Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 You're listening to writing Home American Voices from the Caribbean with Kaiama Glover and Tami Navarro
Speaker 2 00:00:21 Love 11 the experts. It's exhausting to hear this. He exclaimed and it is as exhausting to live in. She mused, though she did not utter a single word. Thank you so, so much for your performance in this academic setting. Offered the gatekeeper in response translation. The visceral has no place here. Keep it at home or on this stage as if we're not all performers. She was too accustomed to such backlash. He was the first to speak and articulate. Guilt without any restraint is staccato or shame A white German man, he stands facing her. Enhance her a small piece, a flat white cotton with his name carefully in boast in his language dissociation. She imagined him the waking of Lago Nav. I know more of your history than you'll ever want to know if she muttered with the beginning of a welcoming smile that had him lean forward.
Speaker 2 00:01:31 Just so to await her assault, she flicks the lid. W then composes her thoughts. Compression the conversation invertedly turned towards those who've come with goodwill, those who've come to make changes to give to the needy. I can save you. No one even whispers about what they reject. No one hears those who dare to shout about what they know. Sir, excuse me, sir, you need to speak English or French. Only two people in this room speak. They all rather cause exclusionary practices by the power invested in me. Little girl. I assure you that I and I alone can save you.
Speaker 3 00:02:24 Hi Kaiama.
Speaker 4 00:02:25 Hello Tami.
Speaker 3 00:02:26 I'm so excited about today's conversation. We are talking with anthropologist, author and creative extraordinaire. Gina Ulysse.
Speaker 4 00:02:34 Yes. Finally, I am so looking forward to this. So let's get started right away. But of course I wanna first introduce Gina properly. Gina Athena Ulysse is Professor of Feminist studies at uc, Santa Cruz, California. She's the author of Downtown Ladies Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian anthropologist in self making in Jamaica. The author also of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives, a Post Quake Chronicle and a trilingual book published in English, Coyo and French. And also the author of, Because When God Is Too Busy Haiti Me and the World, which is a collection of photographs, poetry, and performance texts. And this was long listed for the 2017 Penn Open Book Award and awarded the 2018 Best Poetry Connecticut Center for the Book Award. And then in 2020 as an invited artist, her installation performance and equitable human assertion was presented at the BNL of Sydney on Cockatoo Island in Sydney, Australia. Gina, we are so delighted, glad, thankful, all the things that you're here with us. It feels a little bit miraculous. Um, you are a very busy woman, but welcome <laugh>.
Speaker 5 00:03:41 Oh no, the pleasure's all mine. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 00:03:48 I am going to give myself the privilege of asking the first question and jumping right in with something I noticed in your bio. Um, so as you talk about yourself and your work, you write that you're a quote post Zora Interventionist. Um, as an anthropologist myself, I'm interested in this kind of positioning, especially your multimedia work, which I really see in the tradition of Hurston. I'm thinking of her work in sound. Um, but there's also her decision to do ethnographic work in a space that was also her home. Something, you know, you've also worked in the region and, and sort of thought that through your positioning. I just wonder if you can tell us a bit about how Zor Neil Hurston as a figure, as an anthropologist impacts your work broadly.
Speaker 5 00:04:30 Sure. Thank you so much. That's such an incredible question. And, and it's really funny because I often wonder, uh, whether or not I want to say more about post Laura interventions. I mean, I've started to write about it and I stop and then I don't. Um, I think, you know, for me, a big part of the role that Zuora has played comes right down to me being in grad school, how I came to be introduced to Z Hutton while at Michigan, where, you know, back then, cuz it was quite a while ago, um, most of the courses did not mention, um, people like Zora, people like Katherine Dunham. So it was, I was taking a course with, I mean, I knew of her sure. But in terms of like serious engagement that came through with Ruth Bihar's course on Blur jars, um, which was one of those courses that just left an imprint, not only because I was able to finally come to recognize, oh, there had been anthropologists who had done work in a particular kind of way.
Speaker 5 00:05:36 So I was not as much of an oddity as I thought I was still do, but that's a whole other conversation. Uh, but rather I was part of this very long lineage of scholar artists who existed, you know, way before time, if you will. And, and so that there was a history that I could be a part of, right. That I could sort of tap into. And so there's that. The other aspect of that I think of Zora's impact on me is, and I teach this course called Po Zora Intervention, which is a course that looks at intersections of art, anthropology and activism. And then of course the students are raging. They're like, she was so socially conservative. I'm like, Yes. But she fought to be an individual. Like the aspect of her as someone who individuates is what I've always held onto in terms of how I think of myself within the discipline or how I think of myself professionally is, is individuation possible.
Speaker 4 00:06:35 Thank you. Gina. I'm, I'm curious, this is my, so I'm not an anthropologist as you well know, um, but I love anthropologists and I'm gonna ask you like a <laugh> clearly, right? This is a follow up to Tammy's question that comes from my, my literary brain, um, that you ended up sort of backing into in your comments about your, the reactions of your students. So my question had to do with the language of your, of your name post Zuora, in as much as that prefix post suggests that you're doing something not ex yes. In part in the wake of an, in continuation of, but you're also marking a shift into a future that is after Zora. And so when I say that you sort of backed into it, um, by bringing up your students, like, oh, she's so socially conservative, I wonder is that deliberate, the post of it? Did you put that prefix there to kind of say, I'm doing Zora, but I'm doing some of the things that I wish Z had done or had done differently or, or anything like that? I don't, I'm going too far.
Speaker 5 00:07:40 No, no, no. That's actually a really excellent question and, and, and it's a question that I, I've yearn to answer, um, in part because, um, no one wants to talk about the marking. And I think the marking has as much to do about professionalization within the discipline. Um, the fact that if we went too often, we keep coming back to Zora as though time has not passed and people have not been doing that kind of work over time. And it's appalling to me that people will be talking about Zora as though no other anthropologist in the last 60 or so years have been blurring jars. Cause that's, we are freezing anthropology in time by doing that. And, and we're able to keep saying that the discipline has not shifted when in fact there's been some shifts. You know what I mean? I don't think there's been the kind of shifts that I wish they were there, but clearly there's been, um, uh, there's been significant enough shifts.
Speaker 5 00:08:42 And then the other aspect of it too, I think, you know, I don't talk about it a whole lot again. I'm, I'm, I have a book project called The Horse that Wouldn't Listen, which is interesting. <laugh> tell my horse, but not all of them listen, you know what I mean? Not all of them listen. So, and because I, cuz there's so many problems with her writing around Haiti especially that, you know, that's a whole other conversation. Um, but I, I wanted to just appre say that I appreciate the fact that you, you caught onto the significance of the marking. And it is something that I am working on that I do think we need to have more conversations about because as I said earlier, we end up freezing right? Sort of almost fossilizing the discipline and sort of like, okay, so we keep pointing to these four mothers and and so forth. But there's been a number of other folks, you know, in the sixties and the, and the fifties. I mean, we're talking like the 1930s and the 1940s. Has anthropology really not moved since? So that's part of what I'm interested in interrogating or at least pointing to with that. Thank you.
Speaker 4 00:09:48 Yeah. And I think there's also, uh, like a, how can I put it? Like a confidence that comes from being able to grapple with our icons without worrying that questioning them will take them down or render them irrelevant, right? We, we wanna idolize and we wanna ize our fore mothers, but at the same time we do them a disservice if we don't continue to engage them, including the things about them that we, we feel need to evolve or to be rethought. So I appreciate,
Speaker 5 00:10:17 Yeah, and I think another aspect of that that's also a bit dangerous is for the folks who are not going to, uh, I'm gonna say automatically turn to a minoritized folks in the discipline. They, they get to only point, Well, let me teach that sore hurston piece in my course, Right? Let me, And it's kinda like, oh, well that, that's, that's all you feel you need to do, right? And then after that it stops. Right? So there's a way then that continuity, you know, gets, uh, frozen
Speaker 3 00:10:52 The diversity and inclusion approach to pedagogic. Yeah, absolutely. That's so useful. Um, I am really interested, Gina, in the way you position yourself in your work. Um, I'm thinking right now about downtown ladies, cuz I just taught that last semester and my students were so taken with it. Um, and what I was reminded of is how clear you are in your decision to articulate your relationship to your field site. Um, and the ways you I your own identity was affected, um, during field work. So, you know, all anthropologists now, there's a sort of almost necessity of self reflexivity, but you go beyond that. There's a real decision that I see in your writing and performance to be upfront about your presence, your whole self, um, in your work. And I just wanted, it's, it's fascinating. I just wanted to hear you talk about that decision and how you decide, um, how much of yourself to bring to the
Speaker 5 00:11:44 Work. Well, I think initially it wasn't, I didn't, I wasn't strategic about it. It was very painful. Downtown ladies, Downtown ladies was a painful project. Mm mm Down, I mean there's, there's part two that <laugh>, who knows if I'll ever write it downtown Ladies, was a very painful, painful project because I went to Jamaica in part, you know, I went to graduate school as I wrote in the introduction wanting to, to do something in Haiti because I had these ideas that I was going to do development in Haiti. I really did. I really, this was so long ago. And then of course you read all these accounts of development gone wrong and you're like, Okay, that's not gonna happen. And then I had a moment of actually working on a project with Ralph Trio, Ira Lowenthal, Michelle, Oh my God, what's Michelle's last name? Acaia and somebody else.
Speaker 5 00:12:43 And I was like, Oh, this is how you, your per diem. Oh, this is what really happens with development money. I, I knew that was, and I left, you know, sort of like disillusioned. And it was just like, that's not what this is. I can't do this and, and sort of have the commitment that I have to social justice and so forth. And I say this in part to say then what I had invested in Jamaica was always what I had invested in Haiti, Right. Which was the sense that I'm doing this work for something greater, right? And then to get to Jamaica and to have people say, You look like one of we, but you're not Jamaica. And I'm like, Okay, <laugh>, and then I'm from Haiti, but you don't look like one of those boot people. And I go, Ugh. I mean, it was just like, I mean it was like knives af you know, it was just brutal.
Speaker 5 00:13:35 Can you give us the context? Do you know what, what time are we talking about? Is this the, the nineties? Uh, what time are we talking about? We're talking about early 1990s, right? When I'm doing my field work or me coming into realization. Cuz this is, cuz the other part to know about this is, and it's there and I'm able to deal with a lot of this in my poetry, right? Um, or the fact that when I was in Jamaica, I'd gone back to Jamaica before I went to Haiti. So you have to read like the ethnography, well they're all ethnographic. You have to read downtown ladies alongside because when God is too busy and then you'll get the pieces that are not in downtown ladies. And because a lot of the poetry was written around the time I was doing my field work, um, cuz that's where a lot of the pain went.
Speaker 5 00:14:24 That's why the, you know, it's like you got some other, you know, whatever stuff, but the pain is in because when God is too busy, you know, going into a store and forgetting, you know, that I had walked and my feet are dusty. And then people are basically going, What are you doing here? Can you afford to be here? You know what I mean? Like, so the class and color stuff that happened in Jamaica was just like, um, or realizing for example, that people couldn't place me class wise. And, and I had a conversation with a scholar and I wrote about this in downtown ladies who said, you know, which is where I came up with, you know, the idea of sort of causing class, um, trouble because I couldn't be placed. I lived in Papen. I clearly was on the US you know, I dressed like I was an outsider.
Speaker 5 00:15:15 People, some people in Jamaica thought I was a club kid who was just like running around. And I mean, it was just so dealing with positionality was just like my, every single moment of every single day, it would've taken a lot for me to write and pretend that wasn't the case. And I did start writing that way. And I think I allude to that in the beginning of, um, downtown ladies. And then I ran into Ruth and Ruth was like, How's the work going? And I told her about it's not quite happening. And then I remember she said to me, Where's all the emails? What about all the stuff you used to tell me about? Cuz I would email her once in a while. And it's also what it meant to be working with someone who did not have any feminist sensibility. That's the best way I'm gonna say it.
Speaker 5 00:16:09 Um, who basically was like, this is not your field work. This is, you know, these were trials to your, to real data. And then Ruth was like, What? This is your work. This is your data, quote unquote, Right? And then realizing all of that. So then putting myself in was not a strategy. It was not someone that, something that I thought about it was I got into, which is something I've always felt about anthropology into telling stories. And in order to tell those stories, I couldn't pretend I wasn't there. Especially when so much of what these, what made these stories compelling was my presence. You, you, you see what I'm saying? It's like no one else could have written that book.
Speaker 3 00:16:52 No. But you're also very willing, I mean, there's a vulnerability there that you're willing to sort of let the reader go along with you on this journey, right? So we, we hear the ambivalence, we sort of see, you know, you're right, the pain isn't, isn't up upfront and center, but we do see, we do journey alongside you as you make these decisions and think about what it costs you to make this decision over that. And I think that that, um, I won't say it's unusual, but it's singular. And so I wanted to ask about what I thought was a decision, but maybe was a decision that you felt you had to make to get through the process.
Speaker 5 00:17:23 Well, it was a decision that I had to make if I wanted to tell the story in a way that was going to maintain my integrity. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Cause it's, it's, um, you know, the moment with Ms. Stein for example, when she was just like, she, I'm all set. I'm ready to go. I show up and she was gonna leave me behind. You're gonna leave me behind. And I was like, What the fuck? I, I was like, and I'm like, Oh my God, am I doing this? Like during the field? What the hell? You know, it's like, like, am I really talking to Miss Tiny this way? I'm losing it. And then I, and but it, why did, it took for me to realize that? And she goes, Jayna young ladies, don't ride on the truck. I was like, Become a young lady. What the fuck you?
Speaker 5 00:18:06 And then you realize someone else sees you some way and is protecting you too, right? Because it was about protecting my class identity. Like, you, you are not gonna, So then of course when I got up there, I, and I took a cap cuz I was like, No way in hell am I not gonna get to pass, you know, all the way up there. I can't even remember. And when I got there, she was like, I said, I can pay a taxes. She goes, as you should. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Cause that's what I needed to do. I did not need to have the experience of riding in the back of that truck. Right? And, and so how do I tell that story and for it for you to get like the vulnerability of my skin color and my class position, right? Cause I don't quite see how that would be clear if I didn't allow myself to just tell tell that part.
Speaker 5 00:19:00 Right. You see what I'm saying? So, so, and I was most, I was most committed to being truthful and assuring that people who gave me a lot, and this is all I could give them, this is it. This is all I could do is be vulnerable. That's all I could give them. Cause people took risks, you know? I mean there were moments where I was just like, No, no, no, no, no. I didn't come here for that <laugh>. You know what I mean? There were, you know, there were stabbings, there were, there were things going on, political things. There were very dangerous things going on that talking to the foreign gal, that Yankee gal, people took risks. So, so then what do I get to give back? Um, and that's what drove me. And, and, and so yeah. Yeah. But I also know professionally it meant people were gonna read it in a very particular kind of way. And that was not a, an issue for me.
Speaker 4 00:20:05 The causing trouble part, which now I see its roots and I have read its roots in your work, but this is not something that like you used to do back in the nineties cause trouble. Um, I would argue that the way that you have positioned yourself since then in the academy with respect to the academy, calling into question the codes and the constraints of the academy, which is was which is trouble making and which is hard one. Certainly. I just wondered if you could take us a little bit past those moments in graduate school to the vulnerability and the trouble making that's informed your evolution as an anthropologist, as a scholar, an artist, a contributor. Um, and I will tag on the question of, you know, are you able to in good conscience or do you feel called to mentor your students to similarly cause trouble as they make a path for themselves through the institution?
Speaker 5 00:21:08 No, I do not do that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And it's so funny because I'm very clear with, with students all the time and I say, you know, I, I will give them a sense of the landscape. And that's a personal choice cuz there's a price and you have to decide. You have to decide if you want to pay it. I mean, and, and I've paid it. Um, and I can't imagine having done it any other way. I think, you know, I I, I don't always talk about this, but I have what I call rebel mentoring. Cause I think the thing is you have, if you see yourself and understand yourself in a particular kind of way, professionally, because I think what, what I can say about this is to the extent that I have troubled and continue to trouble, I'm at peace with myself. That's very clear. Um, I think I've gone through places where I've ruffled things and, and, and, but it's not, one of the things I tell students usually is like, you don't really know a boundary until you've pushed against it. I mean, that's just a fact.
Speaker 4 00:22:08 And when we just found our episode line, we don't really know a boundary until you've pushed against
Speaker 5 00:22:13 It. And also one needs to know themselves. Well, um, many, many years ago, I had gone in 1991 actually, um, no, no, 2001. Hm. I, after the LASA conference, and I remember this because of nine 11, um, I went to see Max B War and I was like, Max, it's not working. It's not working. You know, am I an anthropologist? Am I an artist? What am I going to do? And I'm trying to figure my life out. And he goes, you know, you, you were born for self-expression. I was like, What? You, you were born for, I mean, you know that you were born for self-expression. It doesn't matter what you do. Art apology, you were born for self-expression. And I didn't fully get what? That I was frustrated. I was pissed because I was like, I'm trying to get counsel here from an elder.
Speaker 5 00:23:08 I need you to tell me, which way do I go? And instead you're like, I was born for self-expression. Uh, right. You know, I mean, what, what the hell does that mean? Right? But now I understand, right? Because now I understand why it is that I kept pushing the boundaries of anthropology. Why it is that, you know, with my art, I keep pushing the boundaries of this. Why it is that I, you know, so whether it is with poetry, with performance and so forth, because I rented a whole new space now where I'm not speaking a whole lot. I'm not talking a whole lot. And if you had asked me, this is where I was gonna go, I would've said no. But then here's California in, you know, living in a world that's, you know, surrounded by nature. And I'm having to think of the trees as, you know, in the forest as my source of methodology.
Speaker 5 00:23:53 So it's, things are shifting and things are moving. Um, one of the things that I could say though, that's driving this, and I started to think about this a while back, and it's this understanding that no one, nothing lives there lives along disciplinary lines, right? That's disciplines are a function of, and the property of an academic world, right? No one is having a biological experience or a political economy experience, or, you know what I mean, Or biologic, like whatever the discipline is, we just live. But the academy needs to make sense out of that experience and these conditions using these singular and sometimes quote unquote interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary whatever, um, uh, approaches. Um, so for me, I'm chasing having a sort of, something of a comprehensive sense of things. And I think what I've come to learn, the more I play around with art, is it's recognizing the limits of forms.
Speaker 5 00:25:02 Right? So I, you know, so back to this point about pushing against the boundary, it's sort of when I've reached a limit of a form, I wanna go into the other one. And, and, and, and, you know, and I see that the way I do my art, that's where I see, that's where it's most visible to me. That I could get lost painting a calabash. And you know, and then I'm, you know, and I'm using different kinds of materials and, and, and so forth. And feeling like the work that I'm doing now with these calabashes is just a continuation of my written work, right? And, and, and, and part of it has to do with I'm, as I said, I'm chasing the same, I'm chasing the same thing, the same feeling, the same sense. I'm in conversation with the same users. They haven't changed, right? They haven't changed. It's just the form that I'm using that has shifted a bit.
Speaker 4 00:26:02 And is it, and is it in a spirit of play and fun and pursuit? Or is it because you get frustrated by a form? Is this what you're saying when you say you don't know
Speaker 5 00:26:12 It's all play and that's the part that's fun. It's totally play, right? Cause I'm thinking about Voodoo Doll and I, you know, cause I'm like, I've brought Voodoo Do Back and I'm reworking on it now. Okay. Um, because I was written in 2010, I started it and, and it's like, well, you know, now that the New York Times has decided Haiti as a particular <laugh> had this colonial history, it's, it's matter of fact. Um, you know, uh, so, uh, it's kind of fun for me to say, Okay, well what would it mean to engage with this material and do it from a point of play? Ok.
Speaker 4 00:26:49 Is there a do, do I, I'm, I know maybe you don't wanna reveal all your secrets, but are you, you've given us one, so Voodoo Doll is coming back. Is or Voodoo Doll's coming back. Is there, are there other forms you have in mind? You
Speaker 5 00:27:02 Might Oh, it's totally, it's all installation and, and performance, right? So it's right because it's like, cuz it's the, it's the limit of the, the written word. And then why am I so drawn to sound and just want, and then an imagery. Um, and part of it I think also has a lot to do with the state of things in the world. Um, I think it was Yoni cu who had said to me a couple years back that Michael Dash, before he passed, had said something about, you know, the artists, the artists, the artists are the ones who are having a conversation now, Right? Just thinking about, you know, those of us who have been doing the work that is, um, somewhat interested, invested in social justice and then seeing the limits of where those conversations lead or the fact that they remain, um, very, um, contained only in within the academy, which is what was good about all the news that fits tot you know, publishing that.
Speaker 5 00:28:10 Because now it actually went to a huge audience. Um, so, you know what I mean? Just thinking about the popular and what that means. Mm-hmm. And you know, and I'm also reminded of Ralph Trio Andile in the past where we talked about most people learn history not in history books, right? It's, it's in the TV shows, it's in the theme parks, it's in the, you know, it's in theaters and so forth. So, and that's always been something that's always drawn me because I went into the academy wanting, I was, I wanted to be an artist before I wanted to be an academic, right? I wanted to be a singer. So, so that for me, I just, that sense of like, it's just a continuation. Just, you know, so I'm excited to see what I'm doing now and then wonder, oh okay, that's what you wanna do now. I'm like, yeah, I guess So <laugh>,
Speaker 3 00:29:02 I love it though. I love that we've journeyed from the pain, um, into the play. I think that that's,
Speaker 5 00:29:07 That's oh 100% one, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think we will survive as the species if we don't do that. Because I think we're gonna be living with horror for quite some time. Um, which is one of the things that I appreciate about being in California. Cuz it's like, you're right in it. And
Speaker 3 00:29:23 How do you make your way? How do you find new interlocutors with the trees and how do you,
Speaker 5 00:29:28 The extremities are right there. I live in one of the, you know, most pricey zip codes. And then I see routinely every single morning, every single evening I see the unhoused situation and it just, it just, it blows you away. Um, um, so then it's like, well how are we gonna be dealing with all of these extremities here? You don't get to sort of
Speaker 4 00:29:53 Sick tea during the apocalypse. Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:29:55 Oh yeah. No, you don't. <laugh>. I just heard what you just said.
Speaker 4 00:30:00 <laugh>. No, it's the image I have just right. I mean, it's everywhere. It's in New York, it's in dc it's in San Francisco. Just this idea that somehow we remain contained in these boundaries that are delineated by things like border walls or zip codes. But that doesn't keep us from seeing like right on the other side of that transparent divide, the reality that it is that we're in constant. Right. So we can sit there on our porch and sit tea, but that doesn't change the fact that this is next door. So
Speaker 3 00:30:27 Beautiful. Okay. All right. I have a question for you. I think it, um, it's so lovely, Gina, who was born for self-expression. Um, I wanted to ask you about one of your forms of expression that I'm really interested in. You've talked a bit about some of the kinds of ways that what you're interested in just sort of flows across these sort of constructed boundaries, right? Of the word of performance of song. Um, and I wanted to ask you about your, your work that you've been doing in, um, Raam bla and I'm wondering if you would say a bit about how you came to produce your work this way and how you curate the material that you choose to create.
Speaker 5 00:31:01 Sure. I mean, I think the thing about that, that is actually I'm gonna, I give all credit to Kira Malika Daniels, who's a professor of art at Boston, right? Who was my student, Well I'm gonna call my student for like one year because she came to, to, uh, Wesley and to study, um, to learn more about Haiti with Alex Dupe, Zama Callister myself and so forth, you remember? And, and then went, went on to go to Stanford, Tuc Stanford. And I remember when I started to working right around Roo bla and Kisa, you know, pro you've been doing a Ros bla your whole life. And I thought about it that way and I was just like, Oh, you're right. You know, And cause I had not, I had not thought about it that way. The realization though for me, that I am really excited about, remain excited about, cuz there's a Rael flash manifesto that's like, you know, I'm twirling around, that's twirling around me and I'm still fighting with it cuz I don't know what's happening with it.
Speaker 5 00:32:06 Um, it's got its own time. Is the significance of having spirits be part of this, right? So it's a gathering of ideas, things, people, spirits, and now I say not necessarily in that order. And it's important that I stress that in part because again, if we go back to the muses, what does it mean to consider spirits or interlocutor and to think about spirits without having to think about them in fetish it this way without it being fetish. I mean, it's just so important for me to have that, to express that, to engage with that. So, and it's easy, I think in some ways through performance because of the chanting and it's there with the visual art because of just, I think in part the power of the, the imagery and, um, some of the materials that I use, the fact that things that are quote unquote, um, natural, uh, products that are also, uh, things that can be used to create color, but also have spiritual properties, right?
Speaker 5 00:33:25 The fact that they're sort of multifaceted, um, materials. Um, and for me the need to, and, and I think it's also there in earlier parts of Voodoo doll, certainly there in, um, because when God is too busy is what it meant that I as a quote unquote, supposedly enlightened subject <laugh>, whatever that means, uh, considers the spirit world in a way where I am and remain determined that it, they are as much my interlocutors as anything or anybody else. So this gathering, and I always have this imagery, and I wrote about this in a piece in, um, oh my God, Janet, no, Janelle Hobson's anthology, which was called All the Women Still White, which was a, you know, in response to all the, all the black women, all the women are white, but some of us are brave, which, uh, was a collection around transnational feminism.
Speaker 5 00:34:32 The relationship we have with our spirit itself in the natural world is something that for me, as a Haitian American person who feels the need to be part of a broader black conversation, right? And, you know, this is part, this is a whole other conversation, but where Haiti does not configure into black conversations if in North America, um, that is to me both a, a disservice, a missed opportunity. Uh, if there's any frustration, that's where I have it. I tend to not have it around in most anything else. Um, because then what we end up doing is we, we keep sort of, not even bifurcating, but you know, Haiti keeps being blackness of a particular kind and that's out written about it, right? Um, we don't get to have a black conversation about blackness without Haiti being another, right? So, so glass bla for me is a space and an opportunity to have this sort of black diasporic conversation. Um, because whether we're talking about North America, whether we're talking about the Caribbean, whether we're talking about Northern or Southern Africa, whether we're talking about Asia, the concept of the a gathering of ideas, things, people's spirits is actually universal.
Speaker 5 00:36:09 I think we can clean that. Right? You see what I'm saying? So, so I'm, I'm interested then what would that look like? What did it mean that some of the work that I've done of late came from conversations with, um, people in Australia who are indigenous to Australia, Right? Um, and how that influenced my artwork and sort of wanting and wishing keep, and I, that door is wide open for me, which is what Grassland Lodge is doing. I remember I met Theatric Gates, I'm like, Oh my God, you're a Rao bla artist <laugh>. It was like, what, whatever. But <laugh>, but I, you know, because it's like, look at what you do, look at what you bring together and da da da da. Um, so there is a national aspect to this, right? It's a, it's a concept and it's one that's broader. And then maybe from a nationalist point, I could always say, and I think the historians, you know, folks who have written about Haiti's history, you know, can also point that out, which is the fact that, well, that revolution was the one that actually tried to meet universal ideas, right? And, and so, so that for me remains one of those points of conversation that I hope we can continue to have. And that's what Russell BL represents to me. So that it's not just a Haiti thing, right? Which is, I think too often we, we, you know, especially with the Creole word and you're like, and I'm like, actually it's so much broader. It's so much bigger.
Speaker 4 00:37:37 Uh, you know, we are, we're running at out of the time you have allocated to us. But I want to, well first just to say, and this may be for another conversation, but I'm just so struck by your, um, willingness to be ambivalent about, about the written word. Because you've said sort of in a very declarative way, I'm frustrated by the constraints of the written word, but every other sentence is, Well, I'm working on writing this project, I'm working on this book, I'm in my poetry, and then this other thing I wrote, and it's just so beautiful to watch you claiming this multimedia space, which you're fully invested in. But try as you might, you're also a writer in a poet and you do play with the written word. I just want to, to put that out there, um, and tell you a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 4 00:38:20 But <laugh> my question, um, our last question just to wrap up, I hope this doesn't annoy you because maybe you're asked it too much, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask, in 2015, you made the exhortation, the declaration that became something of a mantra across many disciplines in Haitian studies. And I'd say beyond Haitian studies in as much as, as, as black studies admit, Haitian studies as well, which was when you said Haiti needs new narratives. Um, and this is something that just has resonated like a stone in a pond throughout the academy and well beyond. And so I'm wondering, seven years down the road, how have we done <laugh>? How are those new narratives coming, <laugh>?
Speaker 5 00:39:10 Well, no, I'm gonna say two things about that. I call it the trope that is not
Speaker 4 00:39:14 Mine. Okay. Let's hear
Speaker 5 00:39:17 In part because that's, you know, what I intended. Um, but then this is what happens, right? You write something, you put it out there and then whatever happens happens with it. For me, the book was, I mean, I think just to think it through what it was, it was blog post op-eds done in like small alternative media. This was always about the media to me always. Um, now I think about it and I'm like, it should have been like why you need your narratives in the media, right? Because cuz that would've really sensed it and, and made it even clearer. Um, and the reason really was because those of us who know, know the damage that media narratives can cause, right? And, and what they can do and what they've done and what they are doing, we know that, we know that Haiti is where it is right now, in part because of the, how much those those ideas continue even after that book, right?
Speaker 5 00:40:21 In, in conversations. Cause um, you know, the dominant narrative in the media still holds until, what was it like two months ago? <laugh>, everybody's was sending me, you know, like, it's like supposedly, right? So, so I think the thing for me about, about that, um, I think there are ways it was, um, people wanted what people, people got what they wanted out of it. Like some people wa people read it as, you know, like it was useful fiction. It was just this, it was like, for me, really what <laugh> and it's not that I don't have a lot to say. I'm actually writing a piece, it's called the Trope that is not mine. Cause I feel like I need to, to point to, I was making an intervention on a particular moment around something specific. And you know, seven years later, where are we? Where I was afraid we would be
Speaker 4 00:41:23 Are you, are you writing a piece, Gina? Huh?
Speaker 5 00:41:27 No, but, but, but the other way, do you, I I'll take a few more minutes. The way to think about it though is it was an opening, right? It wasn't opening and no place was not opening greater than the academy, right? So, and I think for me, part of what I realize is no matter how much I wanna keep shifting what my position is, right? It's like where does my work resound more? You know, I had a conversation recently with um, na dev in, um, in Alene Trulio. And, and I said the thing that I'm most, that I think I'm most happy about with that project is that it made translation a conversation again with some folks, right? And you would know that more than anybody else Kama with all the translation work you do. So why it's important then to have done work about Haiti that people in Haiti could read in all three languages. That was the most, that for me was the thing about that project that was most that I appreciated the most. Um, but I think it, it, it led to conversations that we need to have more. Maybe one of these days I'll be like a a a conference type kind of conversation about, about that. Cuz I think there's a lot more that needs to be said around it, right? Cause that's always been my point. It's like it's Haiti, but it's the way that Haiti points to the, to the larger world.
Speaker 4 00:42:58 Beautiful. I could not, That's, that's an answer that we can really, I think hang on to and be hopeful about. Cuz you're absolutely right. You were right then. And, and the way that that resonates seven years hence, and we'll continue to, I think is, is incredibly meaningful. So thank you for that work. Thank you for your work. Thank you for being here and running through your work with us and our audience. We appreciate you.
Speaker 6 00:43:28 Riding Home is produced by Kiama Glover, Tammy Navarro, Rachel James and Miriam Neptune. Support for this podcast comes from the Digital Humanity Center Center for Research on Women, the media center, and the Library at Barnard College. Our music is by Aza from their album Deli Jos. And the track is three Bela.
