The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States

about the fact that we like trashing on the weak

because we don't have the courage to confront the powerful

in this place

in this white power center

this bastion of liberalism

where ANTHROPOLOGY incubates racism

where anthropology INCUBATES racism

where anthropology incubates RACISM

this place of learning who the players are

what the rules of the game are

and how to play and win

How do you play knowing that at every moment in time your identity is in question

How do you win when at every moment in time your identity is in question

I'm criminal

compulsive alertness

always having to be alert

criminal

always ready to answer questions

that never get asked

because of assumptions

that lead to even more questions

‹All I need is a good defense

coz I'm feeling like a criminal›

How do you overturn four hundred years of history

in less than one century?

Since this is about why I can't wait

I am gonna tell you why I am so tired

why I'm so tired

of not being able to imagine a better world

so I can change my world so we can change the world

why can't we talk about the things that make you wanna

can't talk about the things that make you wanna holler

make me wanna scream

cry

yell

let my people go

let my people go

right here

right now

right here

let me go

how far will we go

when we're still in chains

I can't wait because I am tired

tired of smiling

tired of masking

I'm tired of signifyin'

tired of being on the front line

tired of fighting the same damned isms

daily

I am tired of wearing this suit of steel

I am tired of being weighed down by armor

I am tired of carrying a banner of love

while THE war

still rages

on

FUTURE

LAZARUS RISING: AN OPEN LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER by Myriam J. A. Chancy

Ma tres chere Aimee,

You have not yet even arrived and already I worry about what your life may be like, far from Haitian shores. I can already see it- the day you enter kindergarten, all frills and curls, bright-eyed, with some butterflies making your little stomach queasy: No one will know how to pronounce your name. Aimee, like the pan-Africanist Martinican writer Aime Cesaire, but named for love. Aimee: French for beloved. Will you know to tell your teachers and schoolmates how to pronounce it correctly? They will insist on transforming it into 'Amy.' Will you wince, misrecognize yourself, crawl into your infantile shell and reemerge as something closer to their expectations as I had done so many years ago only to return, at long last, to my own bright self, name and all? I must pause now and smile at the thought of how long you have been loved and awaited. You are bound to arrive in the next century, not so long from now. I want this letter to be a bridge for you, to people and events already come to pass that you will not have the opportunity to experience, but which are nonetheless yours to hold and have, a part of your heritage.

Our lives may intersect in two different planes, you in the flowering of a new life, me in the wilting of an aging one. I write you this, then, so you will know your mother before she was your mother, when she was young, full of life and dreams-dreaming still about the day you would be in her midst. I want to try and set down some details of what life has been like for me as a displaced Haitian woman, growing up in lands not my own, in places that have demanded my integration and assimilation, a betrayal of my Haitianness and the various heritages that make up that identity; I want you to know some of these things in case you must repeat those lessons and I am not there to speak to, or, in case I become (between now and the moment of your arrival) the kind of adult who no longer knows how to listen to the wisdom of children's voices, who no longer daydreams or draws boxes on scribbling paper with elephants inside, invisible to the naked eye. I write these things to you so that you may know and understand that you are not alone in the things you will experience. You will not be the first and you will certainly not be the last.

RACE LESSONS

I want to begin, briefly, with the story of my family's movements back and forth between Port-au-Prince and North America. From the moment of my birth in 1970 until the age of five, the four of us shuttled back and forth from Haiti to Quebec. At one point, as my parents sought to establish themselves in North America, my brother and I, ages three and one respectively, lived either with an aunt or our grandmother for over a year's time. For this reason, I did not realize until we moved to English Canada in 1975 and I attended school there that we no longer