Fiction that Matters

penlive:

Haiti in Two Acts- May 5 @ Cooper Union

When an earthquake, or rather The Earthquake, ripped through the bowels of Haiti in January 2010, 300,000 people lost their lives. Among them were the the President of PEN Haiti, Georges Anglade, and his wife Mireille Neptune.

Today, PEN Haiti is helmed by the novelist Jean-Euphèle Milcé and his wife, the poet and novelist Emmélie Prophète. Milcé, Prophète, and the rest of the PEN Haiti staff and volunteers will conduct much of their future activities from the newly opened Maison Georges Anglade, a beautiful mountainside facility named in honor of the organization’s fallen father. Already there are plans in motion to cultivate new youth programs, writer’s residencies, reading series, and inter-cultural exchanges.

However, wonderful as these plans may be, Milcé and Prophète had their minds on more incendiary concerns on Sunday afternoon. Namely, the largely destructive intervention of northern NGO’s in the wake of perhaps the greatest natural disaster their country has even witnessed. Both Milcé and Prophète no doubt have unique and fascinating insights into the literature of their country and its place in the wider global cannon. Understandably though, both they and the author and long-time Haiti scholar, Amy Wilentz, felt compelled to share with us all the road to hell that has been paved with so many misguided good intentions. 

Wilentz began by describing the drastic changes she witnessed in the types of people making the pilgrimage to this historically troubled and complex land. Publicity-ravenous charitable organizations, growing hordes of perky Christian youngsters psyched for their ‘Awesome Adventure in Haiti’, militarised bureaucrats, they all came in their droves without an adequate understanding of how Haiti operates or how to best deliver money to those who really needed it. 

Speaking through interpreter Daniel Sherr, Milcé described the two-sided war that the country has been fighting for so long. On the one hand, it has the geographical misfortune of being criss-crossed by earthquake fault lines while also sitting in the middle of a hurricane pathway, not too mention its susceptibility to the unpredictable twin afflictions of flooding and drought. Arguably more maddening however, is the political shitshow which Haitians have been forced to watch play out down through the decades. The murky political realm has conjured up dictators, narco War Lords, and now an ongoing struggle between competing NGO’s for who can make the most use of this blighted place.

Prophète, when pressed on the question of what happened to all the donated funds, did not mince her words: “Not a single concrete humanitarian project has been carried out fully.” She explained how the bulk of all monies donated ended up in the hands of the U.S military to maintain security or to fund the lavish lifestyles of the functionaries who were more interested in securing various creature comforts than in making a realistic contribution to the reconstruction effort. 

Despite their anger at how skewed the world’s passive perception has been with regard to the ground-level realities of “aid” in Haiti, Milcé and Prophète both recognize that there are also truly good, useful outsiders who can be of benefit to the country. Unfortunately, these people are often the first victims of this toxic, post-quake, interventionist state of affairs.

It is difficult to hear just how naive the developed world can be in its efforts to fix the so-called broken nations of this planet. How misguided the best laid plans of Clinton, the Red Cross, and the thousands of disaster tourists who pour into natural disaster zones every year truly are. But it’s necessary. All too often we fool ourselves into believing that we can pacify entire regions of wounded, grieving people with a flurry of disorganized hand-wringing. In truth the world does not work that way.

PEN Haiti seized a rare opportunity to cut through the bullshit and speak to us about what they knew to be the reality, however unpleasant it might be to hear. We would all do well to dwell upon their advice. 

Haiti in Two Acts: a hard-hitting panel on literature and politics in Haiti on 5/5

In January 2010, Haiti was devastated by an earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people. Three years later, what has changed? What is the role of literature as Haiti rebuilds? What are the untold stories of this vibrant, expressive country? Act I: An expert delivers remarks about the country. Act II: Local writers respond to questions raised. 

Participants: Jean-Euphèle Milcé, Emmelie Prophéte, Amy Wilentz, Shoshana Guy

Get tickets here

creativetimereports:

AUDIO INTERVIEW

Haiti Beyond the Headlines: Tom Healy Interviews Edwidge Danticat

Three years after a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti, poet Tom Healy looks “behind the sound bites of trauma” with award-winning Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat, who shares stories of her childhood and reflects on immigrant life in the United States. 

Listen to the interview on Creative Time Reports.

Writers get ready. PEN Haiti's house of literature has opened!

penamerican:

Named in honor of Georges Anglade, an ethnographer and academic who died in the January 2010 earthquake, the sprawling, mountainside facility is swiftly becoming a hub for youth education and international exchanges after opening in August 2012. 

Three Years After the Quake, PEN Haiti launches a new house of literature

penamerican:

Saturday will mark three years since the devastating earthquake in Haiti that killed an estimated 300,000 people. PEN, too, was affected by the tragedy, as PEN Haiti’s director Georges Anglade was killed, along with his wife, after just having formally established the PEN center a few years prior. Three years later, PEN Haiti—and Haitian literature—is experiencing a renaissance. PEN Haiti recently launched its House of Literature, Maison Georges Anglades, which can host eight people and serve as a hub for writers around the country. The center is focusing on the next generation of writers by inviting youth to participate in workshops, as well as international writers.

Read more

photo by treesfts

sexantus:

caribbeancivilisation:

La Citadelle, Haiti 

The massive stone structure was built by up to 20,000 workers between 1805 and 1820 as part of a system of fortifications designed to keep the newly-independent nation of Haiti safe from French incursions.

comin from where i’m from…

(via freshmouthgoddess)

thecrashcourse:

Haitian Revolutions: Crash Course World History #30

Ideas like liberty, freedom, and self-determination were hot stuff in the late 18th century, as evidenced by our recent revolutionary videos. Although freedom was breaking out all over, many of the societies that were touting these ideas relied on slave labor. Few places in the world relied so heavily on slave labor as Saint-Domingue, France’s most profitable colony. Slaves made up nearly 90% of Saint-Domingue’s population, and in 1789 they couldn’t help but hear about the revolution underway in France. All the talk of liberty, equality, and fraternity sounds pretty good to a person in bondage, and so the slaves rebelled. This led to not one but two revolutions, and ended up with France, the rebels, Britain, and Spain all fighting in the territory. Spoiler alert: the slaves won. So how did the slaves of what would become Haiti throw off the yoke of one of the world’s great empires? John Green tells how they did it, and what it has meant in Haiti and in the rest of the world.

While Haiti Library Relief dollars are making a difference, the need is so vast that the American Library Association has to focus this effort on specific sustainable projects that will advance the nation’s recovery from one of the largest natural disasters on record. ALA has raised $55,000 for Haiti library reconstruction, and $35,000 has already been disbursed to specific building projects.

In the midst of all this, however, the Haitian American Institute, a school and cultural center with some 2,500 students, has broken ground for a new library building. The earthquake destroyed the campus’s historic library, but the collection—comprised of Haiti’s largest offering of English-language books for the public—was salvaged.

The Bibliothèque Nationale has received $20,000 from ALA for a new library in Petit-Goâve, a coastal town 42 miles southwest of the capital that was virtually leveled by the quake. The Haitian foundation FOKAL (Fondation Connaissance et Liberté) has received $10,000, which was used to purchase property for the construction of a new facility for the Centre Culturel Pyepoudre Library in Port-au-Prince.

U.S. Department of State: “Center Stage” Brings International Artists to Main Street, U.S.A.

statedept:

About the Author: Ann Stock serves as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post profiled Center Stage, one of the newest and most dynamic programs run by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural…