26569: Ferdinand: Madame Dread, a critical piece, by Hyppolite Pierre

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: anna ferdinand <fredalokoz@verizon.net>

Madame Dread
By Hyppolite Pierre
If you are drawn to Haiti for professional reasons, or even if your sense of
adventure takes you nonchalantly into a Caribbean mood, then you need to read
Kathie Klarreich's Madame Dread. Haiti in this autobiographical work, is all
that you know the country is, all you had been told it is, and much more.

For this thirty-something Jewish girl in the late 1980's from a respectable
Ohio family, the fascination for that land began the strangest of ways: in
political violence during an attempted coup that had put her life in danger.
Amidst that political chaos, she sensed something much more significant and so
she extended her three-month stay. Thus began a level of fascination that did
not start as typically with Vodou, in the heart and mind of a research student
in Ethnology from some American Ivy League. It is instead a level of interest
that emanated from the cheerfulness of a stampeded people, victims of
political treachery and political violence. It is a fascination that also
finds its raison d'être in the language of the masses with its infinite
wisdom, as she rightly proves it through each chapter heading in this book.

The first lines in Madame Dread are so dreadful that they compel the reader to
move to the next page, and to the next because each page or chapter builds the
thirst to find out more and more about this seemingly strange land. Was Kathie
hit by a stray bullet? Did she really decide to extend her stay in this
country so prone to political violence?

Strangely enough, as one continues to read page after page, methodically until
the last one, it becomes clear that Haiti is truly a land to love. It becomes
clearer why one never leaves Haiti once he or she has been there. It's a
country that sticks to your bones and invades your bloodstream, for better and
worse. However you feel afterwards about that place, you will at least never
completely forget the country and its people, as depicted in this
autobiography.

Madame Dread is a fascinating journey, before and after all. The author,
Kathie Klarreich, is so brutally honest throughout that one feels like a
voyeur, especially in the parts where she recounts some of her romantic
experiences with men not of her ancestry. As the local music deeply rooted in
Vodou, takes her into trances unknown to her until then, so does love and all
that is determined by it: thrilling uncertainty. She first travels to the
place as a potential interest group organizer to have become overtime, more
than just "one more foreign expert" in Haitian affairs. Haiti had become a
part of her which she brilliantly recounted in virtually every single page,
with the same ease and writing clarity.

This is no writing of the journalist Kathie Klarreich; it is instead the
writing of a woman who has also given birth to a Haitian son, from a Haitian
man with a Haitian name. The journalist Kathie is there throughout, with the
accuracy of the details, the quality of observation, and the conclusion one is
drawn to without her suggesting it overtly or subtly. However, it is Kathie
the honorary Haitian who has added to her Jewish soul the heavy salt of
Haitian culture.

This book has so many dimensions, that it truly gives everyone a rare glimpse
at Haiti in its totality. In this autobiographical work, we learn or are
reminded of the power of Vodou from the good (Rada) and the bad (Petro)
perspectives. We learn or are reminded of the deep disconnect between the poor
and the so-called rich. However, that disconnect is not exposed through the
classic elements of class or color. Rather she expresses, through focusing on
the cultural issue, a more accurate view on the issue, still ignored or
misunderstood by most. One gets to realize the power of language as a cultural
expression, and perhaps even detect the economic and social reasoning behind
the discomfort of many from well-to-do background with the majority language.

One also gets to look at the political pack whether their mantra is Aristide,
or Roger Lafontant, Michel François, Raoul Cédras, or any other. The tradition
of Haitian politics and politicians is exposed in their discomfort with or
impossibility to respond directly to any question they have been asked.
Frustrating as it is, it is also quite telling.

As this autobiographical work expands from the 1980's through the second
overthrow of Aristide in 2004, it is also a powerful reminder to those who
were part of those political movements, or are just getting introduced to the
politics of that land, how things evolved and evolve and live and die and
disappear and reappear, all in a span of 20 years or less.

Haiti took Kathie Klarreich by storm and never left her. The book will also
hold firmly your interest as you will begin to read it, and so you'll desire
and want to read more, and more, and more of the story until the last page.
Afterwards, the shock will come through you. Haiti, to the reader of this
biography, will perhaps never be once more just a place that is viewed through
the simplistic eyes of hunger and anger on a television screen.

Madame Dread is the story of a country full of love, but also hungry for love,
hungry to be loved. It is the story of betrayal at many different dimensions
but also, a story of faith at many different levels: faith in a culture, in a
people, in a language, in humanity. It is the classic story of an ignored
culture and country that only reappears on our screen or in our newspaper page
when all seem to fall apart once more, as if they were ever put together in
the first place. It is the story of the resiliency of a people and their
nation, as lived by its author in this impeccable autobiography. It's a story
that could also easily be told on a movie screen.


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