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27073: Hermantin(News)South Florida is home to a lively literary culture from Haiti (fwd)
Sun Sentinel
South Florida is home to a lively literary culture from Haiti
By Chauncey Mabe
Photos by Angel Valentin
January 1, 2006
Max Pierre came to the United States, like many Haitians, illegally.
On the way home from a trip to the Bahamas, he left the plane during a Miami
layover to see his mother, who had been in the United States for 16 years. It
was 1990; he was a teenager with no papers, not even a tourist visa. Just
getting into high school was a struggle.
Now, after graduating from Miami-Dade College, after working as a teacher and a
travel agent, after writing two books of poetry in French, the language of his
Haitian education, Pierre has produced his first book in English. Called Soul
Traveler, it's a poetry collection.
"I write in English because I feel American," Pierre says.
Pierre is one of dozens, if not hundreds, of poets, novelists, playwrights,
children's authors, bookstore owners, publishers and spoken-word artists who
make up a lively literary community among about 245,000 Haitians thought to be
living throughout Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
The literary scene is centered in Little Haiti, the changing neighborhood just
north of Miami's Design District, where celebrated novelist Edwidge Danticat
makes her home, and where playwright Jan Mapou's modest Libreri Mapou bookstore
is a locus of Haitian culture. But it extends much farther.
Children's author Joanne Hyppolite lives in Pembroke Pines, while spoken-word
poet Prosper Sylvain, a member of the four-man performance troupe The Maroons,
resides in Davie. Fequiere Vilsaint runs his small company, Educavision, in
Deerfield Beach, publishing English-Creole textbooks, children's books, adult
novels and nonfiction. In Delray Beach, the small Haiti Kreol bookstore serves
the growing Haitian community in Palm Beach County.
"Literature is a unifying force in any diaspora culture," Danticat says. "We
have Haitian literature in several languages now. French in Canada and Haiti,
of course, and there is even a Haitian writer in Spain writing in Spanish. And
you have this whole generation of young Haitian-Americans writing in English.
The great thing is you don't have to feel excluded from Haitian culture to live
here."
Indeed, says Sylvain, literature is one way Haitian-Americans hold on to their
roots.
"When I was growing up, I was never taught about Haitian culture or
literature," says Sylvain, who was born in New York to immigrant parents. "The
closest we got was Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. But the literary
movement in Haiti is old. Haitian literature has toppled governments and caused
exiles and murders. If you happen to come to one of our poetry venues, you will
learn about our history and our literature."
Yet, as Pierre demonstrates, it's also a way for immigrant writers to
synthesize their Haitian literary tradition, a sort of mash-up of formal French
literature and African oral storytelling, with the English influences they
encounter in the United States.
Pierre, in fact, volunteered to teach English as a second language as a way to
master his new tongue. "In French I can reach only a few readers," Pierre says.
"My poetry is about love for a country and a people, and I want to share that
love with my new countrymen."
Mentoring is common: Pierre, for example, received encouragement from Danticat
and Mapou, as well as the great Haitian poet Felix Moriseau-Leroy, who lived
out his last years exiled in Miami, where a street is named for him.
"Anyone who writes about Haiti knows about Edwidge and goes to Mapou's
bookstore," Pierre says. "I started writing poetry when I was 12, but I doubt I
would have ever had the chance to publish anything if I had not come here. The
community here is so energized, I'm still getting to know everyone."
Danticat grew up in New York and moved to Little Haiti to be with her husband,
who has a Haitian-American translation business in Miami. At 32, she is the
most prominent Haitian writer in the world, with such acclaimed novels as Krik?
Krak!, The Dewbreaker and Breath, Eyes, Memory.
She is, Hyppolite says, "the voice for the Haitian-American generation, with
one foot here and one foot in Haiti." What Amy Tan was for Chinese-Americans,
Danticat is for Haitian-Americans: the first to achieve critical and commercial
literary success, showing the way to mainstream acceptance.
"One writer does not make a movement, but I think it will soon be our turn,"
says Hyppolite, author of the young adult novels Ola Shakes It Up and Seth and
Samona.
Little Haiti's origins as a distinct immigrant community date to 1965, when the
first Haitians arrived in what was previously known as "Lemon City," settling
only a few houses apart: Claire Nasser, who worked for a mental health agency
at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and Roland Jean Louis, a teacher and the first
Haitian assistant principal in Dade County.
The first to document the history of Little Haiti is not a Haitian, but a
Jewish American named David Brown. A community activist and former teacher, he
includes the stories of Nasser and Louis in his as-yet-unpublished pamphlet,
The History of Little Haiti: Featuring Its Pioneer Settlers. Brown operates
Urban Tour Host, a company that provides tours to Little Haiti, Liberty City
and black-Bahamian Coconut Grove, as well as more conventional tourist
destinations such as South Beach and Little Havana.
"The literary community is very rich," says Brown, who frequently makes the
Mapou bookstore a tour stop. "The Haitian culture stands out as unique,
especially the literature. The Creole language also lends a flavor all its own,
even in English, and the African tradition gives the literature a lot of folk
tales and proverbs."
Jan Mapou moved to New York in 1971 after being released from the notorious
Fort Dimanche. The regime of dictator Jean-Claude "Papa Doc" Duvalier had
imprisoned him for the crime of advocating that Creole -- Haiti's blended
language, with French and African roots -- be taught alongside French in the
schools.
"Duvalier, like all tyrants, did not favor of the education of the masses,"
Mapou says. "People who are educated might start asking questions and want a
free press, so they labeled us as communists."
Since 1984, Mapou has been director of the parking system at Miami
International. "Miami felt just like home," he says. "You come to Little Haiti
and hear the music, smell the foods of Haiti, feel the sun, talk in Creole. It
was very nice."
But in 1984, boat people were coming in the thousands, Mapou said, and once
they got here they were blamed, in part, for the AIDS epidemic. Young Haitians
denied their roots and tried to pass as African-Americans. Mapou founded a new
chapter of Sosyete Koukouy -- "Society of Fireflies," his Creole movement in
Haiti -- to promote Haitian culture in Miami.
After several years of writing and producing plays, writing two books of poetry
and a collection of short stories, Mapou opened Libreri Mapou in 1994. The
store instantly became a center of Haitian culture. "Haitians wanted to stay in
touch with their culture and literature, and they had nothing," he says. "It
was a time when Haitians were accused of carrying the AIDS virus. With a label
like that, people need the antidote of good books about Haiti."
Danticat, who says her friendships with Hyppolite, Mapou and other South
Florida-based Haitians made her decision to move here easier, praises the
bookstore's contribution.
"Mapou has helped create a sense of cultural community," says Danticat. "I had
been to his store, and I was struck by the energy there. He very much had
things happening, offering an example for young people. Others did that for me.
I hope it conveys to younger people that if you achieve in American culture it
doesn't mean you have to flee your own community."
Chauncey Mabe can be reached at cmabe@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4710.
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