The great irony of my life is that it is life in exile which has afforded me the luxury of looking back across time, to appreciate all that is Haiti. Living on the outside has enabled me to learn not only about Haiti but about the rest of the African diaspora. As a woman, there are things I have accomplished that I know both of my grand- mothers could not have accomplished in Haiti. No one knows what their dreams might have been, whether one had wanted to be a poet, the other a teacher. They became wives and mothers and their lives were defined by those two words. They sacrificed their personal happiness for their families, never thinking that perhaps they could, by living out those dreams, present them as gifts to their children, especially their female children, as pathways to their own dreams. And yet, it is clear to me that in the strength of their presence in those children's lives, they showed the potential to have accomplished anything they might have set their minds to. They made the most of what they had and this, in itself, makes for a humbling example. Because of their sacrifices, as well as the upheavals in Haiti, I am free in ways that I could not have been there. Yet Haiti remains my compass. How to explain? I think, Aimee, that this, too, will be one of the riddles of your life. But until such time as you may need to consider such a question, I leave you with the parting words of my own grandmother: "La paix de Dieu soit avec toi" [May the peace of God be with you]. Whatever gods you may believe in, may they protect you and light your way and may you be a light for others as you have always been to me.
With love, your mother,
Myriam Josephe Aimee Chancy
CONTRIBUTORS
Edwidge Danticat is the author of two novels, Breath, Eyes, Memory, and The Farming of Bones, and a collection of short stories, Krik? Krak!, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1995. She is also the editor of The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Women and Men of All Colors.
Sandy Alexandre was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and is a graduate of Dartmouth College. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in English at the University of Virginia.
Patricia Benoit is a filmmaker living in New York City.
Jean-Pierre Benoit is Professor of Economics and Law at New York University.
Martine Bury is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in several publications including Vibe, Jane, Nylon, and The Source.
Jean-Robert Cadet holds a master's degree in French literature and teaches French and American history in Cincinnati, Ohio. Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American is his first book.
Anthony Calypso is an actor who writes both fiction and nonfiction. He is a graduate of the MFA program in fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. He is at work on his first novel.
Sophia Cantave is a doctoral candidate in American literature and a lecturer at Tufts University. She is the author of an essay "Who Gets to Create Lasting Images? The Problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom's Cabin," in Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. She is also author of "Geography, Language, and Hyphens: Felix Morrisseau-Leroy and a Changing Haitian Aesthetic," published in The Journal of Haitian Studies.
Leslie Casimir is a journalist, currently working in New York City at the Daily News.
Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author of Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (Temple University Press, 1997) and Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (Rutgers University Press, 1997). Currently residing in Phoenix, Arizona, she is associate professor of English at Arizona State University, Tempe. She is at work on a novel entitled The Serpent's C/awand on a literary memoir focusing on Haiti and the Latin Caribbean.
Leslie Chassagne, born in Haiti and raised in New York City since the age of nine, studied art and language in the New York City University system and is currently a teacher at the Young Adult Learning Academy and Hunter College's International Language Institute. He is a poet, painter, and musician and has traveled throughout the Caribbean and Colombia.
Marc Christophe was born in Saint Marc, Haiti. He is professor of French and Caribbean literature at Howard University. This excerpt was adapted from his poem "PRESENT PASSE FUTUR" which was published in his 1988 collection of poetry Le Pain de L'Exile (The Bread of Exile).
Joel Dreyfuss is a former senior editor at Fortune and a regular contributor to The Haitian Times.
Phebus Etienne is a poet living in Montclair, New Jersey.
Annie Gregoire is a teacher and an aspiring children's book writer. She teaches second grade at Cush Campus Schools, a private school in Brooklyn, New York. Gregoire received a master's degree in foreign language education at New York University, where she has also done extensive research in cross-cultural studies and children's literature.
Maude Heurtelou is a native of Haiti, where she completed high school. She holds an undergraduate degree from the San Carlos University/ INCAP in Guatemala and a master's degree in public health education. She has written over sixteen nonfiction books in Haitian Kreyol and two novels, Lafami Bonplezi and Sezisman, which have been translated into English. She and her husband, Fequiere Vilsaint, are the founders and publishers of Educavision, a publishing company.
Joanne Hyppolite was born in Haiti. Her family settled in the United States when she was four years old and she grew up in Boston. She has published two popular children's books, Seth and Samona (De-lacorte Press, 1995), which won the Marguerite DeAngell Prize for New Children's Fiction and Ola Shakes It Up (Delacorte, 1998). Her fiction addresses the Haitian-American experience.
Dany Laferriere was born in Haiti, where he practiced journalism under Duvalier. He went into exile in Canada in 1978; soon after, he began working on his first novel How to Make Love to a Negro, which became an instant bestseller in both the original French and in English and was made into a feature film. He now divides his time between Montreal and Miami.
Marie-Helene Laforest currently makes her home in Italy, where she teaches postcolonial literatures at the Instituto Universitario Orientale, Naples.
Francie Latour is a journalist, currently working at The Boston Globe.
Danielle Legros Georges is a writer living in Boston. Her work has been anthologized in The Beacon Best of 1999.
Miriam Neptune, age twenty-three, was born in the United States and raised in Los Angeles. She has taken an active interest in Haiti/ U.S. relations since the start of the 1991 coup, and hopes to produce documentary work on this subject. She is now a graduate student in New York University's Media and Culture program.
Nikol Payen received her B.A. in journalism from SUNY New Paltz and her MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She was an assistant editor at Essence Magazine, where her writing has been featured. Other publications where her work has appeared include The Daily News Caribbeat, The Crab Orchard Review, Third World Viewpoint, New World, and a host of newsletters. Currently she is a professor of public speaking at Kingsborough Community College and is working on her forthcoming book, Something in the Water.