KENBE FEM: HAITIAN WOMEN’S MIGRATION NARRATIVES AND SPACES OF FREEDOM IN AN ANTI-IMMIGRANT AMERICA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Marsha Bianca Jean-Charles May 2019 © 2019 Marsha Bianca Jean-Charles ii KENBE FEM: HAITIAN WOMEN’S MIGRATION NARRATIVES AND SPACES OF FREEDOM IN AN ANTI- IMMIGRANT AMERICA Marsha Bianca Jean-Charles Cornell University 2019 “Kenbe Fem: Haitian Women’s Migration Narratives and Spaces of Freedom in an Anti-Immigrant America” is a study of the impact of forced exodus from Haiti and experiences of anti-Black racism in migration for Haitian women and girls as expressed in narratives of Haitian women writers. This study demonstrates that writing about coming of age during migratory processes is a genre of literature that captures the diaspora experience and offers a significant way of understanding the nature of women’s migration experiences. Throughout this work, I use trends, experiences, and themes explored in the texts written by Edwidge Danticat, Roxane Gay, Elsie Augustave, and Ibi Zoboi to deliberate on both the politics of travel for black women and the generative spaces that provide for identity formation, political consciousness-raising, and reimagining of one’s place in the world. I introduce a concept of dyaspora saudade—combining the Brazilian notion of “saudade” with the Haitian conceptualization of “dyaspora.” Dyaspora saudade is that which also nurtures and provides similarly generative spaces where home is lost, found, contested, and restructured and healing is as much a journey as it is the goal. Lastly, I uncover the politics in these works, conceptualize iii Black feminist citizenship, and offer foundations on which to imagine better experiences for both marginalized migrants and citizens. This dissertation is an understanding of the revolutionary potential of these texts that involves a foundational shift in conceptions of race, womanhood, class, cosmology, and nationhood that immigration due to forced exodus catalyzes. It is an exploration of the science of this literary revolution—a revolution that interpolates Black women authors publishing in diaspora speaking for, against, and through their kindred. The goal of this literary revolution is to affect change. If struggle brings forth the best of human existence, then the stories of Black immigrant women are masterpieces in their exploration of human social issues that are prominent in contemporary societies worldwide. In my work, I endeavor to comprehend, complicate, catalog, and translate their genius. iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Marsha Bianca Jean-Charles is a Haitian-American junior scholar interested in transnational literary studies of black women’s bildungsroman and immigration novels. She endeavors to research the cosmologies and revolutionary politics aroused from forced migration and statelessness. A Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, her undergraduate thesis, titled “Of Griottes & Pantomimes,” is a work elucidating the place of Black feminisms in the novels of Edwidge Danticat. In her Master's thesis, titled “Embodying Goddesses: Edwidge Danticat's Literary Revolution,” she mixes historical narratives and two of Edwidge Danticat’s short stories to include the voices of revolutionary women in Haiti’s war for independence. An organizer at her core, she fuses her academic work with her activist work and expands understandings of the uses of literary and performance art as tools for activism. B.A., Wesleyan University (2011) M.A., Columbia University (2014) v Dedicated to all the warrior women I know, both in and out of words vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In writing this, I realize how truly blessed I am to have a village that sees both me and in me what the world tried to bury time and again. From the very nascency of my scholarly career, I have been nurtured and supported as both thinker and dreamer by varied people—most especially Black women. Thank you to all along the way who cared to inspire, invest, and push me to go further than I ever before imagined. In truth, the seeds of this dissertation began when I picked up Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) in high school. The idea grew roots, however, in my undergraduate thesis written under the tutelage and socio-emotional guidance of Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse. Drowning in a sea of anti-Haitian media coverage of the 2010 earthquake, Dr. Ulysse reminded me of why I became an African-American Studies major and shared with me the world of the Haitian Studies Association—one of the first academic places where I felt seen and cared for by scholars like Dr. Régine Michelle Jean- Charles. Thank you to the both of you, sincerely, for the examples you set and the paths you dared me to pave. Thank you too to Dr. Krishna Winston and Dr. Renée Johnson-Thornton who curated and guided my Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship experience. The pursuit of this field of inquiry gained traction and vigor during my time at Columbia University while pursuing my Master’s degree at what was then the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) and is now the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department. I am immensely grateful and forever indebted to Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin, the late Dr. Marcellus Blount, Shawn D. vii Mendoza, and Sharon Harris for all you helped me overcome and the ways you showed me how to thrive in spite of facing difficulties—without you I most certainly would not have continued to pursue a doctoral degree. Thank you, Dr. Griffin, for your guidance, mentorship, and for all the ways you have bettered my work, even before you ever met me. “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration Narrative lit a spark in my mind and catalyzed my work in theorizing Haitian diasporic migration narratives. Thank you for also being a guiding light and showing me another life was possible if I willed and worked at it. Doctoral programs are, by nature, life-changing. Without Dr. Carole Boyce Davies, the change would have most certainly been to my detriment. Thank you for the opportunities you created for me, the edits and recommendations you crafted, and the ways you reminded me that I could be all of who I am, unapologetically. The example you set, the fire in me that you stoked even on my worst of days, are both what compelled me to continue past many trials and tribulations. Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject grounded my work with its brilliance and made me better understand theorization of migratory subjectivities within, and resistance evinced in Black women’s writings. Dr. N’Dri Assié-Lumumba’s work on women, gender, and education clarified my endeavor to comprehend the dialogic and didactic potential of Black women’s literature. Dr. Margo Crawford’s and Dr. Naminata Diabate’s courses offered me space to begin conceptualizing the beginnings of my dissertation. Dr. Boyce Davies, alongside Dr. Assié-Lumumba, Dr. Crawford, Dr. Diabate, and Dr. Riché Richardson continued the legacy that IRAAS set and buoyed me through some terribly tumultuous seas. viii Thank you too to all of the women, writers, activists, and scholars who were all pieces of the puzzle that became Black feminist citizenship. Thank you preeminently to the varied people who used their courses to shape and evolve my thinking. I have named a number of you already and wish to also include Dr. Patricia G. Lespinasse and Dr. Danielle Terrazas Williams—you along with other educators opened up for me worlds of thinking and scholarship that genuinely made my heart smile and my soul weep with the realization that there was a world out there worth fighting alongside. Lastly, I wish to express extreme gratitude to my family—blood and chosen. From all the beloved beings I met along the way and who intermittently jumped in with words of encouragement or hope, to the very ones I share most of my days with, I am because we are and without you, I would have long given up. To my crew: Gelihsa Arjoon, Arnoldys Stengel, Njeri Parker, Sara Haile, and Jaynice del Rosario, only the moon and the sun can speak of all the ways you have aided me in continuing to pursue this Ph.D. dream for over a decade now. From helping me find time to write and still live to sending messages here and there to encourage me to push past obstacles, you have all helped me stay motivated in innumerable ways. To the staff and members of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, especially Cidra M. Sebastien, Khary Lazarre-White, Jason Warwin, Simone Gamble, and Joshua Leach, thank you for always being there to listen, line-edit, center, support, love, and guide me. Principally to my mom and sister Lia Jean-Charles and Norly Jean-Charles, and to many in my family: Everton Lamarre, Ardeyne Delva, Saradya Jolivert, Emmanuelle Vielot, Beatrice Saintil, Borelle Saint-Aubain, Ersilia Rejouis, Zyir Delva-Allen, Isabelle Harmon, Rosemary ix López, Steven López, and Steve López—words cannot begin to express how much you have done to make sure I stayed earthside, remembered my magic, and find strength in a love so big it moved mountains. To my husband Michael Velarde and our family, thank you for loving me atomically, inspiring me molecularly, and reminding me regularly of my power exponentially—especially when I needed it most, which was seemingly every day toward the end. To all of you, your wisdom, exemplary perseverance, brilliance, grace, fortitude, and love make me better with every second you are in my life. Thank you for being and, in so doing, showing me this world is also unimaginably beautiful and revolution the only way to make it so forever.