SOURCE 1:
Title of Article: Figures of Flight and Entrapment in Edwidge Danticat's "Krik? Krak!"
Author(s): Wilson C. Chen
Source: Rocky Mountain Review, Vol. 65, No. 1 (2011), pp. 36-55 Published by: Rocky
Mountain Modern Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41289362 Accessed: 03-10-2018 23:39 UTC
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Brief summary of the story:
Set in a village in Haiti, "A Wall of Fire Rising" provides a glimpse of three critical days in the
life of an apparently ordinary Haitian family struggling to survive without gainful employment.
While several signs in the text, along with a maternal family tree sketched in a subsequent
story, place this family in the mid- twentieth century, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact time in
which this story takes place. The main source of work in the village is the local sugar mill,
owned and managed by an Arab family - "Haitians of Lebanese or Palestinian descent whose
family had been in the country for generations" (60). The father, Guy, is deep on the wait list
for permanent employment at the mill, and the mother, Lili, during their most impoverished
times, purchases spices on credit and attempts to sell them at the marketplace. Through all of
this financial hardship, they are trying to raise a son, Little Guy, and aspire to give him life
opportunities beyond a career of backbreaking work at the sugar mill (37).
Importance of sugar in Haiti
Throughout the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first, the grueling labor and
exploitative practices of the sugar industry on the island of Hispaniola continue to be
reminiscent of slavery and its legacy on the island. Haitian sugar cane fields are reminders of
when French-owned sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans made Haiti (St. Domingue)
Frances most profitable colony in the Americas, supplying a great share of the world's
consumption of sugar. In Carolyn Ficks words, Haiti was "one of the greatest wealth-producing
slave colonies the world had ever known" (91). Indeed sugar cane fields are a repeated setting
in Danticat's fiction and allow her to explore issues of violence and trauma across different
historical moments in Haitian history (37).
Parallel Plots: Little Guy and Guy
"A Wall of Fire Rising" is governed by two parallel plot lines involving the respective plights of
the father and son. Little Guy has been given the honor of performing the role of the Haitian
revolutionary leader Boukman Dutty in his school play. Little Guy enthusiastically announces
this news just as Guy Sr. holds back on his news that he has been given a few hours of work
cleaning latrines at the sugar mill - his first job at the mill in nearly six months. Thus, one
storyline consists of Little Guy rehearsing the glorious revolutionary rhetoric attributed to the
legendary Boukman, a slave from Jamaica who was sold into slavery in Haiti and became an
inspirational political leader. The reputed vodou priest Boukman, according to legend, spoke
powerful words of freedom in defiance of the French colonizers and helped to spark the
revolution that led ultimately to the abolition of slavery and the founding of the Haitian republic
in 1804.
However, while the son gains mastery over Boukman’s words, the father, in the other storyline,
turns inward in response to their impoverished conditions and also becomes increasingly
obsessed with his desire to fly a hot air balloon, thus inaugurating the theme of flight. As Little
Guy proudly announces, "I am Boukman" (54) and subsequently recites Boukman's famous call
for freedom, the setting of the story reminds us that this is a family that is still very much in
bondage. And the transcendent feelings produced by Little Guy s eloquent revolutionary
rhetoric - not to mention the intellectual promise demonstrated by his facility in memorizing
these rhetorically complex lines - are in marked contrast with the family's abject poverty as well
as the fathers increasing misery. Little Guys defiant words draw attention to a twentiethcentury Haitian community in desperate need of liberation. Quite tellingly, as Little Guy
triumphs in mastering the first passage from Boukman's speech, Guy Sr. completes his first day
cleaning toilets (38).
Myth of “Flying Africans”
Guy's flight, even if it leads to a violent, tragic conclusion, does evoke various New World tales
of flying Africans and a whole set of twentieth-century reworkings of these narratives. Most
fundamentally, this is a legend that circulated among enslaved African communities in the
Americas. "First named in [the collection] Drums and Shadows [1940]," observes Olivia Smith
Storey, "the Flying Africans specifically refers to African born slaves flying from slavery in the
Americas" (1-2). In prominent literary works...the legend is connected with the West African
slaves that landed off the coast of Georgia in 1803. According to the basic folk tale, after
landing on St. Simons Island, a group of enslaved Africans transcended the conditions of
slavery by flying back to Africa. The strictly rationalist outsiders' perspective is that these
slaves committed suicide and that was the only form of transcendence. Yet the flying African
stories passed down in folklore are celebratory tales of magic and freedom (41).
Culture and Language as a Requirement for Flight
Interestingly, in many versions of the legend of flying Africans, maintaining one’s African
tongue, or at least being reminded of one’s native language by an elder when it has been
forgotten, was a precondition of flight. According to the cultural logic of these tales of
transcendence, keeping intact or recovering one’s culture prior to the distortion wrought by
enslavement gave one the resources, the "magic," to transcend the conditions of enslavement in many stories literally and in several twentieth century literary reworkings, metaphorically.
The diasporic predicament sketched by Danticat in this tale presents a family struggling in a
system of continual exploitation, yearning for freedom, and lacking access to the kinds of
cultural resources that might allow them not only to withstand but also transcend their material
circumstances (44).
SOURCE 2:
Title of Article: "I NEED MANY REPETITIONS" Rehearsing the Haitian Revolution in the
Shadows of the Sugar Mill
Author(s): Angela Naimou
Source: Callaloo, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Winter, 2012), pp. 173-192 Published by: The Johns
Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41412503 Accessed: 03-10-2018 23:22 UTC
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Haitian History and Boukman
At the threshold of colonial Saint-Domingue and the republic of Haiti lies the story of Bois
Caiman. Multiple variants of the story all tell of a summer night in 1791, when enslaved and
maroon Black men and women gathered in the Cai ̈man woods to plan a revolt against the
colonial slave system. The meeting involved a religious ceremony led by Boukman Dutty and an
unnamed mambo to serve the spirits and fortify the commitment to revolt.1 Within a few days,
the sugarcane fields of Saint-Domingue' s northern provinces were ablaze, the processing
machinery wrecked, and the owners dead or fleeing. The uprising left the economic heart of the
world's most brutally profitable colony in what C. L. R. James describes as "a flaming ruin,"
one that would burn for nearly thirteen years before culminating in the declaration of the free
Black Republic of Haiti (173).
Importance of Rehearsal
Rehearsal has two basic functions in the story: a son repeats his lines from a school play as a
kind of practice performance in order to memorize them for the "real" performance, and his
father mentally prepares for a future and unrepeatable act. At one level, rehearsal dramatizes
people's efforts to gain some narrative control over the telling and meaning of specific historical
narratives. At another, rehearsal becomes a literary model of how narrative fiction may theorize
an involvement in history as material, social process and as a narrative of that process.
Rehearsal can offer us especially suggestive ways to explore the writing of history as a
narrative problem (of how to connect the past, present, and future into a story) without
ignoring the material conditions that shape both the narrative construction and the events that
make up any historical narrative (176).
Little Guy’s rehearsals, in contrast to Guy’s own, allow this complex relationship to come into
view. Little Guy is the son who plays the father of the revolution. Guy plays the father who is
the son of the dispossessed for whom the revolution had been fought - still ‘born in the shadow
of the sugar mill; but, no, barely allowed to work there (182).
Boukman speech at Bois Caiman ceremony, insurrection of 1791; fire, flames, ashes; Macandal,
the west African slave and precursor to Boukman; “A Flying Fool”
Haitian sugar cane fields are reminders of when French-owned
sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans made Haiti (St.
Domingue) Frances most profitable colony in the Americas,
supplying a great share of the world's consumption of sugar.
Sugar cane fields in Haiti remind Haitians of when sugar fields
farmed by Africans kept as slaves transformed Haiti (St.
Domingue) into France’s wealthiest colony in the Americas,
providing a large piece of the world's use of sugar.
Oral Narrative as Short Story Cycle: Forging Community in Edwidge Danticat's "Krik?
Krak!"
Author(s): Rocio G. Davis
Source: MELUS, Vol. 26, No. 2, Identities (Summer, 2001), pp. 65-81
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the MultiEthnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3185518
Accessed: 09-10-2018 23:37 UTC
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Oral Narrative as Short Story Cycle:
Forging Community in
Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!
Rocio G. Davis
University of Navarre
Only when ethnic literature liberates its sources of mea
from hegemonic impositions and begins to inform theory and
vert traditional signifying strategies can it begin to reconfigur
tural interpretation. As though responding to this challenge, e
fiction demonstrates a proliferation of the short story cycle, a
until now most clearly defined within the Euro-American lite
tradition, that many ethnic writers have adapted for the formulat
of their processes of subjectivity. Amy Tan's The Joy Luck C
Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, Julia Alva
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and Louise Erdich
Love Medicine emblematize how ethnic writers appropriate
specifics of this narrative genre to engage with the dynamics
meaning. This article will explore the short story cycle as a v
for the development of ethnic literature by analyzing Hai
American Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak! to show how the dra
of identity and community is mediated through a genre th
linked to the oral narrative, itself a way of fostering imagina
communities and developing identities.
The dynamics of the short story cycle make it appropriate
the quest for a definition of the cultural pluralism that incorpo
immigrant legacies while adapting to the practices of the cultu
which these works are created. A cycle may be defined as "a s
stories linked to each other in such a way as to maintain a bal
between the individuality of each of the stories and the neces
of the larger unit" (Ingram 15). The term "short story cycle"
plies a structural scheme for the working out of an idea, charac
or themes, even a circular disposition in which the constituent
MELUS, Volume 26, Number 2 (Summer 2001)
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66
ROCIO G. DAVIS
ratives are simultaneously independent and interdependen
challenge of each cycle is twofold: the collection must asser
individuality and independence of each of the component
while creating a necessary interdependence that emphasi
wholeness and unity of the work. Consistency of theme
evolution from one story to the next are among the clas
quirements of the form, with recurrence and development
integrated movements that effect final cohesion (Ingram 20).
The essential characteristics of the short story cycle abou
the literatures of the world: Homer's Odyssey, Ovid's Me
phoses, Boccaccio's Decameron, Chaucer's The Canterbury
the Indian Panchatantra, the Arabian A Thousand and One N
and Mallory's Morte d'Arthur reflect the fundamental separ
and cohesion of the form as defined by twentieth-century
Cycles figure prominently in twentieth-century American
ture: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Ernest Heming
in our time and Raymond Carver's Cathedral, among others
constituted and popularized the form within the "mains
canon. By appropriating and transforming this narrative ge
established and defined by "mainstream" writers and critics
ticat, like other ethnic writers, intervenes in the dominant
American literary tradition. A text such as Krik? Krak! cha
hegemonic discourse on several levels, as the author explo
advantages of the established structure and theme to presen
version of the immigrant story, blending cultural tradition
codes for innovative literary representation.
The short story cycle looks back to oral traditions of nar
while embodying signs of modernity. One of its most salien
tures is its attempt to emulate the act of storytelling, the effor
speaker to establish solidarity with an implied audience
counting a series of tales linked by their content or by the
tions in which they are related. The experience of the oral
tive, of telling and listening to stories, has been a vital part
development of the body of thought and tradition that has f
culture and united diverse peoples. As Walter Ong argues
physical constitution as sound, the spoken word manifests h
beings to each other as persons and forms them into clos
groups: when a speaker is addressing an audience, the memb
the audience normally become a unity, with themselves and
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
67
the speaker (74). Much of the vividness of the oral narrative
precisely from the fact that it resists writing, preserving the sp
word as always "an event, a movement in time, completely l
in the thing-like repose of the written or printed word" (Ong
Sarah Hardy's comparison of the short story and the oral n
tive is, I believe, equally applicable to the story cycle: "A
theme or episode. .. pulls in the direction of its own self-co
narrative line, towards other similar and parallel stories, an
wards certain patterns of language or a particular set of sym
.... In other words, the presence of an audience is vital t
completion and validity of the short-story [cycle] form just
in an oral setting" (355). The title of Danticat's cycle sets it
within the oral narrative. She invites the reader not merely
the book but to participate in a traditional Haitian storytellin
ual. "Krik? Krak! is call-response but it's also this feelin
you're not merely an observer-you're part of the story. Som
says, 'Krik?' and as loudly as you can you say 'Krak!' Yo
the person to tell the story by your enthusiasm to hear it"
12).
In the stories, Danticat examines the lives of ordinary Haitians:
those struggling to survive under the cruel Duvalier regime and
others who have left the country, highlighting the distance between
people's dreams and the distressing reality of their lives. As Ethan
Casey points out: "Writers will spend precious time accounting for
what has happened, it is true; the literary challenge is to write
about Haiti in the vocabulary of human tragedy and human survival" (525). As such, the book becomes a literary response to the
Haitian situation and a feeling description of the immigration of
the 1980s. Importantly, Danticat's presentation of the theme of storytelling through the technique of storytelling locates her writing
within what Jay Clayton has called the "narrative turn" in recent
ethnic fiction, which stresses the political dimensions of form,
making the pragmatics of traditional narrative a theme in the fiction (378, 387). Through technical experimentation with the story
cycle, Danticat heightens the power of narrative, elucidating the
significance of the oral mode to her characters by positioning the
theme within a genre that engages it on different levels. Importantly, the blending of the performative dimension of storytelling
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68
ROCIO G. DAVIS
in form and content allows Danticat to expand the reach of h
by making the text dramatize as well as signify.
In a note distributed by her publisher, Danticat defines th
lenge she set herself: "I look to the past to Haiti-hoping tha
extraordinary female story tellers I grew up with-the on
have passed on-will choose to tell their stories through my
For those of us who have a voice must speak to the present a
past" (qtd. in Casey 525-26). Danticat's narrative present
voices and visions of women, usually mothers and daug
whose personal tragedies impel them to form community in
midst of oppression and exile. Because the practice of break
lence has become one of the shaping myths in the writings o
nic women, storytelling in the cycle becomes both a med
self-inscription and subjectivity and an instrument for dial
The telling of stories heals past experiences of loss and sepa
it also forges bonds between women by preserving tradition
female identity as it converts stories of oppression into para
self-affirmation and individual empowerment. The mann
which Danticat links the stories with the processes o
inscription by the different women becomes a metaphor for
gotiation of the characters' strategies of survival.
The profoundly oral character of Haitian culture is illustra
both textual and contextual levels in Krik? Krak!. The epigr
the cycle, a quote from Sal Scalora from "White Darkness
Dreamings," discloses the purpose of the old tradition: "We t
stories so that the young ones will know what came before
They ask Krik? We say Krak! Our stories are kept in our he
Seven of the nine stories are told in the first person, with
them written as monologues, and the rest alternating two vo
the narration. The epilogue, "Women Like Us," is written
second person, a technique with rich connotations in a cont
rary text inspired by the oral tradition. The art of storytelli
ures importantly in several of the tales. The game of "Krik?
is played in the first story as a way for the refugees on the
wile away the fearful hours. In "Wall of Fire Rising," the in
tants of the town who watched a state-sponsored newscast e
evening "stayed at the site long after this gendarme had go
told stories to one another beneath the big blank screen" (6
night woman whispers her mountain stories in her son's ear
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
69
ries of the ghost women and the stars in their hair. I tell him o
deadly snakes lying at one end of the rainbow and the hat fu
gold lying at the other. I tell him that if I cross a stream of
clear hibiscus, I can make myself a goddess" (86). "We know
ple by their stories" (185), one of the characters declares, sign
ling how storytelling, which educates people in imaginative his
and community values, provides an organic link between the
and the lives of the people in the present.
Other stories present verbal games that serve both as entert
ment and strategy for identification and survival. Among the r
that unite the women in the stories is the verbal code established in
times of trial which was used to signal belonging. When Josephine
meets a woman who claims to be part of the group who went on
pilgrimages to the Massacre River, she questions her in the secret
way because "if she were really from the river, she would know
. all the things that my mother had said to the sun as we sat with
our hands dipped in the water, questioning each other, making up
codes and disciplines by which we would always know who the
other daughters of the river were" (44). This question-and-answer
ritual is kept alive by Gracina and Caroline in Brooklyn: "We sat
facing each other in the dark, playing a free-association game that
Ma had taught us when we were girls.... Ma too had learned this
game when she was a girl. Her mother belonged to a secret
women's society in Ville Rose, where the women had to question
each other before entering one another's houses" (165). This game,
played in the United States, carries within it memories of the lost
country and links to those who have died. Gracina will be charged,
in a dream, with remembering the lost past through the paradigm
of the game: "If we were painters, which landscapes would we
paint?. . . When you become mothers, how will you name your
sons?. .. What kind of lullabies do we sing to our children at
night? Where do you bury your dead?. . . What kind of legends
will your daughters be told?" (210-11). The commission, which
emphasizes the power of the word, implies that the daughters must
be similarly creative and constructive. The words and the hidden
meanings in their mothers' verbal games form a significant starting
point from which they can develop their own voice and autonomy
because a space is created within the inherited contest in which
their own representation is possible. Drawing from a rich source of
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ROCIO G. DAVIS
70
oral traditions, as well as from their own experience and im
tion, the daughters can then construct and claim their own s
tivity.
Moreover, the narrative structure of short story cycles mirrors
the episodic and unchronological method of oral narration. Most
cycles do not have a linear plot, emerging rather as portraits of persons or communities pieced together from the diverse elements offered in the individual stories. The fundamental structure of a cycle
lies in the interaction of the elements in the independent stories, as
connective patterns on all levels draw these together into a totality
strengthened by varying types of internal cohesion: a title, the development of a central character, the delineation of a community,
or an explicit theme. Nonetheless, the most pervasive unifying pattern of short story cycles appears to be the dynamic of recurrent
development (Ingram 17). The repetition of a theme from different
angles and its ensuing growth in depth in the mind of the reader
may unify a cycle at the same time that it individualizes each story.
Moreover, the genre, as with the oral narrative, intensifies the
normally participatory act of reading by insisting that we "fill in
the blanks" as we go along; the discovery of connections is transformed into the reader's task. In a text that centers on the forging
of community through the relationships of mother and daughters,
"the structure nicely evinces not only the varied perspectives the
women have regarding similar events but also the tenuous balance
between separation and connection that many psychoanalytic theorists argue is a key to understanding mother-daughter relation-
ships" (Kelley 306).
Recurring images that appear in Krik? Krak! create a bond of
mystical unity between the characters, their lives, and their destinies. The butterfly, one of the principal images in almost all the
stories, becomes a symbol of both continuing life and transformation (Shea 15). The butterfly's life cycle, which involves a manner
of death and rebirth, becomes a paradigm of the need to emphasize
the existence of life and the search for beauty in situations of precarious survival. The most vivid evocation of butterflies is in
"Children of the Sea," where the young woman left behind in Ha
speaks to her boyfriend on the refugee boat: "i don't sketch m
butterflies anymore because i don't even like seeing the sun.
sides, manman says that butterflies can bring news. the bright on
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
71
bring happy news and the black ones warn us of death" (
character looks to the butterflies to bring her tidings of h
friend's fate and, when the awaited sign comes, refuses to
what it implies: "there it was, the black butterfly floating
us. i began to run and run so it wouldn't land on me, but it
ready carried its news. .. now there are always butterflies a
me, black ones that i refuse to let find my hand" (28). In oth
ries, images of butterflies acquire expanded meaning. The s
son, fragile in his innocence, in "Night Women," is describ
butterfly fluttering on a rock that stands out naked in the m
a stream" (85). Lamort and Raymond in "The Missing Peac
with "leaves shaped like butterflies" (103), this game height
the pathos in the characterization of the adolescent who
works for the military.
Complementary to the image of the butterfly is the ima
flight, another constant in the cycle. Defile, in the story "
was accused of being a witch because she was seen flying
her mother's death, Josephine understands the truth of this
that on the night of the massacre "my mother did fly. We
down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican s
the water and out again on the Haitian side of the river" (49
in "Wall of Fire Rising," dreams of flight. His wife tries to
of this absurd obsession by pointing out that "if God want
ple to fly, he would have given us wings on our backs." To
her husband replies, "You're right, Lili, you're right. B
what he gave us instead. He gave us reasons to want to
gave us the air, the birds, our son" (68). Guy will die in a f
attempt to fulfill his dream and, looking at his dead body,
only say to the men who want to close his eyes, "my husba
likes to look at the sky" (80). These desperate images of flig
test to the need to escape from the violence and oppression
old country, another central concern of the characters.
Images of death also recur, in particular the death of infan
sephine contemplates the women in jail with her mother an
izes that they were all there for the same reason: "They we
to have been seen at night rising from the ground like birds
A loved one, a friend, or a neighbor had accused them of ca
the death of a child" (38). Celianne gives birth to a stillborn
on the refugee boat and later throws herself into the sea af
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ROCIO G. DAVIS
72
The description of the baby foreshadows that of another de
fant in a later story: "I never knew before that dead children
purple. The lips are the most purple because the baby is so
Purple like the sea after the sun has set" (25). In "Between th
and the Gardenias," Marie, haunted by her repeated miscarr
the babies "my body could never hold" (92), retrieves an
doned baby that the reader understands is dead: "She was
pretty. Bright shiny hair and dark brown skin like mahogan
coa. Her lips were wide and purple, like those African dol
see in tourist windows but could never afford to buy" (91).
three recurring images-the butterfly, the wish for flight, and
of infants highlight the themes of innocence and the pri
for its loss, of the need to escape and of freedom. The viole
tories and continuing dreams of many of the characters find
bolic expression in these images. Because these symbols ar
sent in stories about leaving Haiti and seeking a future elsew
they emphasize the presentation of many of the painful reali
the immigrant situation.
The specificities of the form make the short story cycle a
nent vehicle for the distinctive characteristics of ethnic fiction in
general. The short story cycle is itself a hybrid, occupying an indeterminate place within the field of narrative, resembling the novel
in its totality, yet composed of distinct stories. Interestingly, as
Jerome Bruner and Susan Weisser show, "genre is a way of characterizing a text in terms of certain formal and content properties,
but it is also a way of characterizing how a reader or listener takes
a text, whatever its actual content and its formal characteristics
may be" (131). Ethnic fiction lends itself to new strategies of read-
ing, enhancing awareness of immigrant issues through renewed
ethnic creativity. The ethnic short story cycle may therefore be
considered the formal materialization of the trope of doubleness as
the between-world condition is presented via a form that itself vacillates between two genres.
Elizabeth Ordofiez has pointed out that the "disruption of genre"
is a common thread that links various ethnic texts by women: "the
text itself becomes both the means and embodiment of modifying
and reshaping female history, myths, and ultimately personal and
collective identity" (19). Subverting narrative styles chracterizes
much of this writing; the fiction of Amy Tan, Julia Alvarez, Louise
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
73
Erdich, Toni Morrison, Theresa Cha, Fae Myenne Ng, among
ers, attests to their emancipation from the confines of trad
theories and practices. Specifically, Danticat's cycle, the wr
a subversively oral matrilineal tradition, permits the reader
beyond cultural nationalism toward a "re-vision and revital
of female ethnicity in a more broadly conceived context" (O
20).
On different levels, ethnic short story cycles may project a desire to come to terms with a past that is both personal and collective: this type of fiction often explores the ethnic character and history of a community as a reflection of a personal odyssey of displacement, and search for self and community. More specifically,
the two principal thematic constituents of the ethnic story cycle are
the presentation of identity and community as separate entities and
the notion of an identity within a community, again, a common
theme of ethnic fiction. In Danticat's case, the textual tension
arises from the presentation of women who struggle to establish
and preserve the bonds of the Haitian community in the United
States through powerful links with the mother country. Her stories,
centering on the politics and the people of Haiti and Haitian immigrants to the United States, illustrate the numerous and varied connective strands that serve to draw the individuals of the short story
cycle into a single community. The passage from appreciation of
individual stories to the whole presented in the cycle marks the
shift from the individual to community, setting the individual
against the social group to which he or she belongs. The connections that are established will therefore yield what J. Gerald Kennedy has called the "defining experience" of the short story cycle:
a vision of community accumulated by the reader's discernment of
meanings and parallels inherent in the composite scheme (196).
This movement, witnessed in other cycles by women such as Tan's
The Joy Luck Club and Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place,
constitutes the collective protagonist, the community, as the central
character of the cycle.
The individual stories in Krik? Krak! present versions of life in
and away from Haiti that create a composite portrait of the Haitian
and her world. Although the stories are independent and written in
different styles, they inform and enrich one another. In "Caroline's
Wedding," the protagonist and her mother attend a funeral service
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74
ROCIO G. DAVIS
for those who died at sea in the first story. The seaside t
Ville Rose figures in the lives of many of the female charac
the young woman and her parents in "Children of the Se
refuge there when she is being sought by the police; this to
also the setting of the stories "The Missing Peace," "
Women," and "Seeing Things Simply." More importantly, a
mon ancestry links the women in the diverse stories. Th
character of "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" is th
daughter of Lili from "A Wall of Fire Rising" and the grandd
ter of Defile, imprisoned for witchcraft in "1937." As Rene
signals, these details serve to show that the many narrators c
understand their connections and their place primarily "throu
bonds of women" (14).
The presentation of women and their relationships, specif
that of mothers and daughters, is pivotal to Danticat's narrat
this sense, she reflects the same concerns as another emblem
mother-daughter short story cycle, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck
Both complex ensembles of stories told by mothers and dau
are innovative variations of the traditional mother-daughte
which focuses on the daughter's perspective and the foregrou
of the voices of mothers as well as daughters (Heung 599
women in both cycles are primarily responsible for the per
tion of culture and bonds with the lost homeland. The mothe
major roles in the daughters' lives and growth, a role that pr
the daughters with models for self-affirmation. Although the
ers all have different names and individual stories, they seem
changeable in that their role as mother supersedes all other
discrete identities of the women are woven into a collectivized in-
terchangeability through the cycle's juxtapositions of characters
and motifs. Through the narrative interweaving of time frames and
voices, both Danticat and Tan unite generations of women within a
relational network that links grandmothers, mothers, daughters,
aunts, and sisters. For these women, however, "mutual nurturance
does not rise from biological connections alone; rather, it is an act
affirming consciously chosen allegiances" (Heung 612-13).
In stories where the mother/daughter bond is broken by the
mother's death, this loss is viewed as devastating and must be
compensated for by the daughter's taking the place of the mother
or finding mother substitutes. Josephine, in "1937," is taught early
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
75
in life the importance of a mother and need to belong to a
of women: "Manman had taken my hand and pushed it in
river, no further than my wrist.... With our hands in the
Manman spoke to the sun. 'Here is my child, Josephine. We
saved from the tomb of this river when she was still in my
You spared us both, her and me, from this river where I lo
mother"' (40). She joins the yearly All Saint's Day pilgrim
Massacre River with the women who had lost their mothers there:
My mother would hold my hand tightly as we walked toward the water. We were all daughters of that river, which had taken our mothers
from us. Our mothers were the ashes and we were the light. Our
mothers were the embers and we were the sparks. Our mothers were
the flames and we were the blaze.... The river was the place where it
had all begun. "At least I gave birth to my daughter on the night that
my mother was taken from me," she would say. "At least you came
out at the right moment to take my mother's place." (41)
The narrator of "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" reiterates
the idea of the loss of a mother and importance of the link with
past generations: "For no matter how much distance death tried to
put between us, my mother would often come to visit me. ...
There were many nights when I saw some old women leaning over
my bed. 'That there is Marie,' my mother would say. 'She is now
the last one of us left"' (94). As exemplified in this story, Danticat
locates subjectivity in the maternal and employs it as a axis between the past and the present.
Other daughters feel the need to complete the work their moth-
ers had left undone. Emilie, in "The Missing Peace," comes to
Ville Rose to search for her mother, a journalist who disappeared
while on assignment in the area. Part of her pursuit involves an attempt to bond with her lost mother by fulfilling one of her dreams
"I am going to sew [the small pieces of cloth] onto that purple
blanket. . . . All her life, my mother's wanted to sew some old
things together into that piece of purple cloth" (114). Her search
parallels that of Lamort, named because her mother died when she
was born: "'They say a girl becomes a woman when she loses her
mother,' [Emilie] said. 'You, child, were born a woman"' (116).
An epiphany comes for both women as they are forced to face and
accept the loss of their mothers: "I became a woman last night ...
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76
ROCIO G. DAVIS
I lost my mother and all my other dreams" (121), Em
Lamort will take her mother's name, Marie Magdalen
rightful heritage. Though these stories reflect loss and a
lack of affiliation, the overwhelming movement is towar
ciliation and pertinence, confirming the necessity and the
ity of seeking connection even after death.
Occasions in which communication between mother and child
is obstructed result in confusion and unnecessary hurt. Two stories
that mirror each other present the mother leading a secret life that
her offspring does not know about. "Night Women," set in Haiti, is
a mother's monologue as she gazes at her sleeping son. "There are
two kinds of women: day women and night women. I am stuck between the day and night in a golden amber bronze" (84), she says.
Corollary to this, the story entitled "New York Day Women" has a
daughter watching, unobserved, as her mother makes her way from
her home in Brooklyn to Madison Avenue where in Central Park
she cares for a young child while his Yuppie mother goes jogging:
"This mother of mine, she stops at another hot-dog vendor and
buys a frankfurter that she eats on the street. I never knew that she
ate frankfurters. . . . Day women come out when nobody expects
them" (150, 153). Both stories emphasize the different worlds that
mothers and children inhabit while linking the mothers. Furthermore, issues of race and class oppression suggested in both stories
serve as factors that complicate maternal relationships because
they lead the mothers to find ways of surviving or of asserting independence that they cannot, or will not, share with their children.
The second story also suggests that the rift between mother and
daughter may be brought about by attitudes towards immigration.
Exile, which implies the loss of an original place, banishes belong-
ing to memory and often causes dissociation from both the old
ways and the new home. The process of diasporic self-formation is
presented here through the growing distance between mother and
daughter who struggle to define new identities and decide what to
keep and what to relinquish.
This theme recurs in "Caroline's Wedding," where conflict centers on the American-born daughter's impending marriage with a
Bahamanian and her mother's reactions to it. Gracina, the daughter
born in Haiti, tries to serve as buffer between the two points of
view. She understands her mother's dreams: "Ma wanted Eric to
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
77
officially come and ask her permission to marry her daught
wanted him to bring his family to our house and have his fa
her blessing. She wanted Eric to kiss up to her, escort her
buy her gifts, and shower her with compliments. Ma wante
blown church wedding. She wanted Eric to be Haitian" (1
Caroline, the old country's rules do not determine her obli
nor her mother's authority. The traditional role of a Haitian
has been greatly curtailed in America, and the mother has
learn to deal with daughters whose way of life is American:
we were children, whenever we rejected symbols of Hait
ture, Ma used to excuse us with great embarrassment an
'You know, they are American.' Why didn't we like the thic
pig skin that she would deep-fry so long that it tasted like
We were Americans and we had no taste buds. A double tra
(214-15). "In Haiti, you own your children and they find it n
(215), their mother would say, which explains her sense of
what she considers abandonment by her younger daughter.
lationships between the mother and daughters in this
American family underline some of the cross-generatio
cross-cultural conflicts typical of ethnic texts. At the end
story, the relationship will rest on the daughters' recognitio
value of the mother's establishment of community that pr
them with the resources they need to survive on their own.
There is an obsessive need to find and establish familial and his-
torical connections with other Haitians. Because "Ma says all Haitians know each other" (169), the community in America survives.
The immigrants experience continued and profound nostalgia for
the lost home though their children chaff at the extent of this loyalty: "Twenty years we have been saving all kinds of things for the
relatives in Haiti. I need a place in the garage for an exercise bike"
(150). The song "Beloved Haiti, there is no place like you, I had to
leave you before I could understand you" is sung by the refugees in
the first story and listened to on the radio in the last.
In consequence, history also becomes a protagonist in Krik?
Krak! as stories set in Haiti directly or indirectly involve historical
events. "1937," for instance, centers on the Dominican Republic's
dictator Rafael Trujillo's massacre of Haitians at the river separating Haiti from the Dominican Republic. Furthermore, Danticat has
commented that the original title of the first story was "From the
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78
ROCIO G. DAVIS
Ocean Floor" but that she decided to change it to "Children
Sea" to emphasize the link to the Middle Passage. "It's a
powerful image-from the ocean floor," she explains. "N
knows how many people were lost on The Middle Passage
are no records or graves-and the ocean floor is where our f
are. The journey from Haiti in the 1980s is like a new midd
sage. Not to romanticize it, but the comforting thing about d
that somehow all these people will meet. I often think that
ancestors are at the bottom of the sea, then I too am a part o
So we are all children of the sea" (Shea 12). Gracina, in
line's Wedding," reflects on this ancient belief that links H
"There are people in Ville Rose, the village where my mo
from in Haiti, who believe that there are special spots in th
where lost Africans who jumped off the slave ships still res
those who died at sea have been chosen to make that journey
der to be reunited with their long-lost relations" (167-68
death of the people in the refugee boat in the first story wil
lish historical links, forging a community of Haitians that in
not only those alive in the present time but also those lost
past.
Though the stories in Krik? Krak! have a continuity derived
from recurrent themes and motifs, they are more profoundly linked
by a spiritual vision where the bonds between women are imperative for survival. The most vivid metaphor for interconnections,
echoes, and blending appears with Danticat's image of braids in
the final section, "Epilogue: Women Like Us," a meditative finale
to the nine stories. "When you write," she says, "it's like braiding
your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity" (220). Danticat uses this ritualistic image
to illustrate the inseparable strands of history and the need for
community:
Your mother, she introduced you to the first echoes of the tongue that
you now speak when at the end of the day she would braid your hair
while you sat between her legs, scrubbing the kitchen pots.... When
she was done, she would ask you to name each braid after those nine
hundred and ninety-nine women who were boiling in your blood, and
since you had written them down and memorized them, the names
would come rolling off your tongue. And this was your testament to
the way that these women lived and died and lived again. (224)
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK!
79
The persona in the epilogue pays tribute to what she calls "
Poets," those voices "urging you to speak through the blunt
your pencil" (222). The storytelling tradition, essential f
transmission of lives and cultures, strengthens the connectio
tween women: "
With every step you take, there is an army of women watching over
you. We are never any farther than the sweat on your brows or the
dust on your toes... you have never been able to escape the pounding
of a thousand other hearts that have outlived yours by thousands of
years. And over the years when you have needed us, you have always
cried 'Krik?' and we have answered 'Krak!' and it has shown us that
you have not forgotten us. (222-24)
The use of the second-person narrator implicates the
reader/listener, inviting her to participate in the storytelling act,
commisioning her, as with many of the characters, with the task of
telling, of participating in the process of creating and preserving
community though narrative.
Considering the urgency and implications of the identity politics
within which Danticat works and her awareness of the dynamics of
the culturally diverse audience of her story, her innovative use of
narrative perspective in the concluding section of her cycle further
challenges the construct of a monolithic "you." Ethnic writers who
use the second-person address are aware that "assumptions that
white middle and upper class audiences bring to the act of reading
are thus foregrounded and exposed-particularly the insidious assumption that they are, 'naturally,' the universal you addressed by
the text" (Richardson 323-24). Opening up a possibility for the
narratee, the second-person point of view also opens up a possibility for the reader. The use of the narrative "you" becomes one of
the more interesting facets of literary theory and criticism because,
while in standard fiction the protagonist/narratee is quite distinct
from the actual or implied reader, this mode of narration often collapses this distinction because the "you" could refer to the reader
as well.
Danticat's epilogue to her short story cycle forces the reader to
face the experience of cultural betweenness and choices in the
manner that implicates most directly, pulling her into the drama
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80
ROCIO G. DAVIS
and suggesting that this is, more than just a Haitian-American
and dilemma, everyone's as well. Although the oral comm
figured in Krik? Krak! is clearly distinct from the mass read
in the US and European markets, Danticat, by identifying an
testing the assumed "you," generates a widening of disc
space, where more and more diverse voices may be hear
similarly plural subjectivities may be addressed. This conc
strategy is Danticat's tour de force, the final touch to the in
tion of theme and technique, as she weaves the formal stran
oral narrative and story cycle with the contextual tellin
women's lives, expanding the reach of the stories and dr
more people into the experience.
This short story cycle, as a discourse on ethnic self-defin
has recollections or personal experiences of Haiti as an impo
aspect of the creation of self. The questions the characte
themselves are answered through narratives that, in reflectin
form of the oral narrative, articulate almost epic tales of surv
Edwidge Danticat has turned to roots-family, community
ethnicity-as a source of personal identity and creative expre
The manner in which she, like other ethnic writers, has app
ated the short story cycle as a metaphor for the fragmentati
multiplicity of ethnic lives is itself an articulation of the p
towards ethnic self-identification. The subsequent narrat
turning to past forms of narration and reflecting a tendenc
wards a hybrid form, provides enriching glimpses of societ
the process of transformation and growth. The vivid dream a
piration that remains at the end of the book is succinctl
claimed by Josephine: "I raised my head toward the sun thin
one day I may just see my mother there. 'Let her flight be jo
said to Jacqueline. 'And mine and yours too"' (49).
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EDWIDGE DANTICAT'S KRIK? KRAK! 81
Works Cited
Bruner, Jerome and Susan Weisser. "The Invention of Self: Autobiography and
Its Forms." Literacy and Orality. Ed. David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 129-48.
Casey, Ethan. "Remembering Haiti." Callaloo 18.2 (1995): 524-28.
Clayton, Jay. "The Narrative Turn in Recent Minority Fiction." American Literary History 2.3 (1990): 375-93.
Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak! London: Abacus, 1996.
Goellnicht, Donald C. "Blurring Boundaries: Asian American Literature as
Theory." An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature. Ed.
King-Kok Cheung. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 338-65.
Hardy, Sarah. "A Poetics of Immediacy: Oral Narrative and the Short Story."
Style 27.3 (1993): 352-68.
Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's The
Joy Luck Club." Feminist Studies 19.3 (1993): 597-615.
Ingram, Forrest L. Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century:
Studies in a Literary Genre. The Hague: Mouton: 1971.
Kelley, Margot. "Gender and Genre: The Case of the Novel-in-Stories."
American Women Short Story Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed.
Julie Brown. New York: Garland, 1995. 295-310.
Kennedy, J. Gerald. "From Anderson's Winesburg to Carver's Cathedral: The
Story Sequence and the Semblance of Community." Modern American Short
Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. Ed J. Gerald
Kennedy. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995. 194-215.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London:
Routledge, 1982.
Ordofiez, Elizabeth J. "Narrative Texts by Ethnic Women: Rereading the Past,
Reshaping the Future." MELUS 9.3 (1982): 19-28.
Richardson, Brian. "The Poetics and Politics of Second Person Narrative."
Genre 24 (1991): 309-330.
Shea, Renee. "Belles Lettres Interview: Edwidge Danticat." Belles Lettres 10.3
(1995): 12-15.
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All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Map Within: Place, Displacement, and the Long Shadow of History in the Work of
Edwidge Danticat
Author(s): Patti M. Marxsen and Patti M. Marxen
Source: Journal of Haitian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 140-155
Published by: Center for Black Studies Research
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41715295
Accessed: 10-10-2018 01:23 UTC
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extend access to Journal of Haitian Studies
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140 The Journal of Haitian Studies, Vol. 1 1 No. 1 © 2005
Patti M. Marxsen
Boston Research Center for the 21st Century
The Map Within: Place, Displacement, and the Long
Shadow of History in the Work of Edwidge Danticat
A place on the map is also a place in history.
-Adrienne Rich
The literature of Haiti in the twentieth century is a literature of exile.
From early novels such as Jacques Roumain's Gouverneurs de la rosée
(Masters of the Dew) to the Magloire-era novels of Jean Métellus to Dany
Laferrière's Un autobiographie américain (An American Autobiography),
major themes inevitably include the disintegration and reconfiguration of
relationships and society. Stories inhabited by displaced people migrating
in a world anchored by France, the United States, the Caribbean, and
Canada define and connect the terrain of the Haitian writer. 1 On this journey,
historical references are inescapable as characters alive in the present
learn to speak out of what Michel-Rolph Trouillot has referred to as the
"silencing" of Haiti's past.2Even non-Haitian writers of Haitian literature,
like Madison Smartt Bell, are compelled to confront the "non-event" of the
Haitian Revolution3 and the essential Haitian dilemma of displacement. In
the third and final volume of his triology, The Stone that the Builder Refused,
Bell richly imagines Toussaint Louverture's death in a prison cell in France
as the culmination of a long and tortuous history. In fact and fiction, such
cruel dislocations are the substance of the Haitian experience.
Onto this dark landscape, a new and distinctive voice appeared in the
1990s. Not only is Edwidge Danticat distinctive for being young and female,
or for writing in English rather than French, or for living in the United
States, or for attracting the attention of Oprah Winfrey and an audience
of mainstream readers; she is also distinctive for the ways in which she
works new magic with old themes and, in fact, advances them onto new
terrain. Early in her career, she was praised as Haiti's "literary voice."4 More
precisely, she is the voice of the Haitian-American Diaspora, a far-flung
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The Map Within: The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 141
community of approximately 3 1 5,000 souls.s As the literary voice of
people, Danticat has joined Laferrière in liberating Haitian literature
the local boundaries of Hispaniola, the island it shares with the Domi
Republic. In so doing, her work is redefining the meaning of past, pre
and place for a new generation.
In an early interview focused on her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memor
Danticat identified migration as one of her major themes.6 With the s
of Krik? Krak!, her second novel The Farming of Bones, and throug
her most recent collection of stories titled The Dew Breaker, Dantic
characters have continued to move from place to place like a flock of
in search of a safe nesting ground. But migration is more than a phy
journey. This paper interprets Danticat's approach to the theme of migrat
as an experience that encompasses a deepening relationship with his
In Danticat's work, the search for place in the present is anchored i
awareness of the past.
Furthermore, the absence of a sense of place - or the reduction of plac
in Danticat's stories to spaces that are restrictive, marginal, temporary
alienating7 - will be explored. As Danticat's characters struggle with
unresolved past, one psychic option is to transform Haiti through memoiy
individual or collective - into a lifeless symbol inhabited by heroes
strangers. By breathing life into Haiti's historical past and linking it t
living reality of today, Danticat offers a way out and a way forward.
Placemaking in Haitian Culture
What constitutes a sense of place? How do we come to know wher
belong in the world? Does the idea of "home-place" rely on relation
with people, a familiar landscape, language, religion, or our knowledg
cultural practices? Do we feel more "rooted" if we live in close proxim
to those who share our personal memories? If we live apart from fam
how do we keep the memory of our personal and collective history a
To what extent do monuments, historic buildings, commemorative p
and museums solidify our sense of place?
Franz Fanon analyzed colonialism and its psycho-social implicatio
in his famous 1961 treatise: "This world divided into compartments,
world cut in two, is inhabited by two different species. The original
the colonial context is that economic reality, inequality, and the imm
differences of ways of life never come to mask the human realities."
coexistence of two "human realities" described by Fanon was, in
the nature of life for the enslaved and colonized people of Haiti (form
Saint Domingue) for a century prior to the Black Revolution that w
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142
Patti
M.
Marxen
independence
cultures
share
situation
slavery
and
of
of
in
from
a
sense
Haiti
Saint
recovery
is
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u
Domi
in
its
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One
measure
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th
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population
In
a
this
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illitera
environment,
sense
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and
m
simp
estates
a
Violence,
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an
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and
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the
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and
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h
people.
in
Thus,
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internal,
eve
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a
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imaginative
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a
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i
realities.
It
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h
The
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With
drew
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of
Geog
first
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Danticat
came
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Sophie
p
aunt
pushes
it
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e
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But
Soph
on
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its
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dreams and learn to relate to a woman she has never known:
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im
and
The Map Within: The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 143
Am I the mother you imagined? She asked, with her eyes
half-closed.
As a child, the mother I had imagined for myself was like
Erzulie, the lavish Virgin Mother. She was the healer of all
women and the desire of all men. She had gorgeous dresses
in satin, silk, and lace, necklaces, pendants, earrings,
bracelets, anklets, and lots and lots of French perfume. . .
I could always count on her, like one counts on the sun
coming out at dawn. (59)
But a deeper problem emerges when Sophie's mother becomes obsessed
with her daughter's sexuality and insists on "testing" her purity and
wholeness by feeling for her hymen on a regular basis. This invasion of her
body causes Sophie to become estranged from her mother, her lover Joseph,
and, in a sense, from herself. She is a young woman without an identity.
Life in the rural Haitian village of Dame Marie was much simpler.
Viewed through the context of placemaking, this early work was
largely concerned with physical space and geography. In a sense, Sophie's
body is the only physical space she can claim as her own, and yet her
newfound mother invades it with her probing fingers.13 We might also
read this novel as a feminist "tract" in which mothers, daughters, aunts,
and grandmothers learn to understand and forgive each other and, in so
doing, build a community of strength. Indeed, the daughter's sexual and
emotional dysfunction can be attributed to maternal abandonment, abuse,
and neglect so easily traced to the sheer existence of Sophie whose face
resembles that of her violent father, a rapist.
But the deeper we delve into Breath, Eyes, Memory, the more clearly
we see how the mother/daughter emotions explored in this story are rooted
in history, in the dehumanizing violence of Duvalier 's secret police, in the
destabilizing effects of such violence on families, on the ways in which
historical and political violence is internalized and played out in the most
intimate relationships. In the sum of its parts, the plot of Danticat's first
book explores far more than one mother/daughter relationship; it explores
how relationships are shaped by history and, in Haiti, by the disorienting
violence of history.
As a means of coping, Danticat articulates the phenomenon of
"doubling" in her first novel, and relates it to historical events. For Sophie,
"doubling" is a trick of consciousness that allows her to be here and not here
at the same time. Related to Vodou and the twinned spirit named Marassa,
"doubling" is, in effect, a state of dual-consciousness. As Sophie says,
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144
Patti
M.
There
had
Marxen
were
presidents
and
many
doubled.
part
ca
Followin
were
shadow.
actu
Tha
and
rape
so
many
p
their
children
and
m
Sophie's
achievement
wholeness
from
you
a
can
lightly.
The
that
place
carry
.
she
where
your
.without
Living
r
br
pa
pain,
Past
In
a
world
where
th
fulfilled,
its
violent
a
negotiated
through
li
evolved,
she
has
incre
Haitian
people
of
history
witness
to
live
in
th
linking
past
an
by
humanizing
histor
a
path
of
empathy
alo
to
the
lives
of
women
beyond
"heroic
histor
As
we
have
Memory.
framed
the
and
the
seen,
Her
within
title.14
the
b
second
a
mythi
Among
thes
in
a
variety
of
ways.
in
which
a
powerless
as
Boukman
in
a
schoo
slave
uprising
in
1791
priest
and
slave
leader
Haitian
people.
The
lin
the sorrow that fueled the Haitian Revolution:
A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones
of my people. Not only those people whose dark hollow
faces I see daily in the fields, but all those souls who have
gone ahead to haunt my dreams. At night I relive once
more the last caresses from the hand of a loving father, a
valiant love, a beloved friend. (56)
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The Map Within: The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 145
This confession of emotion and its motivating force runs parallel to th
emotions growing in the weary heart of Guy, the boy's father who ha
trouble finding work. In the course of the story, he feels shamed when t
best job he can find amounts to a few days of employment cleaning latrin
at the local sugar mill. As his son swells with the reenacted revolutio
spirit of Boukman, the father's thoughts are fixed on a hot-air balloon
belongs to the owner of the mill. The hot-air balloon is a French inve
and, as such, represents power as well as the power to move, to rise
and beyond the harsh life of Haiti. As a symbol, the hot-air balloon
brilliant evocation of a glorious past and a hopeful future echoed in
child's continuing recitation:
There is so much sadness in the faces of my people. I
have called on their gods, now I call on our gods. I call
on our young. I call on our old. I call on our mighty and
the weak. I call on everyone and anyone so that we shall
all let out one piercing cry that we may either live freely
or we should die. (71)
The father hears these hollow words deep in his angry soul. In the
his despair over the long struggle for freedom leads him to break fr
his life and fly the balloon alone. He dies violently in the process, fa
to the ground before the eyes of his son and his wife. In this story
sky is a liberating space but the only liberation available is death. In
historical context of Guy's dilemma, hope and hopelessness collide i
tragic moment. Time has collapsed. There is no longer a past, nor is t
a believable future.
In "Wall of Fire Rising," the sky beckons to Guy as a means to freedom.
In "Children of the Sea," the liberation of death comes from drowning.
This now famous story follows the thoughts of young lovers torn apart by
political violence in Haiti. The epistolary structure of the story relies on an
imaginary exchange of letters between a radio journalist who has become
one of the "Haitian boat people" sailing to America in a small boat with 36
others while the girl he loves remains in Haiti, protected by her powerful
father.16 Through the device of letters, we feel the immediacy of their
dilemma. He writes of the voyage and of the others on the boat. He tells of
a young woman who gives birth to a stillborn baby on the boat but will not
let anyone throw the body of the dead child overboard. He writes of seawater
coming into the boat. He rethinks his life and professes his love.
In alternating segments written in lowercase letters, the girl replies
in a mixture of French and English. She has destroyed most of his tapes,
but kept a few, writing that "... i still have your voice." It is through her
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146
Patti
words
"a
that
group
were
Marxen
we
of
learn
of
students
you
went
all.
to
the
the
t
got
demonstrating
calling
who
M.
fo
rad
morgu
She
tells
of
Macoutes
l
that
head
was
her
dinn
And
so
the
story
unf
family
moves
away
fr
has a new life filled with butterflies and a view of the mountains, "i feel
like all those mountains are pushing me farther and farther away from
you," she says. (26)
She is right, of course, for he is traveling on, embracing his fate. 'The
other night I dreamt that I died and went to heaven," he writes. 'This
heaven was nothing like I expected. It was at the bottom of the sea." In
his last letter he says, "Perhaps I was chosen from the beginning of time
to live there with Agwé17 at the bottom of the sea." (p. 28) Likewise, her
last missive and the last lines of the story speak of "... a sea that is endless
like my love for you." (29)
As this story suggests, the sea occupies an important place in Haitian
history and culture. Not only does the sea serve as a key to economic life,
it carries with it historical, spiritual, and cosmic meaning. In many ways,
the sea in Haitian life is equivalent to Christian concepts of Heaven as a
place where all ancestors reside. It was, after all, the sea that brought the
ancestors from West Africa, often called Guinin or Guinea. And it is to the
sea that all ancestors return. In Vodou, the mirror is symbolic of the sea
and its ability to reflect all time:
The connection of mirrors, water, and Guinin, the home of
the spirits, makes a complex, uroboric point. Gazing into
the water, a woman sees her own reflection, and through
it, simultaneously, she sees the Iwa. Superimposed on
the faces of the Iwa, she sees the faces of her ancestors,
because an ancestor returns to the living in the form of
the Iwa he or she revered most during life. Thus, Haitians
gazing into the mirror surface of the ocean that separates
them from Africa see in intermingled reflections the Iwa ,
the ancestors, and themselves.18
Danticat herself has written about how "[t]he past is full of examples
when our foremothers and forefathers showed such deep trust in the sea
that they would jump off slave ships and let the waves embrace them. They
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The Map Within: The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 147
too believed that the sea was the beginning and the end of all things,
road to freedom and the entrance to Guinin."19 In "Children of the Se
the sea encompasses past and present as the young man and many ot
are presumably swallowed in a tragic fate. The socio-political conditio
in Haiti, so well described by the girl's letters, drove these people aw
from the only home they had ever known, making each of them a victim
history. In the end, the sea is a way out, and a way into the deep free
of eternity.
Another story in Krik? Krak! that also relies on historical events for
its framework is titled "Nineteen Thirty-Seven." In this tale of rebirth,
Josephine's mother is in prison in Port-au-Prince for witchcraft because
she knows how to make a Madonna statue weep by placing wax and oil in
the corner of the eye. But the real meaning of the Madonna's tear has to do
with an important event in twentieth-century Haitian history: the slaughter
of Haitians in the Dominican Republic by General Trujillo in November of
1937. We learn that in that massacre Josephine's mother narrowly escaped
death by leaping through the bloody water from the DR to the other side.
Josephine, still in her mother's womb at the moment of escape, was born
in Haiti on the same day. Furthermore, Josephine's grandmother died that
day.
Throughout her life, Josephine has known the Massacre River. The
slaughter itself and her frequent return to the river to bear witness have
formed Josephine's identity and linked her life to her mother's suffering,
and the suffering of her people:
We were all daughters of that river, which had taken our
mothers from us ... We came from the bottom of that river
where the blood never stops flowing, where my mother's
dive toward life- her swim among all those bodies
slaughtered in flight- gave her those wings of flames. The
river was the place where it had all begun. (41)20
As the story unfolds, Josephine's pilgrimage from present to past
continues as she makes regular visits to her mother, who is ill. This border
crossing, of sorts, echoes the past. When an old woman comes to Josephine,
they go through a mysterious series of questions and answers beginning
with an essential understanding of where they locate themselves:
"Who are you?" I asked her.
"I am a child of that place," she answered. "I come from
that long trail of blood." (44)
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148
Patti
M.
Marxen
'That place" is history
made a community
and spirituality born of
after her mother's dea
has
their
bodies,
like
angels
chrysalis is inescapable.
contained in this story
mother's
The
courage
Farming
"Nineteen
of
behind
Massacre
finds
theme
of
the
works
a
the
there
"homeless"
Javier,
The
on
of
the
the
f
ri
"home
man
border.
As
Domin
Amabelle
kind
in
Bon
1937.22
in
River.23
her
The
of
h
Thirty-Seven"
slaughter
left
gave
Her
cane
is
s
who
e
conv
fields,
"Sometimes the peop
and angry, they say
"They
say
we
are
the
b
They say some peopl
us. I say we are a gro
She
recalls
her
childh
playing in the "deserted
rest of the world from
that
From
were
the
meant
safety
to
of
hol
these
green mountains, the r
sixty-five doors down i
the queen's court acros
Thus, history is evoke
the world is viewed an
Independence,
the
vision
of
of
which
space,
freed
enters the psyche of A
Though other reference
the "Yanki occupation,"
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The Map Within: The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 149
authority (1914-1934), Amabelle is particularly rooted in her memo
the Citadel and in the heroes of Haitian Independence, whose names
spirits are evoked throughout the novel.
From the beginning of this story, place forms the focus of Amab
thoughts and is a primary topic of conversation with characters at all lev
of society. This is partly due to a rumor emerging that Generalissim
Rafael Trujillo wants to get rid of any Haitian not working in a cane
A Haitian woman in Amabelle's village expresses anxiety about not ha
any "papers in my palms to say where I belong."25 Reflecting on
conversation, Amabelle's thoughts run along similar lines:
I had no papers to show that I belonged either here or in
Haiti where I was born. The children who were being
taken to school looked troubled as they glanced up at their
parents' faces, which must have seemed- if I remembered
the way a parent's face looked to a child- only a few
inches from the bright indigo sky. I found it sad to hear
the non -vwayajè Haitians who appeared as settled in the
area as the tamarind trees, the birds of paradise, and the
sugarcane- it worried me that they too were unsure of
their place in the valley. (70)
As the story evolves, General Trujillo's army does, indeed, butch
Haitian people, committing atrocities that are unforgotten to this d
Amabelle escapes, miraculously, to the other side with Yves. Many fr
die in the process and her beloved Sebastien is lost forever. She can
love Yves, though they live together for many years. In a poignant ef
to regain herself, Amabelle visits the Citadel and joins a tour group
"white foreigners" who learn the story of Henri Christophe's life, ri
power, and suicide. She returns to the river, and even to the Domin
Republic where she pays a visit to her former employer, Señora Vale
Her motive is to find Sebastien, or at least to find out what happene
him. Instead, she finds nothing but a deeper understanding of herself
child of the 1937 massacre:
The slaughter is the only thing that is mine enough to pass
on. All I want to do is find a place to lay it down now and
again, a safe nest where it will neither be scattered by the
winds, nor remain forever buried beneath the sod. (266)
In the final pages, the "place to lay it down" is the river itself. We step
into the water with Amabelle and feel her buoyancy as she floats on her deep
and painful past. Magdalena Cohen's thoughtful analysis of the baptismal
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150
Patti
power
to
a
ease
kind
M.
of
water
the
of
Marxen
in
pain
The
of
peace.26
lif
1
and rebirth to be found in water- whether it be river or sea- is a sense of
place, a kind of heavenly homecoming to which one can return when all
else fails and be soothed by the waves of time.
Like The Farming of Bones, the Romanesque collection of stories
gathered under the title The Dew Breaker is an historical work. The nine
stories "woven"27 around the central, nameless figure of the "dew breaker"
explore the reality and impact of the Duvalier era in Haiti (1957-1986).
Through these stories, we meet an assortment of people whose lives have
been touched by the torturer, a man described as "fat," with a distinctive
"widow's peak," a man whose daughter Ka was raised to believe that his
role in the politics of Haiti had been good, even noble and courageous. But
in the opening story, 'The Book of the Dead," Ka learns otherwise.
Danticat is adept at choosing a place that reflects the alienation of
her characters. In this pivotal story in which Ka learns of her father's true
identity as a torturer, the rented motel room is a keen contrast to the home
and life of the Haitian actress, Gabrielle Fonteneau, a place that blends
all spaces into a luxurious homeplace complete with a garden and loving
parents. In a characteristic Danticat irony, Ka's father spoils the moment
or, more to the point, the silent, violent past in which he participated spoils
the moment. In the end, both Ka and her father are perceived as intruders,
impostors, out of place as the "plot" shifts in place from Haiti to New York
to the motel room in Florida to the Fonteneau home. This story anchors the
book and announces the outcome of the dew breaker's life in America.
In 'The Book of Miracles," we once again encounter the idea of the
vwayjè who figures so prominently in Danticat's stories. The dew breaker is
such a character, and by association, so is his wife Anne, whose attachment
requires that she renegotiate places and spaces as a way of life in light of the
historical past. After tense moments at church on Christmas Eve, she decides
that she will not return to the church with her husband, the torturer who might
be recognized by one of his victims. She will come alone next time.
We also meet wanderers in "Night Talkers." In this story, Dany, a young
man who now lives in New York, makes a pilgrimage to his village in Haiti
to visit his blind, elderly aunt.28 Estina Estèrne is delighted to see him in the
light of day, but it is in darkness that they share "noctural habits."
He too spoke his dreams aloud in the night, sometimes to
the point of jolting himself awake with the sound of his
own voice. (98)
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w
The Map Within: The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 151
In the village, Dany meets the hip Americanized Claude, who has co
back to Haiti from New York, grateful to live in the country instead o
Port-au-Prince "... eating crap and sleeping on the street." Claude has b
in prison for murdering his own father. After learning this, Dany dre
of his parents' murder by a fat man with a widow's peak who shot them
front of their house. He remembers the event vividly; he was six years
and there to watch it, pulled back from the shots and pinned to the gro
by his now elderly aunt.
Not long before his visit to Haiti, Dany paid a visit to the barber
believes to be the man who murdered his parents. This is the dew break
and when a room becomes available in the basement of his house, Dan
rents it with the intention of killing him. He comes close, stands over
snoring barber in the middle of the night, prepares to choke him to de
and then retreats. He talks to Tante Estina all about this, but then wak
up realizing that he has only been talking in the night while his aunt
awake nearby.
"Da, were you dreaming of your parents?. . . You were
calling their names."
"Was I?" He would have thought he was calling the
barber.
"You were calling your parents," she said, "just this
instant." (108)
They skirt the truth with a conversation about what Dany's paren
were doing that led to their deaths. Were they involved in politics? W
did they do to deserve their fate? To Dany's questions, Tante Estina rep
" I don't know, Da. Maybe they were mistaken for all of us. There's a be
that if you kill people, you can take their knowledge, become everyth
they were."29
Before this story ends, Dany's aunt dies and Claude confesses his crim
to Dany, declaring himself to be "the luckiest fucker on this goddam
planet."30 Dany cringes in the knowledge that Claude can speak
nightmares in daylight. For him, the childhood victim of murder, th
horrors belong to the noplace of the night.
It is in the final story, "The Dew Breaker," that we come to underst
how history swallowed the murderer of Dany's parents into the militi
the "Papadocracy" and how, in a startling twist worthy of Greek trag
three completely disparate forces- his final murder, a deep wound to h
face, and a woman propelled by a spiritual seizure- become the combi
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152
Patti
impetus
murder
breaker
M.
to
Marxen
purchase
tw
of
the
preache
finds
himself
walls
that
is,
in
fact,
dwells
in
sickening
vio
as
if
to
purge
himself
an
outward
sign
that
h
moment,
into
like
him.
been
She
taken
a
is
meteor
away
to
Unknown
to
her,
breaker.
The
fury
past-present,
s
dressed
Ca
this
of
life-death
and nurses his wounds.
"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. (237)
Out of this strange moment of empathy an unspoken agreement is
formed, almost instantly. It is not romantic love; or perhaps it is more than
romantic love. These two will go to New York together, build a life, have
a daughter. And one day the daughter will learn of her father's role as a
Tonton Macoute and ask her mother the unanswerable question, "Manman,
how do you love him?"31 It is at this point that 'The Dew Breaker" picks
up the thread of 'The Book of the Dead," for the question is asked when
Ka calls her mother from the motel room in Florida after learning the truth
of her father's past. The continuity is artful and metaphorical. History is
alive in the present and passed on, generation to generation. The power of
historical place is inescapable.
Healing the Wounds of the Past
As these stories demonstrate, Haitian people today are drawn into a
complex and violent history, as actors and victims. Thwarted from within
and without for over two centuries, they continue to migrate, driven from
their island in search of a home that does not exist. But they do not migrate
alone. As Danticat's work demonstrates, the things they carry include
personal and collective histories of shared suffering and codified courage.
As the stories and themes discussed here suggest, there is a reckoning with
history in Danticat's work that recognizes the necessity of making a place
that honors history, even in the midst of migration.
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The Map Within : The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 153
"To know who you are means knowing where you are," says James
Clifford. "Your world has a center you carry with you."32 For Haitians a
Haitian-Americans, the center will always encompass the tragic legacy
of slavery, colonialism, revolution, invasion, massacre, and imperialism
Just as Danticat's characters live with individual and collective memories
of Boukman, Henri Christophe, the "Yanki" Invasion, the slaughter of
1937, the horrors of the Duvalier Era, and the losses of the "boat peopl
so do members of the living Haitian Diaspora. Placemaking in the long
shadow of such a history is destined to be a difficult necessity. Humaniz
and dignifying that history through the power of literature is one way
ease the pain and, perhaps, find a way to heal it. By telling the stories a
drawing the map within, Edwidge Danticat is becoming a cartographer
reconciliation.
Notes
1 Jane Evans Braziel proposes a concept of "trans-American" identity to describe
the complexity and unity of the North-American aspect of this experience.
2 Edwidge Danticat also refers to the problem of silence. "Migration silences you,"
she explains, as a result of distance and language. See her interview with Renée
H. Shea in The Caribbean Writer , Vol. 18.
3This is Trouilloťs term. See Silencing the Past for his analysis of how the "archival
power" of history rendered the Haitian Revolution "invisible" and irrelevant to
western civilization.
4 Paule Marshall is quoted on the 1995 cover of the first edition of Breathf Eyes ,
Memory with this statement.
5 Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey account for over 267,000
of this number. See the 2000 U.S. Census for a state-by-state breakdown. If
we include Canada in the Diaspora population, the number increases to nearly
500,000 with 100,000 Haitians in the Montréal area alone.
6 Danticat, 1995.
7 Consider the prison space in "1937," the overcrowded boat in "Children of the
Sea," or the motel room at the beginning of "The Book of the Dead." Such
marginalized spaces are characteristic of Danticat's work.
8 Franz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Constance Farrington, Trans. New York:
Grove Press, p. 39
9 Note that it was 1835 before France recognized Haitian Independence and only
then when a 150 million franc "indemnity" was agreed upon to avoid another
French invasion. It is also relevant to this discussion to note that the impoverishing
effects of this debt, which was reduced to 60 million francs but still took over a
century to pay off, prolonged the legacy of colonialism in Haiti.
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154
10
Patti
See
M.
Marxen
Trouillot
more
recent
French
were
for
his
study
by
L
not
prepar
11
The
deforestation
of
and
is
expected
to
reach
is
the
devastating
effec
the
Central
Plateau.
Se
12
Consider
the
iconic
p
the
Lincoln
Memorial,
f
13
While
this
is
cultural
context
problematic.
an
acce
and
jux
14The
question/answer
a
story?"
"Yes,
give
us
15The
1791
uprising
is
a
ceremony
in
August
17
plantations
were
presen
marked
with
outrageou
Nord
was
burned,
thou
property,
16
In
the
and
over
1990s,
it
10,0
is
overcrowded boats.
17 Agwé is the spirit of the sea
18 McCarthy Brown, p. 284.
19Danticat, Edwidge, 1996b, p. 141.
20 In this context, see Magdelena Cohen's article, which extends the healing power
of the sea to include water in general.
21 Danticat, p. 47. It is worth noting here that prisons occur frequently in Danticaťs
work.
22 It is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 Haitians were butchered in the
slaughter.
23 The river is so named for the killing of French buccaneers by the Spanish in the
18th century, not for the 1937 event.
24 At the time independence was declared, Christophe was a black general in the
north. He built the Citadel as a fortress after he declared himself king in 181 1.
25 Danticat, 1998, p. 70.
26 See Cohen, 2004.
27 Danticat has referred to herself as a "weaver of tales." See Danticat 1995.
28 Note that pilgrimage back to one's origins or source of pain is a theme that
appears in many of Danticaťs stories and in both of her novels. Also, it is
worth mentioning that characters with infirmities, handicaps, and missing parts
frequently appear in her work.
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es
The Map Within : The Work ofEdwidge Danticat 155
29Danticat, 2004, p. 109.
30 Danticat, 2004, p. 120.
31 Danticat, 2004, p. 239.
32 Clifford, 1989, p. 4.
Bibliography
Bell, Madison Smartt. 2004. The Stone that the Builder Refused. New Yor
Random House.
Braziel, Jane Evans. 2005. '"C'est moi, l'Amérique' Canada, Haiti, and Dany
Laferrière's Port-au-Prince/Montréal/Miami textual transmigrations of the
hemisphere." Comparative American Studies : An International Journal 3, no.
1: 29-46.
Brown, Karen McCarthy. 1991. Mama Lola: A Vodou priestess in Brooklyn.
Berkeley: Universtiy of California Press.
Cohen, Magdalena. 2004. "The ability of water to heal and unify in Edwidge
Danticat's The Farming of Bones and 'Children of the Sea,"' The Caribbean
Writer 18: 201-224.
Clifford, James. 1989. "Traveling theories, traveling theorists." Inscriptions 5.
Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Cultural Studies.
Danticat, Edwidge. 1994. Breath , Eyes, Memory. New York: Soho Press.
randomhouse.com/vintage/danticat.html.
Dubois, Laurent. 2004. Avengers of the New World
Revolution. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Farmer, Paul E. 1995. The Uses of Haiti. Monroe
Press.
Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. Constance Farrington Trans. New
York: Grove Press.
Kidder, Tracy. 2003. Mountains beyond Mountains. New York: Random House.
Laferrière, Dany. N.D. Books: Le cri des oiseaux fous by Dany Laferrière. at www.
frenchculture.org
Roumain, Jacques. 1997 [1944]. Gouverneurs de la rosée. Coconut Creek, Florida:
Educa Vision.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of
History. Boston: Beacon Press.
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THE FLYING AFRICANS: EXTENT AND STRENGTH OF THE MYTH IN THE AMERICAS
Author(s): Lorna McDaniel
Source: Nieuwe West-Indische Gids / New West Indian Guide, Vol. 64, No. 1/2 (1990), pp.
28-40
Published by: Brill on behalf of the KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian
and Caribbean Studies
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027305
Accessed: 05-10-2018 00:02 UTC
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Lorna McDaniel
THE FLYING AFRICANS:
EXTENT AND STRENGTH OF THE MYTH IN THE AMERICAS
The theme of human aerial flight permeates the mythology of
America. Examples of the metaphor are found in major musical
myths and poetry in Black cultures that span the Caribbean and so
North America, embracing generations to testify to the depth o
cosmological and conscious projection of systems of flight escap
homeland return. While the theme of human flight does not occu
significant proportion in West African mythology related them
transformation and pursuit do appear. However, in African thou
witches and spirits possess the power of flight; a flight that can be bl
by the use of salt. The belief in spirit flight, ubiquitous in the Black d
of the New World, parallels that in African thought, but in the New
it is enlarged to include humans as possessors of the capability of
In the Haitian tale, "Pierre Jean's tortoise" (Courlander 1964:29),
present the tortoise with feathers, but at the moment of danger,
them, leaving the tortoise to sing: "If I could fly, ehe, What a t
I have no wings." The South Carolinian story, "All God's children
wings" (Hughes 1958:62) repeats the notion of the repeal of the
of flight. The story begins: "Once all Africans could fly like bir
gift of flight was repealed, but freedom and escape through the
to fly is again awarded the besieged slaves who soar above the sl
heads accompanied by their own singing. In both stories song or m
words precipitate or accompany freedom and in the several vari
the myth (Georgia Writers Project 1940:150, 116, 117), where son
employed, code words facilitate flight. The most recent published
of the story forms the title piece of a children's book of African/Am
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THE FLYING AFRICANS 29
tales called The people could fly by Virgini
One can find thousands of variants th
older folk who know the myth, tale
Africans") and who express the actualiz
Ritual songs use the same metaphor of h
in recondite language. On Curaçao the fo
from Papiamento by Frank Martinus, i
African who bids farewell to his friend
I am in trouble
I am in trouble, man
I am in trouble
If you see god
Give my compliments to him. (Martinus 1988)
Richard Price, in First-Time, documents many bea
histories of the Saramacan past. Among these is the fo
...he could walk in a wink from here to the river ..., and walk
if it were solid ground. ...They say that Vuma could fly like
a human being. He'd prepare the obia till it was just right, push
tip of his thumb, suuu, like this (motions). That's what let him wa
his parrot feather, specially prepared. He'd tie his belt like this-
vauu
piiil
...
(Price
1983:112)
The story above uncovers the u
to conjure flight. In Guiana the
simply put themselves into a ho
in
place
and
fly
back
to
Africa
(Liv
by Miguel Barnet in his edition o
an ex-slave in Cuba: "...what hap
bodies and wandered about over
a snail leaves its shell and goes in
(Montejo
tucked
1968:131).
under
their
Some
armpits
stori
(Elder
around to induce flight. Tobago
journey of Canga Brown, "a m
of fire (Roach 1955).
Each
mode
of
travel
projects,
in
a
system of flight. Whether the
sea shell or on a leaf, soared on
walked upon the water, they had
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30
LORNA
MCDANIEL
of water) represents the obstacle ag
of deterrence in much of the lore
song from Carriacou, Grenada, ov
and the barrier to return - the se
the Bongo dance type, traditionally
Caribbean African-type dance ritu
is French Creole.
Oyo, Mama, Bel Louise oh
Nu kai alé nâ ginî pu
kotwé pawâ mwê
lame bawé mwê
We shall go to Africa to meet
my parents
The sea bars me (Pearse 1956:5)
"The Flying Africans" myth is also pe
by Zora Neale Hurston in this way:
...salt is not given because it is heavy. It h
can not fly and departs if he has salt. Once
ate salt. Many of them were brought to J
slaves. They flew back to Africa. Those
be slaves, because they were too heavy to fly
(Hurston 1938:62
Salt as Symbol
The item above introduces a significant theme that merges with and ext
the significance of the sea symbol. Salt, like the watery saline bar
blocks flight. Just as people intent upon return abstain from the ingesti
of salt so also do spirits and witches avoid salt. The use of salt as a protec
agent against flying witches is found in the folklore throughout the sou
part of the United States as well as in the Caribbean; and in West A
too, similar patterns of belief exist, "...the witch leaves her skin beh
on going out, and among the Vais it is thought that salt and pepper spri
in the room will prevent her from getting back into her hide" (Puc
1926:155). It is reported that during the 1920s in Nigeria people tho
that malevolent spirits of sleeping humans prowled during the nigh
would succumb at the presence of salt and be annihilated, not being
to reinhabit the body (Da Costa 1984). This belief is mirrored in the
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THE FLYING AFRICANS 31
thought of Carriacou that embraces the i
the lougarou and soucouyan, who shed their skin outdoors, can be
apprehended by spreading salt. Salt obstructs the reentry of their spirits
into the covering. Grains of sand from the fine-sanded neighbor island,
Sandy Island, may also be scattered on the door-step for the sand deters
the witch that must count every grain before its exit. Other Caribbean
cultures retain similar folk beliefs with only minor variations exhibiting
belief/practices too wide-spread to have been invented in isolated areas
(Puckett 1926:155).
On West Coast Africa in the Sudanic and Saharan regions, salt, gold
and cola nuts were major pre-colonial trade commodities and from those
early times the significance of salt was most likely imbued with symbolic
strength. Salt was a precious item whose weight was at times exchanged
equally for gold.
One can easily perceive the New World extension of the salt metaphor
in African legends and in history where the distasteful, salty and death
laden Atlantic Passage could have logically reinforced the association of
salt with death and the spirit world. The sea is the physical barrier and
salt, in its association with the sea, also inhibits return, but in an alternative
way. It is the abstinence from salt that could permit flight or "confer
special powers like those of witches..." or even make one "powerful enough
to fly back to Africa" (Schüler 1980:96). Food in the 18th century Caribbean
was preserved in the sea-like brine and reeked of the infamous salt. Weekly
allowances of salted codfish, mackerel, herring or pork constituted the
new and foreign food culture of the enslaved that was dictated by the
Beneficent Clauses of the Code Noir and British slave laws. No doubt
the acceptance of salted food implied to the slave the acceptance of bondage
from which he could not "fly".
The significance of salt permeates African-type religious ritual throughout
the Caribbean as an ingredient abhorrent to the spirit world. In modern
ceremonies perpetuated throughout the Caribbean that are staged in hono
of ancestral memory, salt is withheld from the food cooked in honor o
the old parents.
Victor Turner (1967:30) suggests that symbols may operate on severa
levels and in polarized dimensions, being at once, "sensory" (affective,
easily recognized, and physiological) and at the same time "ideological"
(stressing a larger societal value). The physiological connotation of heav
ness and groundedness is easily recognized in the physical effect of salt
on the body, while the cultural and mythological meanings are less evident
and more difficult to discern. However, in the social ownership of the
symbols the multiple and sometimes conflicting metaphors mingle, bein
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32
LORNA
MCDANIEL
accepted by some on its sensory a
The sensory explanation of magica
the same poem introduced above,
What give Canga Brown that
He don't eat salt nor sugar,
His flesh like Ibo yam,
power?
His blood like clean rain water".
(Roach 1955)
The Igbo Tale
"The Flying Africans" myth/tale as a whole, granting a polarizatio
meaning, alludes not only to the imagination of supernatural power
the soul's return from exile, but also to the ideological choice of su
that was often made by enslaved Africans. This logical and defiant
of rebellion actualized the return to Africa. The Igbo most often m
that choice for, as it was reasoned, he suffered from a state termed "fix
melancholy". Eighteenth century literature describes the Igbo as h
...timidity and despondency of mind;" and a "depression of spirits... (it) gives them
an air of softness and submission, ...which (causes) them frequently to seek, in a
voluntary death, a refuge from their melancholy reflections. (Edwards 1794:76
Igbos, coming from a highly individualistic society were probably extrem
perplexed at their condition under slavery, and being assured that
would consummate their existential notion of the inseparabi...
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