Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance

by Beverly Bell, Edwidge Danticat (Foreword by)

Overview

Haiti, long noted for poverty and repression, has a powerful and too-often-overlooked history of resistance. Women in Haiti have played a large role in changing the balance of political and social power, even as they have endured rampant and devastating state-sponsored violence, including torture, rape, abuse, illegal arrest, disappearance, and assassination.

Beverly Bell, an activist and an expert on Haitian social movements, brings together thirty-eight oral histories from a diverse group of Haitian women. The interviewees include, for example, a former prime minister, an illiterate poet, a leading feminist theologian, and a vodou dancer. Defying victim status despite gender- and state-based repression, they tell how Haiti's poor and dispossessed women have fought for their personal and collective survival.

The women's powerfully moving accounts of horror and heroism can best be characterized by the Creole word istwa, which means both "story" and "history." They combine theory with case studies concerning resistance, gender, and alternative models of power. Photographs of the women who have lived through Haiti's recent past accompany their words to further personalize the interviews in Walking on Fire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801487484
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2002
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Beverly Bell is the founder and director of the Center for Economic Justice in Albuquerque, N.M. She has worked closely with the Haitian democracy and women's movements for more than two decades. Edwidge Danticat is the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, The Farming of Bones, and Krik? Krak!

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Edwidge Danticat
Preface: Beat Back the Darkness
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Women of Millet MountainPart I: Resistance in Survival
YOLANDE MEVS - My Head Burning with the Burden
ALINA "TIBEBE" CAJUSTE - A Baby Left on the Doorstep in a Rotten Basket
LOVLY JOSAPHAT - I Always Live That Hope
ROSELIE JEAN-JUSTE - A Woman Named Roselie Who Fought Back
VENANTE DUPLAN - I Don't Have the Call, I Don't Have the Response
MARIE SONIA PANTAL - SchoolPart II: Resistance as Expression
LELENNE GILLES - I'll Die with the Words on My Lips
MARCELINE YRELIBN - Singing a Woman's Misery
ALINA "TIBEBE" CAJUSTE - Getting the Poetry
YANIQUE GUITEAU DANDIN - The Struggle for Creole
GRACITA OSIAS - Chaleron's Lesson
FLORENCIA PIERRE - The Cultural Soul
MARTINE FOURCAND Expanding the Space of ExpressionPart III: Resistance for Political and Economic Change
ALERTE BELANCE - My Blood and My Breath
YANNICK ETIENNE - A Grain of Sand
CLAUDETTE PHENE - A Little Light
YOLETTE ETIENNE - Jumping over the Fire
LOUISE MONFILS - The Samaritan
VITA TELCY - Five Cans of Corn
MARIE JOSEE ST. FIRMIN - Sharing the Dream
SELITANE JOSEPH - Chunk of Gold
ROSEMIE BELVIUS - Reshuffling the CardsPart IV: Resistance for Gender Justice
LISE-MARIE DEJEAN - Minister of the Status and Rights of Women
GRACITA OSIAS - The Marriage Question
LOUISE MONPILS - Walking with My Little Coffin
CLAUDETTE WERLEIGH - Women's Business
YOLANDE MEVS - Support for the Children
YANIQUE GUITEAU DANDIN - A Country's Problems, A Woman's Problems
MARIE ]OSEE ST. FIRMIN - Deciding My Life
OLGA BENOIT - Assuming the Title "Feminist"
JOSETTE PERARD - The Carriage Is LeavingPart V: Resistance Transforming Power
CLAUDETTE WERLEIGH - Lighting Candles of Hope
MARIE SONIA DELY - Sharing the Breadfruit
LISE-MARIE DEJEAN - The People Say Jump
MYRIAM MERLET - The More People Dream
YANNICK ETIENNE - You Can't Eat Gumbo with One Finger
MYRTO CELESTIN SAUREL - Rocks in the River
KESTA OCCIDENT - A Stubborn HopeEpilogue: Resistance as Solidarity
ALERTE BELANCE - Get Up, Shake Your BodiesNotes
Glossary
For Further Research and Involvement
Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Beverly Bell's remarkable book allows thirty-eight Haitian women to speak for themselves. Defying victim status, together they tell the story of how Haiti's poor and dispossessed women have fought for their personal and collective survival. They weave together an inspiring study in resistance and alternative models of power.

Paul Farmer

The future of engaged feminism is secure if it embraces, without ambivalence, the struggle of women living with a very different kind of violence than that encountered in North America or Europe. Beverly Bell has done us a great service in bringing to light these varied and vivid testimonies of Haiti's cruel modernity and women's resistance to it. Many of the authors of these essays do indeed walk on fire. Some, like Alerte Belance—left for hacked to death after being dumped, along with other activists, in a notorious potter's field—have survived a long, barefoot walk on hot coals and emerged with a message for all of us: 'In my mutilated state, my neck nearly cut in two, my tongue cut in two, my left hand cut in two, my right arm cut in two, God rescued me for a reason. He put his force in me so I could struggle for women, not only to have life, but rights and freedom.'.

Margaret Randall

In transcribing the istwa—stories and history—of these Haitian women, Beverly Bell opens a door that has been closed for much too long. Oppressed beyond imagination, these voices convey sensibility, courage, creativity and power. I am moved at my core.

Editorial Reviews

Walking on Fire provides powerful, moving witness to the desperate struggle of these women to protest and—more important—survive. The women who speak out in the pages of Beverly Bell's book offer an eloquent portrait of a poverty that is unrelenting in its meanness.

Women's Review of Books

Rarely does the voice of Haitian women in Haiti fighting for their rights emerge so clearly to relate their own experiences, battles, and hopes....Despite the harshness of their lives, the honesty and healing potential of the women somehow rises above the unimaginable and lands at the readers' feet.

The Haitian Times

The women Bell interviews, many of whom are veteran activists in Haiti's grassroots democracy movement, recount stories of being raped, struggling to feed their families, and being subject to political torture.... Bell does her best to balance the painful lives of the women she interviews with the recognition that under such conditions, mere daily survival of the body and the spirit takes tremendous resilience.... Perhaps one day the small acts of rebellion that Bell celebrates may help to create a movement capable of political transformation, so that the example of Haiti once again frightens the powerful of the world.

Voice Literary Supplement

Walking on Fire provides powerful, moving witness to the desperate struggle of these women to protest and--more important--survive. The women who speak out in the pages of Beverly Bell's book offer an eloquent portrait of a poverty that is unrelenting in its meanness.

-- "Women's Review of Books"

In this moving book on opposing tyranny and degradation, activist Bell... gives face to the numbers by providing a forum for indigenous women to speak about their lives.... An antidote to cynicism, the book not only introduces American readers to an array of courageous role models but also proves that change is possible.

-- "Library Journal"

Rarely does the voice of Haitian women in Haiti fighting for their rights emerge so clearly to relate their own experiences, battles, and hopes....Despite the harshness of their lives, the honesty and healing potential of the women somehow rises above the unimaginable and lands at the readers' feet.

-- "The Haitian Times"

The women Bell interviews, many of whom are veteran activists in Haiti's grassroots democracy movement, recount stories of being raped, struggling to feed their families, and being subject to political torture.... Bell does her best to balance the painful lives of the women she interviews with the recognition that under such conditions, mere daily survival of the body and the spirit takes tremendous resilience.... Perhaps one day the small acts of rebellion that Bell celebrates may help to create a movement capable of political transformation, so that the example of Haiti once again frightens the powerful of the world.

-- "Voice Literary Supplement"

This is painful reading; it shows much suffering but also much remarkable transcendence. Bell's book vocalizes this, but its point is not merely archival. These testimonies are meant to move readers to action.

-- "Publishers Weekly"

From the Publisher

"The future of engaged feminism is secure if it embraces, without ambivalence, the struggle of women living with a very different kind of violence than that encountered in North America or Europe. Beverly Bell has done us a great service in bringing to light these varied and vivid testimonies of Haiti's cruel modernity and women's resistance to it. Many of the authors of these essays do indeed walk on fire. Some, like Alerte Belance—left for hacked to death after being dumped, along with other activists, in a notorious potter's field—have survived a long, barefoot walk on hot coals and emerged with a message for all of us: 'In my mutilated state, my neck nearly cut in two, my tongue cut in two, my left hand cut in two, my right arm cut in two, God rescued me for a reason. He put his force in me so I could struggle for women, not only to have life, but rights and freedom.'."

Paul Farmer

"In transcribing the istwa—stories and history—of these Haitian women, Beverly Bell opens a door that has been closed for much too long. Oppressed beyond imagination, these voices convey sensibility, courage, creativity and power. I am moved at my core."

Margaret Randall

Why does the movement against corporate globalization protest atmeetings like those of the World Economic Forum, recently completed in New York? What does the movement for global justice want?

There are a million ways to answer these questions. One set of compelling answers is contained in Walking on Fire: Haitian Women´s Stories of Survival and Resistance, a wonderful new book by Beverly Bell (Cornell University Press). Walking on Fire is a collection of interviews with Haitian women, with astute synthesizing text by Bell.

....Walking on Fire illustrates how the dynamics of corporate globalization overlay with local hierarchies, prejudices and systems of patriarchy to impoverish and marginalize women. Most searingly, Walking on Fire reveals the raw violence embedded in these overlapping systems of domination. The women in Walking on Fire recount stomach-churning stories of childhood slavery and abuse, rape and immiseration.

....Walking on Fire is subtitled "Haitian women's stories of survival and resistance" and the emotions of horror stirred by the book are matched by a sense of awe and inspiration of the women, many of whom do struggle just to survive, and especially of those who choose to respond to amazing hardship and myriad challenges by organizing and collective action to improve their and others' lives, and to fight for justice. (Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman)

"What I have witnessed, I have no tongue to tell," says one of the 38 Haitian women who express themselves here. A lyrical but trenchant foreword by Edwidge Danticat and succinct author introductions by Bell (director of Albuquerque's Center for Economic Justice) provide historical and personal contexts for the narratives, or "istwa" (a Creole word "meaning both story and history"), that follow. Many of the women address the random arrests, sadistic torture, savage beatings and violent sexual abuse inflicted upon them by the state and by a sexist social structure. Taken collectively, the women (interviewed largely between 1991 and 1994, during Haiti's brief period with a popularly elected government) tell the same story "survival, resistance, and occasional triumph by women with little formal power." Individually, each voice is unique. One has been a minister of the Status and Rights of Women; another was given away as a child slave. There's also a market woman, a labor organizer and a nurse; a woman with graduate degrees, women who have lived abroad and women who have never left their villages. They are joined by their resistance to oppression. For some, mere survival is an act of resistance. Others resist through poetry, journalism, dance or painting. Some are even involved in political activism, women's advocacy and reestablishing economic and political structures. This is painful reading; it shows much suffering but also much remarkable transcendence. Bell's book vocalizes this, but its point is not merely archival. These testimonies are meant to move readers to action. "I want to make the big ears listen," says Lelenne Gilles. "I'll die with the words on my lips." (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Most people know that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, but what that means for the Haitian people is usually lost in a morass of statistical data. In this moving book on opposing tyranny and degradation, activist Bell, who is the founder and director of the Center for Economic Justice in Albuquerque, NM, gives face to the numbers by providing a forum for indigenous women to speak about their lives. Some of the 38 oral histories here come from illiterate farmers and market women. Other informants are well schooled, earning far more than subsistence wages as teachers and writers. Nonetheless, all of Bell's sources are dedicated to the alleviation of poverty and believe that food, housing, and education are entitlements and that gender equity is inseparable from economic justice. Their articulate views make for exciting reading. Likewise, their resistance to the status quo is inspiring. An antidote to cynicism, the book not only introduces American readers to an array of courageous role models but also proves that change is possible. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries. Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal