Harvesting Haiti
Harvesting Haiti
Reflections on Unnatural Disasters
2024 Longlist OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Bocas Lit Fest
This collection ponders the personal and political implications for Haitians at home and abroad resulting from the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 was a debilitating event that followed decades of political, social, and financial issues. Leaving over 250,000 people dead, 300,000 injured, and 1.5 million people homeless, the earthquake has had lasting repercussions on a struggling nation. As the post-earthquake political situation unfolded, Myriam Chancy worked to illuminate on-the-ground concerns, from the vulnerable position of Haitian women to the failures of international aid. Originally presented at invited campus talks, published as columns for a newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago, and circulated in other ways, her essays and creative responses preserve the reactions and urgencies of the years following the disaster.
In Harvesting Haiti, Chancy examines the structures that have resulted in Haiti's post-earthquake conditions and reflects at key points after the earthquake on its effects on vulnerable communities. Her essays make clear the importance of sustaining and supporting the dignity of Haitian lives and of creating a better, contextualized understanding of the issues that mark Haitians’ historical and present realities, from gender parity to the vexed relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Harvesting Haiti offers invaluable guidance to the international community responding to Haiti’s appeal for assistance in restoring peace within the country.
Harvesting Haiti is a profound reflection of the author’s critical engagement with the human condition in Haiti and about the concerns and demands of the Haitian people. With literary clarity and intellectual brilliance, Myriam J. A. Chancy writes about Haiti with a devotion to ethics and caring. And with the analytical pen of a scholar-activist, she defends the sovereignty and autonomy of Haiti, the rights and self-determination of Haitian women and girls, and the dignity and humanity of the Haitian people. This book is an essential read!
Harvesting Haiti takes the reader on an intimate journey to bear witness to the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that forever changed Haiti. Centering the dignity of Haitian lives, Chancy’s powerful essays and poetry stand against the silencing of Haitian history. It gives voice to the agency and tenacity of Haitian people, drawing connections between Haiti’s historical role as the first Black Republic in the Western Hemisphere and its present. This is a timely and necessary book that urges us to reframe discussions of Haiti–historically rooted in global anti-Blackness–in order to claim space to dream of a 'Haiti for Haitians.'
Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Guggenheim Fellow and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College. She is the author of Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony, and Transmission in the African Diaspora, among other books, including four novels, the latest of which is What Storm, What Thunder.
- Introduction
- Part I: Sovereignty and Survival
- The Aftermath: Responding to the Crisis (2011–2022)
- A Marshall Plan for a Haiti at Peace: To Continue or End the Legacy of the Revolution (October 2010)
- Submission or Omission: Haiti’s Challenge in Latin America (April 2011)
- A Haiti for Haitians: Ending the Legacy of (Band) Aid (November 2010–January 2011)
- Haiti: Five Years After (January 2, 2015)
- Part II: Gender and Equity
- Hearing Our Mothers: Safeguarding Haitian Women’s Representation and Practices of Survival (March 2010)
- Cultural Impasse and Structural Change: How to Address Questions of Gender Equity for Haitian Women across Societal Strata (2013)
- Love, Debt, and Forgiveness: Women Speaking from the Rubble in Post-earthquake Haiti (2011–2019)
- Women in Haiti: Strength in Spirit and Culture (February 19, 2010)
- Part III: Under/Water
- Under/Water (Poem)—May 31, 2010
- Ayiti Alive! Photo-Essay (2011–2014)
- Part IV: Understanding Haiti, in Context—Trinidad & Tobago Review columns (June–December 2012)
- Nou Bouké!!! (June 2012)
- Independence Notes or, “What’s So Great about Being Haitian, Anyway?” (July 2012)
- What Dreams Are Made Of: Haiti Kanpé (September 2012)
- The Horrors of Slavery: Haiti, Vodou, and the Myth of the Cursed Nation (October 2012)
- Walking Sadness: Haitian Returns—Nomad (November 2012)
- Tout Moun Se Moun: Haitian Women’s Feminism, Then and Now (December 2012)
- Part V: Frenemies: The Dominican Relationship
- Are You Haitian? (October 2013)
- Lavé Tèt: Striving for (Black) Wellness in Academe and Beyond (Travels in the DR, October 2013)
- New Year’s Resolution 2014: “Love Thy Neighbor”
- Conclusion: Living with Ruins
- Acknowledgments
- Appendix: Recommended Charitable Organizations Working in Haiti
- Notes
- Index
