.  Inside the walls of the newly dug grave you could see pockets of remains from earthquake victims that were buried the same way.  On the floor of the grave sat a single human skull.

They backed the truck up to the grave and started unloading the bodies into the hole.  One-by-one the body bags tumbled to the bottom of the 20 foot-deep pit that resembled a trash dump more than a memorial to those who had just died.  Another truck arrived to unload another 10 cholera victims, and in the end the grave had a disorganized pile of 22 body bags sitting on one end.  The sheer enormity of the hole made the small pile of bodies sitting there seem that much less significant, as this wasn’t just their grave, it would be the grave of hundreds more.  “We’ll keep on putting bodies in here until it’s full,” one of the team members explained, “and then we’ll cover it with dirt and dig another one.”

The sun set on the grave and the mosquitoes swarmed the living, causing everyone to flee to their cars, and then their homes.  This will be their job for the foreseeable future, as this epidemic is not showing any signs of letting up.  “It’s definitely increasing,” one of the workers explained, “On Monday we had 5, Tuesday we had 12, and today we have 22.  It’s a lot of work.”

I normally wouldn’t write such a gruesome post but this seemed like something that needed to be put out there.  The situation in PAP is bad, and the fact that it has resulted in this is terrifying.  There is a ton of anger amongst the people regarding the source of the epidemic, and all signs are pointing towards Nepalese UN troops who have a base by the Artibonite River, where the epidemic began.  The CDC has confirmed the strain came from southeast Asia, and there is video of latrines at the Nepalese base that leak their sewage directly into the river.  The UN’s response to these accusations is that “the source of the epidemic doesn’t change our response to it medically,” but it is irresponsible to not take responsibility for being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Haitians when you are supposed to be here to protect them.

The numbers are grossly under-reported, as the number of deaths that the Ministry of Health announces every day is only including those who died in a hospital, or were brought there after they died.  Hundreds, if not thousands of people are dying in their homes, or out in the countryside, because they didn’t get a chance to make it to the hospital.  While it’s just an estimate, I would say that that number is probably only a 10th of the real number of deaths.  Even the team that was collecting bodies admitted that they didn’t provide their data to anyone.

But the saddest part of all of this is that this epidemic is not going anywhere.  Health officials here admit that cholera will be in Haiti for at least 20-30 years, and in the end will affect over 200,000 people.  Until the infrastructure here changes into something that can sustain a proper sanitation system and deliver clean water, the disease will continue making people sick, and killing others.  It’s scary because for the people who have lived with absolutely nothing, and could survive before the epidemic because they had learned to live with so little, this is uncharted territory.  But now this disease has come and taken everyone by surprise, killing those who have been fighting for their lives for decades, in just a matter of hours.

The Durbar Festival

For your inspiration, we present to you a photo series of the Durbar festival in Nigeria by Irene Becker (Iris) avid photographer of Nigerian culture. The Durbar festival is an annual festival celebrated in several cities in Nigeria. A long time tradition, the festival involves prayers, a parade with horses, music and performance. Enjoy.

Found via Creative Roots

 

Pecan Grove Press conducts a National Chapbook Competition annually. The deadline for the competition is January 15, 2011, and the winning chapbook will be published in summer, 2011.  All PGP chapbooks will be perfect bound and professionally printed with full color covers.

The Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition has not been conducted for the past four years while the press has been extricating itself from a a massive backlog caused by the editor's wanting to print too many of the wonderful manuscripts submitted and, simultaneously, recovering from a series of unfortunate hospitalizations.

Some recent chapbooks at only $6 each (if ordered while entering the competion):

Wendy Barker's Between Frames
Tim Myers's That Mass at Which the Tongue Is Celebrant
Vince Gotera's Fighting Kite
Paricia Fargnoli's Small Songs of Pain
Jill Alexander Essbaum's Oh Forbidden
Catherine Kasper's    A Gradual Disappearance of Insects
Francine Witte's First Rain
Angela Consolo Mankiewicz's An Eye

You may pay your Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition entry fee of $15 here:

 

Requirements:

• Chapbook manuscripts should be between 24 and 40 pages long.
• The poems should work together as if they were paintings in an exhibition.
• Individual poems within the manucript may have been published in literary magazines, but may not have been published together as a book or chapbook.
• Manuscripts MUST be submitted through PGP's on-line submission manager.
• Please submit your non-refundable entry fee of $15 via PayPal. If you do not have access to PayPal, you may mail the entry fee separately to Pecan Grove Press, St. Mary's University, Box AL, 1 Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, TX 78228.
• If the manuscript is simultaneously submitted and subsequently wins another chapbook competition or is accepted for publication by another press, the entry fee will not be refunded.
• The poet must own the copyright to the poems in the work or be able to secure permission to reprint any copyrighted poem included.
• Notifications will be made via email.

Note: PGP will only accept submissions for the competition through the on-line submission manager. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Chapbooks from Pecan Grove Press are professionally printed with index stock covers. All chapbooks are perfect bound. The poet with the winning chapbook submission will receive $250.00 plus 10 copies of the chapbook. Additional copies may be purchased at 40% off list price.

 While we recommend reading (and purchasing) a PGP chapbook, that is not a requirement.  You can see a list of all our books by visiting http://library.stmarytx.edu/pgpress/authors/index.html

Poets entering the PGP National Chapbook Competitions may order any of the press's books or chapbooks at the time they send their entries at the prices listed to the left and below.  All other PGP books may be ordered at a $2 discount with submission and payment of the entry fee. We recommend purchasing via PayPal.

Poetry Chapbooks

We accept submissions for our annual chapbook contest from November 1 to January 15 (postmark deadline).

Prize: $500, publication of chapbook, and 50 copies
Reading fee: $15
Submit: 16-24 pages of poetry, two cover sheets
(one with contact information and one anonymous) by January 15

SASE for results only
Simultaneous submissions are permissible if we are notified immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.

This year's judge is Jack B. Bedell, the Woman’s Hospital Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as editor of Louisiana Literature and director of Louisiana Literature Press. His most recent books are Call and Response (Texas Review Press) , Come Rain, Come Shine (Texas Review Press) and French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets (LaLit Press).

Please mail your entry and fee to:
Grayson Books
P.O. Box 270549
West Hartford, CT 06127-0549

Poetry Books

Currently Grayson Books is not accepting unsolicited manuscripts. Occasionally books are published as a cooperative venture between author and publisher. These are books that fit in with the themes and general excellence associated with our small press. If you have an idea for such a book to be published cooperatively, send a proposal including your qualifications and publication credits, expected audience and promotion ideas, and a sample of 6-10 pages of the manuscript.

You will receive feedback on your proposal within two months. If your proposal seems promising, we will ask for more details and a complete manuscript so we can give it more thorough evaluation.

contact@graysonbooks.com

 

Boom Chapbook Contest

Congrats to Jessica Young whose Only as a Body won our 4th annual Bateau chapbook contest.

Order Here.

The 5th Annual Boom Chapbook Contest will open 15 September 2010.

 

ELIGIBILITY

Open to all writers.

Age and previous book publication are not considerations for eligibility.

Poems published in periodicals may be included in the manuscript.                

Please, no submissions from students or close friends of the editors.

READING FEE

$12 entry fee must come with EACH entry by deadline or entries will not be considered.

Manuscripts will NOT be returned.

Pay online! You can pay by credit card or check online. (You still need to send in your check via postal mail. But by "paying" online, we can keep track of your transaction and manuscript much more efficiently.)

FORMAT

Manuscript format:

between 20 and 30 pages

must be typed (clear photocopies are fine)

(for mail submissions only) 2 title pages 1- title with contact info. 2- book title only

A biographical profile is not necessary.

****FOR ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS: There is no need to submit 2 title pages. Simply submit the manuscript with an anonymous title page online. Your contact info is with your submission (though the readers are not able to access this information).

COMPENSATION

The winner will receive $500 and copies of the winning chapbook.

The winning chapbook will be a high quality printing with letterpress cover.

To get a very good idea of the production, order any of our previous winners.

DEADLINE

Deadline for submission is a December 31, 2010 postmark.

SEND TO

Bateau Press

BOOM contest

POB 1584

Northampton MA 01061

QUESTIONS

info@bateaupress.org

 

An Interview with Maryse Condé

Marianela González recently interviewed the multiple award-winning writer Maryse Condé, honored guest at Casa de las Américas-sponsored Author’s Week, which renders tribute each year to a different Latin American writer. As Gónzález explains, “thus arrived in Cuba one of the vital voices of post-colonial Caribbean thought: a Guadeloupean who lived her first revolution when she first heard of Aimé Césaire and Franz Fanon… in France, after living sixteen years in her native island.” Her novel Moi Tituba, sorcière noire de Salem has now given birth this year to a sister: Yo, Tituba, la bruja negra de Salem, published by Fondo Editorial Casa de las Américas. Here are excerpts from González’s interview with a link to the full piece below:

During five days, we heard about her life and her ample intellectual production, in the voice of researchers and in her own: that memorable encounter of one hour that left me with few questions, because there were so many answers.

Narrative for children and adults, drama, critical works… What does Maryse Condé find in each of these forms?   —I work most of all on the novel, while it is true that sometimes I do theater or write books for children. The theatre, for example, motivates me because it brings me very close to the people. But if there is something I have learned is that for an author there is no difference between those creations: all of them express the same internal ‘I’ in a multiple and diverse way. Then, criticism makes the difference; but the author simply writes, uses words to create music or a sound and to tell a story.  This I also learned from Africa. Poetry, prose, song, as we were taught in the French way, do not necessarily have those divisions in their essence. The divisions are pure form. Everything comes from a single source: the word. We place them in a large oven to cook until we obtain a deeper notion of the human being.    

You say that a book must make “sense and sound;” you expect that, when we open one of your books, we find not only a story, but also “a voice” that speaks to us. Glissant also calls for this in his Le Discours antillais: [he wants] to be “heard,” more than to be “read.” How much does orality mark Caribbean literature, Caribbean cultural thought?   —To tell you the truth, much less than it could. Exemplified by my own case, I was raised by my parents, who did not believe in the Creole word. As a child, they read me stories of Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella. They even prevented me from taking an interest in popular music.  So, obviously, Caribbean orality did not mark me as a writer. However, I have no doubt that it may be important for others: the life of a writer defines her creation; [the writer] is the subject of her work. 

[. . .] Do you think that thought about the Caribbean that occurs within the region is different from the one produced from outside [the region]?  —I think not so much nowadays. Caribbean thought in the region is increasingly more mixed with the one produced those living outside [the Caribbean] or even those who were born away from it. Finally, I believe that [. . .] there is no difference between the outside and the inside.  In all areas of Antillean reality, there is no immutable Caribbean.  We share with people everywhere. The past is important, but the future is more; and the future comes hand in hand with all that human communion.  

Your theory of “Caribbean literature” is very unique, you say that it cannot be defined… — I don’t think that there is a “literature of the Caribbean.”  There is literature from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica . . . each one is very different and says different things. It is wrong to speak of “Caribbean literature” as if those who were born in the archipelago were obliged to say the same things. No, we are different and we say different things.  I don’t even think that it makes sense to speak of “Caribbean identity.” There are multiple identities, unique identities. The same is true with Africa. Of whom do we speak? Senegal, Ghana. . . Each with a past, a different evolution. There is no “Africa,” but rather African countries.   [. . .]

Have you ever felt that French is not sufficient for you as a writer, to apprehend a “truth” about the Caribbean or about a human being who inhabits it? — French is seen as the language of colonization. In the Francophone Caribbean, people who write in French are [seen as] traitors and those who do so in Creole are seen as closest to the people. That is the underlying idea and I think that it is not fair. What happens in my case is that I was not educated in Creole, but rather in French. Perhaps I could have written in Creole and be what they want; but if I must express “the truth,” and the truth is that I write in French.  

“Black skin, white mask”… ¿is this possible? —I am an example of this, which has changed.  I do not like to criticize things, but rather try to understand them. I look [back] at the origins that is where the truths are.

[. . .] Looking back at those origins, how does Maryse Condé explain that Guadeloupe and Martinique are still departments of France in the 21st century?  —Because they are small countries that do not have much strength. We needed a leader to gain freedom, as you had Fidel Castro. It is necessary to have a group of people and a man or woman that will lead towards freedom. We did not have that. The Martinicans had a liberation—at least a cultural liberation—with Césaire; but in Guadeloupe, unfortunately, we did not have anyone. One studies in schools with French books, the press is French, cinema . . . all French. The fight is long. Martinique and Guadeloupe are not Cuba; they did not have a revolution. 

Do you feel that writers today feel a connection with the spirit of Césaire’s generation?  —I always say that my generation was more modest and I still have this feeling. For some countries, the time of colonization ended: for Cuba, for example; for Guadeloupe, no. But writing is like reaching a personal freedom. At least, while it lasts.

For full interview (in Spanish), see http://laventana.casa.cult.cu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5828

For Maryse Condé’s speech (in Spanish), see http://laventana.casa.cult.cu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5809

Photos of Maryse Condé at Casa de las Americas; in the last photo, she is flanked by Caribbeanist critics and writers Emilio Jorge Rodríguez and Nancy Morejón.

Harlem Renaissance Man and His Family, Behind Closed Doors

By NEIL GENZLINGER

Published: November 21, 2010

The first act of “Knock Me a Kiss,” a dandy play about the ill-advised marriage of W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter, is such rollicking fun that you may find yourself worrying at the intermission about whether there’s any way this production can successfully work itself around to the serious part of the story that you know lies ahead. But somehow it does, keeping its sense of humor but muzzling it just enough to allow some drama and poignancy to enter the mix.

 

 

Lia Chang

"Knock Me a Kiss": André De Shields as W. E. B. Du Bois and Erin Cherry as his daughter, Yolande, in Charles Smith's play at the Abrons Art Center.

 

The play, by Charles Smith, is a fictional imagining of a well-known real-life story: how in 1928 in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, Yolande Du Bois (Erin Cherry), only child of one of the century’s leading black figures, married the poet Countee Cullen (Sean Phillips) in a ceremony that rivaled a royal wedding. The marriage quickly fell apart, apparently after Cullen told his new wife that he preferred men.

Mr. Smith’s smart script assumes that you’re aware of the rough outlines of this tale, and it derives its considerable humor from the advantage you enjoy over the characters, especially the clueless Yolande and her mother (Marie Thomas) and father (André De Shields). And this is decidedly not a W.Bois hagiography: the great man’s flaws, especially his odd ideas about love and marriage, are on full display, and Mr. De Shields expertly lets you laugh at them without allowing the role to degenerate into parody.

The Du Bois characters may get the focus, but it is the performances in two secondary roles that really keep the zip in this production by the Legacy Creative Arts Company and Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theater. Gillian Glasco brings sass and nice comic timing to her role as Yolande’s friend and confidante. And Morocco Omari, as the slick, slang-slinging jazzman whom Yolande really loves, starts things off with a dazzling opening scene and turns up just often enough to re-energize the proceedings when they seem about to flag.

There are moments in the second act when the play seems less like a work about the past and more like a work from the past — a bit of melodramatic excess creeps in — but Chuck Smith, the director, keeps this to a minimum. He also does as well as possible within the confines of dingy Abrons Arts Center space, delivering an engaging, well-acted production that deserves a better theater and a longer run.

 

“Knock Me a Kiss” continues through Dec. 5 at the Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street, Lower East Side; (212) 352-3101. theatermania.com.