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Decolonizing Paratexts: Re-Presenting Haitian literature in English Translations (2010)
This article analyses the roles of paratexts in the translations of several Haitian novels as a basis for re-visioning the paratext in my own translation of Marie VieuxChauvet’s novel Les Rapaces (1986). I suggest that paratexts often play a colonizing role in relation to the texts they present through the generalized assumption that the purpose of paratexts is to facilitate access to a foreign language and culture. By examining the functioning of paratexts in several previous translations of Haitian literature, I reveal the colonizing effect of conventional paratexts, and begin to imagine a decolonized paratext for The Raptors. I propose that a more critical role for the paratext of a translation is to draw attention to the translated nature of the text, the resistance and opacity of its linguistic and cultural differences, and the process of negotiation, exchange, and travel on which the translation depends. This strategy is in line with a feminist critique of the limited repertoires for relating to difference offered by masculine epistemologies and promotes an activist feminist agenda through literary re-presentation.
Haiti in Translation: Anacaona by Jean Métellus
2017
The blog series Haiti in Translation on H-Haiti, the H-Network dedicated to Haitian studies, evolved from a need to address the importance of translation in a multilingual field. This is a conundrum all too familiar to Caribbeanist scholars, since any given Caribbean nation features the daily ebb and flow of numerous languages, dialects, and registers through various social spheres. Thus the blog series sought to recognize the exceptional work being done by translators of Haitian writing. Three interviews have been published —Stella, with Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher; Dance on the Volcano, with Kaiama Glover, and a conversation with Carrol Coates about General Sun, My Brother and In the Flicker of an Eye by Jacques Stephen Alexis—and are currently available on H-Haiti.
Decolonizing paratexts: re-presenting Haitian literature in English translations
Neohelicon, 2010
This article analyses the roles of paratexts in the translations of several Haitian novels as a basis for re-visioning the paratext in my own translation of Marie Vieux-Chauvet's novel Les Rapaces (1986). I suggest that paratexts often play a colonizing role in relation to the texts they present through the generalized assumption that the purpose of paratexts is to facilitate access to a foreign language and culture. By examining the functioning of paratexts in several previous translations of Haitian literature, I reveal the colonizing effect of conventional paratexts, and begin to imagine a decolonized paratext for The Raptors. I propose that a more critical role for the paratext of a translation is to draw attention to the translated nature of the text, the resistance and opacity of its linguistic and cultural differences, and the process of negotiation, exchange, and travel on which the translation depends. This strategy is in line with a feminist critique of the limited repertoires for relating to difference offered by masculine epistemologies and promotes an activist feminist agenda through literary representation .
The Journal of Haitian Studies, 2021
The twenty-three years (1934-1957) between the end of the US Occupation and the start of the Duvalier era were a dynamic period of introspection and change in Haitian society. The relatively high degree of freedom of expression, the proliferation of ideologies like Marxism and Noirisme, and the "Revolution of 1946" were all linked to a transformation of Haitian politics and culture unprecedented since 1804. One clear indication of the spirit of this chapter of the country's history, which I have labeled the Haitian Sixties, was the progress made by the Kreyòl movement. After the setbacks under the US Occupation, the call for a legitimation of the popular language entered a phase of renewed vigor: it was bolstered by groundbreaking philological studies, concerted attempts to create a standard orthography, experiments in the use of the Kreyòl language as a medium of instruction, and a renaissance in Kreyòl-language literature. Yet as the movement progressed, it was hampered by new internal divisions and longstanding prejudices at different levels of Haitian society.
The Haitian language: defying odds and opening possibilities
By examining the question of language in Haiti, this article aims at broadening the debate and dialogue among language policymakers and language rights advocates, scholars, researchers and educators about the effects of " linguistic imperialism " (Phillipson 1992) on the development of Haitian Creole and its impact on Haitian children's educational experience.) has helped shape the scope of this analysis, while also garnering various critical insights from the field of oral literature. In sum, this work reflects an interdisciplinary effort that highlights the impact of linguistic and cultural agents and historical events as it also sheds light on the lived experiences of Haitians within the larger Haitian democratic project begun in 1791
From November 1905 to June 1906, Haiti’s French-literate reading public followed the trials and travails of the West African-born slave turned maroon turned revolutionary leader Jean —“Acouba” in his native language— in Massillon Coicou’s serial “La Noire“. Published in the Port-au-Prince daily Le Soir, the serial included over the eight months 165 installments and recounted the commencement of Haiti’s revolution. The feuilleton begins in the late 1780s and follows an allegorical cast of characters —slaves, free people of color, and planters— during the first years of the Revolution. Coicou’s inclusive cast provides him the opportunity to narrate the Revolution from multiple perspectives and illustrate the complex web of alliances and rivalries in revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Unfortunately, he never finished “La Noire”. The final known installment leaves the reader and main character Jean in the middle of revolutionary upheaval in late 1792/early 1793 after the arrival of the second civil commission from France. Despite the unfinished nature of the story, it is an exceptional text in Haiti’s literary canon and one of the earliest Haitian fictional treatments of slavery, yet has received no scholarly analysis. This chapter begins to address this silence by focusing on Coicou’s theory of Creole genesis described in “La Noire”. Beginning with scenes of storytelling among the slaves, Coicou recounted the linguistic encounters between slaves and masters and the process of creating Haitian Creole. For Coicou, these encounters were part of the larger process of cultural exchange occurring between French planters and West/Central African slaves, which he referred to as “creolization”. His imaginative ethnographic forays offer one of the first discussions of Creole genesis by a Haitian intellectual. I read these selections alongside late-nineteenth-century Creole studies to contextualize Coicou’s fictional investigations. Similar to the early creolists, Coicou’s use of Creole sought to legitimate the language and Haiti’s African heritage. Building upon earlier proverb collections by Haitian intellectuals, Coicou’s feuilleton initiates a radical departure from the general silence on Haitian Creole in Haitian publications. Moreover, Coicou’s interpretation of Creole genesis contributes to his narrative of the Haitian Revolution. In contrast to proponents of the “mulatto legend”, earlier Haitian authors who privileged the role of mixed-race leaders of the Revolution, and late-nineteenth-century revisionists who stressed the role of black creoles, Coicou chose a protagonist who was African-born but also had a command of French. According to Coicou, the slave Jean represented an ideal balance between Haiti’s two main cultural influences in the 18th century—West/Central Africa and France. Coicou’s inclusion of linguistic encounters on the plantation further illustrates this cultural métissage and validates Haiti’s hybrid cultural heritage.
Hacking Classical Forms in Haitian Literature, INTRODUCTION
Hacking Classical Forms in Haitian Literature, 2024
This is the first book to study how Haitian authors-from independence in 1804 to the modern Haitian diaspora-have adapted Greco-Roman material and harnessed it to Haiti's legacy as the world's first anti-colonial nation-state. In nine chronologically organized chapters built around individual Haitian authors, Hawkins takes readers on a journey through one strand of Haitian literary history that draws on material from ancient Greece and Rome. This cross-disciplinary exploration is composed in a way that invites all readers to discover a rich and exciting cultural exchange that foregrounds the variety of ways that Haitian authors have 'hacked classical forms' as part of their creative process.
Occupying Creole: The Crisis of language under the US Occupation of Haiti
At the start of the twentieth century a movement began to dismantle Haiti’s linguistic hierarchy. Haitian writers started using Creole in their works of literature in order to contest the notion that Creole was unfit for written and formal contexts. Such a linguistic revolution would allow Haiti’s monolingual masses to participate in public life. The emergent Creole movement, however, came to an abrupt end with the onset of the US Occupation in 1915. Haitian intellectuals opted to cling to their French cultural heritage as a way of contesting the validity of the Americans’ ‘civilizing mission.’ The Creole project was shelved. Curiously, the Americans had their own reasons for expanding the use of Creole, and contributed greatly to the infrastructure of the language. The Americans, however, provoked widespread opposition and undermined their own work on the Creole question. The cause of language legitimation, much like Haitian democracy itself, ultimately regressed under the Occupation.