Feeling Grateful

One moore books fabiolaWhen every thought shows up dressed exclusively in Haitian Creole, I say, Wèlkòm!

Honor and Respect.

I even had a little fun with the language today.  If you know Kreyòl, you know playing with the words isn’t hard to do.

Here’s the new post on  Kreyòl Pale.

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T-shirts available

An-two-kah, kenbe la. Hold on.  Sipòte travay la. Support the work. Pataje Mesaj la. Share the message. “Nou Bèl. Nou La!” We Are Beautiful. We are Here!

 

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Happy Birthday, Nennenn!

Lè w gen 90 zan, epi w kouche plat sou yon kabann lopital, pa gen anpil biznis ou ka regle. Ou etidye kat mi yo. Ou gade aparèy yo. Ou swiv doktè yo. Ak de je w fèmen, ou siveye dènye sa w kapab.

Respirasyon’w monte desann tankou chante Tim McGraw la ki rele Live Like You’re Dying (Viv tankou w pral mouri). Jounenjodiya  wa p viv chante ya; se reyalite w.  Tim McGraw pa bezwen di w respire kòmsi w prèt pou mouri. Se metye w.

Ou koute mezi ti chanjman nan rit aparèy yo. Ou souke tèt ou tou dousman. Si ou renmen jwe avèk vokabilè abcd, ou reyalize ke pi fò mo ou itilize sèjousi fini ak “y.”  An Anglè “Y” gen menm son ak “Way”; men ou pa gen enterè gaspiye souf ou ap poze kesyon. Ou deja konprann ou pa p jwenn repons.

Ti moso fanmi w ki rete yo chita san konsolasyon. Yo chita tankou timoun grangou ka p rettann kras manje. Yo prèt pou yo endispoze. Dlo prèt pou kouri lan je yo. Yo pè gade malad la. Se kòd kè yo ap sote tankou timoun lan rekreyasyon!

Ti moso fanmi ou rete a kraponnen. Yo konnen byen se lan mòd stad sa yo moun konn jwe jwèt ki pi enpòtan an–chanpyona final la.

New Day Photo by Katia UlysseAy si you (ICU) konble ak moun malad ki vin fè konesans avèk lanmò. Pa gen yon kabann ki vid a midi, men demen maten wa jwenn menm senk ladan malad yo ki bat zèl yo. Chanm yo boure ak abuelitas, grand-papa, grandmè, ak dezoutwa <<M’te fout di w pinga w monte motosiklèt la.>>

Vizitè yo chita an plas, ou byen yo monte desann lan koulwa antiseptik la–tankou tòti ka p fè lago. Yo fè gwo diskisyon ak lonbraj yo. Anba yon silans ki lou sou zepòl you, yo mande poukisa? Pouki ou fè m sa? Yo rele way, manman, Anmwey.  Woy, Bondye. Why?”

Yo lapriyè  ak po je yo tankou bijou granmoun sere anba pil dra lan amwa. Menjan tou, pa gen yon moun ki ka wè kisa malad la ap siveye dèyè po je pa l.

Fanm tankou Felicie toujou gen yon ti souri pou yo bay le tout moun fin rele anmwey.

“Mezanmi, pa gen yon moun ki kwè ti madanm sa a gen katrevendizan tout bon vre,” yon enfimyè di.

“Eske se ou ki pitit fi malad la?” yon lòt enfimyè mande’m.

Chak enfimyè ki vini poze menm kesyon an: <<Eske ou se pitit fi’l? Ou sanble avè l tèt koupe.>>

Ou remèsye enfimyè yo. Ou pran prekosyon avè yo; ou trete yo tankou zanj lan syèl. Ou di yo mèsi senkantmil fwa.

Ou konnen malad la pa p mouri. Pa kounye a. Fanm tankou l se orijinal la. Se li ki vayan tout bon vre. Fanm sa yo gen tandans viv pou letènite. Se yo ki konn trase chemen. Yo toujou kite mak yo. Yo rete vivan, menmlè yo fin mouri.

Happy Birthday, Nennenn!

8/15/15

Felicie MontfleuryAugust 15, 1921 – April 2, 2012

 

 

SheA’s Quest ~ New Book by Irmina “Tutu” Ulysse

irmina ulysse heart book“The heart houses more than love and courage. It houses the wisdom of our higher nature. . . the principal of balance which aligns us with a system of conduct that supports equilibrium in all areas of our lives. [The heart] also houses the wisdom of unity and integration . . . Come join SheyA on her quest to restore love, peace, power, and harmony—one chamber at a time.”

WORD!

[SheA’s Quest is] a metaphysical fictional short story about a young girl’s journey to rediscover the wisdom of the various chambers of her heart. . .

A quick summer read with a timeless message for both mature and young adults . . .

Reminiscent of The Alchemist, but with its own personality, and a pure message of truth.”

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VoicesfromHaiti: Nou Bèl. Nou La! (We are Beautiful. We are Here!)

Get the T-shirt. Spread the Message! Click here.

Nou Bèl. Nou La! T-shirts Get the T-shirt. Spread the message.
Nou Bèl. Nou La! T-shirts
Get the T-shirt. Spread the message.

 

 

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: New book by Gina A. Ulysse

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives“Mainstream coverage of the catastrophic earthquake of January 12, 2010, reproduced longstanding stereotypes of Haiti. Aware that this Haiti is a rhetorically and graphically incarcerated one, the feminist anthropologist and performance artist Gina Athena Ulysse embarked on a writing spree that lasted over two years. Her trilingual book (English, Kreyòl, and French) contains thirty pieces and includes a foreword by award-winning author and historian Robin D. G. Kelley.” – From Brooklyn Public Library.

Gina A. Ulysse will read and discuss her work. Don’t miss it!

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle

Saturday, September 19, 2015 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Central Library, Dweck Center

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT  Ulysse’s  new book: Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle

Gina Ulysse from her webpage“Ulysse’s clear, powerful writing rips through the stereotypes to reveal a portrait of Haiti in politics and art that will change the way you think about that nation’s culture, and your own.” (Jonathan M. Katz, author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster)|

This is a beautifully written and profoundly important work of engaged anthropology. Gina Ulysse steps bravely into the public domain bringing a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of things Haitian to a large group of general readers as well as to a broad audience of scholars. Publication of this book marks a kind of ‘coming of age’ for anthropological bloggers and public anthropology.” (Paul Stoller, author of Yaya’s Story: The Quest for Well-Being in the World)

“This compilation is the gut-felt testimony of an insider/outsider that resounds like a thunderclap in the desert. Trapped in the alienating context of sterile academia, a neoliberal political economy, populations displaced, shock therapy and general geopolitical shifts, the author uses the gift of polysemy to open horizons. Through thought, action, word, poetry, song . . . flow yet-unbounded prospects.” (Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique, professor, Université d’État d’Haïti)

Taking us through entangled and liberating possibilities, Gina Ulysse introduces us to Haiti, the kingdom of this world. Embedded in the interstices of words and of aesthetic sensibilities that summon the past into the present, the powerful promise of a people is revealed. Ashe.” (Arlene Torres, coeditor of Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean)

“Five years after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Gina Ulysse smashes clichés, defends Vodou, and reminds us of her homeland’s complex history. Her compelling as-it-happened reports and analyses are crucial to our understanding and empathy for the republic and its people.” (Katherine Spillar, executive editor, Ms. magazine)

Gina UlysseAbout the Author

Gina Athena Ulysse was born in Pétion-Ville, Haiti. In 2005, when she became a U.S. citizen, she gave herself the name Athena. She is the middle child of three sisters – who had migrated to the East Coast of the United States in their early teens. Her family has lived somewhere around there ever since.

A feminist artist-anthropologist-activist and a self-proclaimed Post-Zora Interventionist, she earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is also a performance artist, poet and multi-media artist. It was during the early years of her graduate career that Ulysse began to seriously actively perform in part to pursue a childhood dream of wanting to be a singer and to ground herself and allow her creative spirit to breathe through this restructuring process that threatened to desensitize her.

Spokenword became her chosen medium. She deploys it to both explore and push the blurred border zones between ethnography and performance. She considers these works “alter(ed)native” forms of ethnography constructed out of what she calls “recycled ethnographic collectibles” (raw bits and pieces that seem too personal or trivial) through which she engages with the visceral that is embedded, yet too often absent, in structural analyses. Her ultimate aim with such works is to access/face and recreate a full and integrated subject without leaving the body behind. An interdisciplinary scholar-artist, Ulysse weaves history, statistics, personal narrative, theory, with Vodou chants to dramatize and address issues of social (in)justice, intersectional identities, spirituality and the dehumanization of Haitians and other marked bodies. With her performance work, she seeks to outline, confront and work through the continuities and discontinuities in the unprocessed horror of colonialism. Or to put it another way, Ulysse explores the complex ways the past functions in the present and is disavowed as both Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Sibylle Fischer have aptly put in Silencing the Past and Modernity Disavowed.

A dynamic performer, described by artist Evan Bissell as “a powerhouse and a whirling storm,” and historian Robin D.G. Kelley as “a one-woman aftershock” Ulysse has performed variations of her one-woman show Because When God is too Busy: Haiti, me and THE WORLD and other works at conferences, in colleges and universities throughout the United States and internationally.

She is currently developing an avant-garde meditation, VooDooDoll What if Haïti were a Woman: On ti Travay sou 21 Pwen or An Alter(ed)native in Something Other than Fiction. (10), the first installation-performance from this work, which was curated by Lucian Gomoll, had its debut at Encuentro in Montreal in 2014. Her latest project, Contemplating Distances – explores the exchange value of black bodies in the Transatlantic slave trade and the 18th century grain shortage in Saint Domingue – was presented at the “Spaces, Scales, and Routes: Region Formation in History and Anthropology conference.”

She is currently Professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University.

———————————————————-VoicesfromHaiti: Nou Bèl. Nou La! (We are Beautiful. We are Here!) Click HERE to purchase your own  Nou Bèl. Nou La! T-shirt.

Nou Bèl. Nou La! T-shirts Get the T-shirt. Spread the message.
Nou Bèl. Nou La! T-shirts
Get the T-shirt. Spread the message.