AYITI CHERIE, MY DARLING HAITI by Nimi Finnigan, B.S, M.F.A A

AYITI CHERIE, MY DARLING HAITI by Nimi Finnigan, B.S, M.F.A A Dissertation In ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Dennis Covington Chair of Committee Michael Borshuk Jackie Kolosov-Wenthe Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School May 2012 Copyright 2012, Nimi Finnigan Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people without whom Ayiti Cherie, My Darling Haiti would never have been completed: Dennis Covington, who not only served as my supervisor but also introduced me to literary nonfiction, as well as Jackie Kolosov and Michael Borshuk for generously giving of their time and advice and for putting up with me. And as always, I still have not found the right words to thank and honor Mousson and Sean, who edited the manuscript for the facts, but more importantly who remind me to just be Nimi Finnigan through everything that I do because that’s enough. ii Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... II ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. IV 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Creative Nonfiction Overview: It’s All about the Latticework ................................. 1 Haitian Latticework: The Many Unseen Cultural & Historical Patterns .......................................... 4 Internal Latticework: How Am I Haitian? ....................................................................................... 8 Book Review ............................................................................................................ 14 Memoir, Travel Writing and the Personal Essay ........................................................................... 14 Fiction Texts for Nonfiction ........................................................................................................... 18 2. FOREWORD .......................................................................................................... 23 3. DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE MULE-GIRL? ............................... 31 4. I SPELL VODOU, YOU SPELL HOODOO ........................................................ 40 5. SHADES OF VODOU ............................................................................................ 43 6. YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE DOG? ................................................... 83 7. THE COLOMBIAN CONNECTION ................................................................... 87 8. WHAT THE DEAD DO ......................................................................................... 97 9. NEWS FEED ......................................................................................................... 104 10. MADAME COLO .............................................................................................. 123 11. NEG MAWON .................................................................................................... 132 12. WE DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER ................................................................. 139 13. FOLKLORE, LEGENDS AND PROVERBS .................................................. 158 14. WHAT SKIN CANNOT SAY ............................................................................ 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 172 iii Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 ABSTRACT When it comes to Haiti, so much has been said; so much has been explored, dissected, and elaborated on, be it in the fields of fiction, nonfiction or poetry. Yet, there still remains a particular silence, a hole within every single one of these approaches – contemporary rural Haiti is rarely considered, if even considered at all. Given that at least ninety percent of the island is comprised of rural villagers, Ayiti Cherie, My Darling Haiti , a collection of literary nonfiction essays, brings stories from the Haitian countryside to the forefront and places them alongside current narratives on Haiti. iv Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Creative Nonfiction Overview: It’s All about the Latticework “Our humanity is tied in each other.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show. May 17 2010. Late night television offers few words of wisdom, but the soft-spoken South African Archbishop, and friend to Nelson Mandela, captured what is at the core of many, if not all forms of expression: our humanity. How do we live it? What are its shapes, its moments, its vicissitudes? But beyond that, Archbishop Tutu invites a focus on a particular aspect of our existence within a community: the idea that one needs to be surrounded by people to be human (our humanity is not tied to each other but “in each other”). Given the particulars of such a definition, should writers and artists even attempt to represent such a latticework of interwoven existences and experiences? And can we do so accurately? Poetry has taken part of this discussion to task, in that poetry harnesses the emotive truths of an experience. The line breaks and stanzas of a poem, patterned images and sounds across the page, attempt to evoke the emotional changes within both our mundane daily existence as well as life's abrupt, extraordinary moments. On the other hand, creative nonfiction contends with the latticework of interwoven experiences itself, tracing each detail of the criss-cross patterns of our lives, essentially twinning moments - both their truth and their reality (however complex these may be) - on the page. In her collection of personal essays A Woman in a Man's World, Crying , Vicki Covington claims that we live "storied lives," which implies that the story of our 1 Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 lived experiences can not only be captured but that it is the goal of the creative nonfictionist to "hold up the moment, to take it up, to put it to the light with all its prismatic, uncut edges" (Covington 10). This focus on capturing the "uncut" aspect of life is what differentiates creative nonfiction from fiction. Both genres delve into the many facets of human experience, but as defined by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, creative nonfiction is “factual and literary writing that has the narrative, dramatic, meditative, and lyrical elements of novels, plays, poetry, and memoir.” In Literature of Fact: Literary Non-fiction in American Writing , Ronald Weber further defines the genre as “fact writing based on reporting that frequently employs techniques drawn from the art of fiction to create something of fiction’s atmosphere or feeling and that, most important, moves toward the intentions of fiction while remaining fully factual” (1). Thus creative nonfiction explores reality itself, unadorned with the fiction writer's impetus to fabricate facts, events, or people. As Dennis Covington says it, "the events in a nonfiction piece actually happened; the events in a piece of fiction did not necessarily happen." Consider Toni Morrison's Beloved , a rich and beautifully complex novel loosely inspired by the African American slave Margaret Garner who killed her own daughter rather than allow her child to live the life of a slave. Beloved is awe-inspiring in its language, its imagery, but more importantly in the ways it asks us to consider the psychological impacts of slavery on identity, on the mother-daughter bond, on the ways our social anxieties are rife with guilt, to name just a few possibilities of interpretation. But what about Margaret Garner? What does a mother who sacrifices 2 Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 her own child in an attempt to free her look like after the act? What does she have to say? Does she say anything at all? If it were possible to interview her, to sit down and interact with her, what would be her story (not Toni Morrison’s)? By bringing the actual experience to the forefront of the writing, creative nonfiction offers you a possibility of contact, of human contact, but also reminds you that there is an actual tangible being, a mother, a father, a brother, a child, a friend, that neighbor you hate, who has lived this or that particular event. Thus creative nonfiction becomes a magnifying glass, a tool that traces the "uncut edges" of unmediated life experiences, in hopes of revealing the patterns of meaning within our daily existences. Like Barry Lopez says "If you feel grief or rage or love, give it shape so that we as readers will know what you mean, and be able to better understand, better cope with the landscapes of our own grief and rage and love." Prose in both genres of creative nonfiction and fiction uphold the tenets of this quote, but I think fiction designs and constructs "the shape" Lopez speaks of, while creative nonfiction goes and hunts for it in an actual physical person, an actual existing geographic location, a verified concrete moment. 3 Texas Tech University, Nimi Finnigan, May 2012 Haitian Latticework: The Many Unseen Cultural & Historical Patterns My grandmother says "everything begins with history," and around 1492, three caravellas, La Nina, La Pinta and La Santa Maria dropped anchor on the shores of a large island on the Caribbean. Having arrived to

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