12624: AFTER THE DANCE: A WALK THROUGH CARNIVAL IN JACMEL. Edwidge Danticat (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami Herald



AFTER THE DANCE: A WALK THROUGH CARNIVAL IN JACMEL. Edwidge Danticat. Crown.
125 pages. $16.
Amid the demons, dances of Haiti's vibrant Carnival
BY BETSY WILLEFORD


The crossroads at which the spirit world intersects the Earth is a
significant image in Vodou. How regrettable yet predictable, then, to learn,
in Edwidge Danticat's travel memoir, that Haiti's annual Carnival parade
assembles where Rue Comédie crosses Avenue de la Liberté, in Jacmel, a faded
coffee port on the southern peninsula. An arduous 45 miles southeast of
Port-au-Prince, the city is dominated by New Orleans-style mansions built by
19th century coffee merchants. A recent attempt to attract tourists has
inspired the refurbishing of several of the gingerbread buildings into
boutiques and cafes.

Haitian-born Danticat, novelist and editor, had never been to a Carnival
until the 2001 version she describes. Before she left Haiti at 12 to reunite
with her parents in New York, she was cared for by her uncle, a Baptist
minister. In that mix of protectiveness and malice that is the
near-universal authority-figure style, he deliberately frightened her,
telling stories of deafening noise, demon possession and frottage.

Danticat arrives in Jacmel burdened by that memory as well as the ex-pat's
conflicted feelings and, unfortunately for the narrative, a dutiful
student's anthology of quotations and learned references, which she wears
like a Carnival mask. When she finds a church with an upward-pointing arrow
atop the steeple, she quotes art historian Robert Farris Thompson on arrows:
''a sign of war, token of aggression and manful self-assertion'' before her
own observation that in the high pine forest an arrow is also ``a poignant
reminder that in this part of the country, at least, heaven is the next
highest place.''

She spends a week in and about Jacmel, talking to the parade organizer,
wandering amid the brilliant pines and cacti and in the silent storied
cemeteries, subtly telling us some things we know about Haiti: The country
induces compassion fatigue in anyone who was born there, has lived there or
visited, and it sets us thinking more and more generally about the word
diaspora. Danticat also tells us some things we probably don't know: After a
failed coup in the 1960s, Francois Duvalier set fire to the forests in the
north so potential invaders would have nowhere to hide.

Finally, it's Carnival time. The pre-Lenten celebration anywhere is an
explosive mix of finery and animosity, nowhere more so than in Haiti, where
misty reality and arbitrary rules run as deeply as poverty in the structure
of everyday life. Finally, a reluctant Danticat drops her scholar facade and
gets with the program.

Hard to resist a band calling itself Max Power and wearing masks of Mother
Theresa, Papa Doc, Einstein, Bob Marley and Hitler. Or one of its
competitors, the group Relax Band with its matching orange shirts. Bodies
coated with motor oil, fantastic beasts dart in and out of the crowds.
Devils and bats flutter and swoop. Musicians on truck beds with portable
generators play until the power goes out; then a recording of Elton John
singing, ''I believe in love. It's all we've got,'' can be heard from a cafe
loudspeaker. A dozen young women sign up for the fair queen contest, but
only five show up, vying for airline tickets to Cap Haitien and the
Dominican Republic, a 12-inch TV, the equivalent of $350 U.S., a pair of
cellphones, the chance to view the parade from the VIP stand, a photo on a
website.

Merchants who think Jacmel is Haiti's best shot at earning tourist cash have
been planning Carnival all year. Local and national musicians see it as the
chance to audition and compete. But most of the people, ''in a country that
is not supposed to have any joy,'' see it as the communal celebration it is,
the fleeting crossroads of comedy and liberty.

And Danticat, who brings a lingering apprehension along on this, one of her
many trips back, finally becomes part of the pageant, ''unencumbered, so
lively, so free.'' Her book is among the first in a series the publisher
plans in which writers return to familiar territory. It sets the bar high,
for ultimately it is a novella within a travel memoir. ''After the dance,''
the proverb goes, ''the drum is heavy.'' In Carnival, all the rules are
reversed, and so, for this author, the proverb's opposite was true.

Betsy Willeford is a writer in Miami.






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