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Curiosity Seekers, Time Travelers, and Avant-Garde Artists: U.S. American Literary and Artistic Responses to the Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934)

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Curiosity Seekers, Time Travelers, and Avant-Garde Artists: U.S. American Literary and Artistic Responses to the Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Fall 12-15-2013 Curiosity Seekers, Time Travelers, and Avant-Garde Artists: U.S. American Literary and Artistic Responses to the Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) Shelley P. Stevens Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Stevens, Shelley P., "Curiosity Seekers, Time Travelers, and Avant-Garde Artists: U.S. American Literary and Artistic Responses to the Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934)." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/114 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CURIOSITY SEEKERS, TIME TRAVELERS, AND AVANT-GARDE ARTISTS: U.S. AMERICAN LITERARY AND ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO THE OCCUPATION OF HAITI (1915-1934) by SHELLEY STEVENS Under the Direction of Dr. Renée Schatteman ABSTRACT U.S. American literary and creative artists perform the work of developing a discursive response to two critical moments in Haitian history: the Revolution (1791-1804) and the U.S. Marine Occupation (1915 to 1934), inspiring imaginations and imaginary concepts. Revolutionary images of Toussaint Louverture proliferated beyond the boundaries of Haiti illuminating the complicity of colonial powers in maintaining notions of a particularized racial discourse. Frank J. Webb, a free black Philadelphian, engages a scathing critique of Thomas Carlyle’s sage prose “On the Negro Question” (1849) through the fictional depiction of a painted image of Louverture in Webb’s novel The Garies and their Friends (1857). Travel writing and ethnographies of the Occupation provide platforms for new forms of artistic production involving Vodou. Following James Weldon Johnson’s critique of U.S. policy (1920), others members of the Harlem Renaissance provide a counter narrative that reengages particular U.S. readers with Haiti’s problematic Revolution through the visual and literary lens of the Occupation experience. The pseudo journalism of William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929) serves as the poto mitan (center point) around which other creative works produced after the Occupation appear. Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale Hurston, and Maya Deren followed in Seabrook’s wake. Literature, performances, and film, as well as complementary ethnographic records for each follow from Dunham (Dances of Haiti, 1983), Hurston (Tell My Horse, 1938), and Deren (Divine Horsemen, 1953). The artistic production of these significant cultural producers may better represent their experience of fieldwork in Haiti following the Occupation. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Dunham’s exposure of Haitian dances across the world stage, and Deren’s experimental films better capture the reciprocal effect of the ethnographic process on each in their continued presentation to contemporary audiences. Literature directly related to their production appears later in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Arthur Flowers’s Another Good Loving Blues (1993), Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), and Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads (2005). These productive literatures and art forms actively engage in creating the transnational ideal of diaspora as we understand it today. All dance delicately with spirit. INDEX WORDS: Haiti, Ethnography, Vodou, Revolution, Occupation, Toussaint Louverture, Thomas Carlyle, James Weldon Johnson, Emily Balch, William Seabrook, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Maya Deren, Art, Literature, Film CURIOSITY SEEKERS, TIME TRAVELERS, AND AVANT-GARDE ARTISTS: U.S. AMERICAN LITERARY AND ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO THE OCCUPATION OF HAITI (1915-1934) by SHELLEY STEVENS A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2013 Copyright by Shelley Patricia Stevens 2013 CURIOSITY SEEKERS, TIME TRAVELERS, AND AVANT-GARDE ARTISTS: U.S. AMERICAN LITERARY AND ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO THE OCCUPATION OF HAITI (1915-1934) by SHELLEY STEVENS Committee Chair: Renée Schatteman Committee: Ian Almond Kameelah L. Martin Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2013 iv for Mikayla, who knows “what matters the most”1 1 Lori McKenna, “The Most,” Lorraine, Nashville: Lori McKenna, 2011. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With honor, respect, and eternal friendship, I offer this dissertation to Richard A. Long, Atticus Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Emeritus, Emory University, who left this life January 3, 2013. He and I conceived this project over the period of a decade following his supervision of my M.A. thesis. May his soul find solace amongst the company of many great and esteemed friends. Many generous and rigorous mentors have influenced this work over time including but not limited to Dr. Emily Hanna, Dr. Jane Blocker, Dr. Thomasine Bradford, Professor Ralph Gilbert, Professor George Beasley, Dr. Ivan Karp, Dr. Corinne Kratz, Dr. Sidney Kasfir, Haitian artist Barbara Nesin, Dr. Kameelah Martin, Dr. Elizabeth West, Dr. Michele Reid, Dr. Renée Schatteman, Dr. Ian Almond, Dr. Paul Schmidt, Dr. Calvin Thomas, and Dr. Marion Hollings. All presented theoretical challenges along the way from their changing positions at various universities that improved the quality of my thought, writing, and teaching. I must thank the Haitian Studies Association for allowing me to present portions of this work as it progressed at various stages at both the University of Virginia and Lynn University. The feedback I received from the participants became invaluable in refining my approach to such a delicate subject. Middle Tennessee State University funded my research during this final year of completion. Thank you, Dr. John Omachonu, Dr. Tom Strawman, Dr. Newtona Johnson, and Ms. Janice Lewis for inviting and facilitating this very productive relationship. Thank you to all of my students at Agnes Scott College, Georgia State University, and Middle Tennessee State University. I learn more from you than you do from me. vi I cannot begin to list all of the friends who provided emotional, physical, and spiritual support. Some have already been mentioned in other contexts, but, most especially, C. E. Wagner, Michael Lee, Wayne Tillett, and Monica Deleon; and T. J. Tanaka, Tracy Van Thomas, and Katherine Estes, among others, in Tennessee. Finally, my family, such as it is, deserves recognition for their generous emotional and fiscal support during the course of raising my daughter while pursuing my dreams. C. Mason McAllister earned my deepest regards in providing editorial support. I could never have completed this project without the inspiration of my now adult daughter (and her friends). May the ideals of her mother, her grandmothers, and her great-grandmothers provide her the grace to pursue her intellectual pursuits to whatever end she cares to take them. With all my love. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………….............v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES………….............1 CHAPTER II PRECURSORS TO OCCUPATION: IMAGES OF REVOLUTION IN FRANK J. WEBB’S THE GARIES AND THEIR FRIENDS (1857)….....24 CHAPTER III AMERICAN INVESTMENT IN THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF HAITI (1915-1934)…………………………………………………...…82 CHAPTER IV AN OPEN INVITATION TO HAITI: WILLIAM SEABROOK’S THE MAGIC ISLAND (1929)…………………………………………..167 CHAPTER V KATHERINE DUNHAM (1936 AND BEYOND), ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1936-37), AND MAYA DEREN IN (AND OUT OF) HAITI (1947-55)……………….240 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSIONS: LOVE’S DISCOVERY, ERZULIE IN THE NARRATIVES OF ISHMAEL REED, EDWIDGE DANTICAT, AND NALO HOPKISNON…………………………………………….310 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………333 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS As we go walking in that rubble As we go walking in that heat And we’re holding all the roses as we travel And we’re holding all the thorns as we grieve . What doesn’t kill us will make us stronger What doesn’t break us will make us last a little longer If it doesn’t set us free in the end Well it serves the ones who follow us my friend Before, they had the riot rails Before, they had the barricades Before, they had the history that they love to make I want you to write this down I want you to carry it around Blessed are the ones who know of this heavy road —Amy Ray, “From Haiti (with love),” Lung of Love, Daemon Records, 2012, CD. Once you find yourself in another civilization you are forced to face your own. —James Baldwin, pbs.org, 29 November 2006. On July 20, 2001, I left Atlanta for Haiti alone. With an impending attempted coups d’état on the horizon insurgent rebels captured several journalists for ransom that summer. On my way to interview artists, blissfully unaware, I experienced little of the fear buzzing in the air around me. But I did encounter new sensation aplenty. From the moment I stood in line at curbside check-in in Atlanta, everything in my worldview changed. The usual impatience one experiences from hurried travelers to international destinations was punctuated by new sounds 2 and behaviors. Haitians like to argue, and not in a hateful way but with a profound sense of entitlement combined with an expectation
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