s2, e4 “what remains” | Katia Ulysse

Episode 4 July 29, 2021 00:48:28
s2, e4  “what remains” | Katia Ulysse
WRITING HOME
s2, e4 “what remains” | Katia Ulysse

Jul 29 2021 | 00:48:28

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Show Notes

“No matter how long I’ve been away from home, Haiti remains inside of me.” – Katia D. Ulysse

For the final episode of WRITING HOME’s second season, Tami and Kaiama welcome the critically acclaimed Haitian-American fiction and children’s book author Katia D. Ulysse. Reflecting Katia’s stories, this conversation weaves together the vitality of music, the multifaceted bonds between mothers and daughters, and the changing, transnational narratives of Haiti. Katia drops some wonderful gems as she lifts up the names of the people she loves, such as how she learnt how to story-tell at her grandmother’s feet and why she thinks of motherhood as “babysitting her daughter for the ancestors.”

Katia D. Ulysse is a fiction writer, born in Haiti. Her short stories, essays, and Pushcart Prize–nominated poetry appear in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including: The Caribbean Writer, Smartish Pace, Phoebe, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalismMozayikThe Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, and Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat. She has taught in Baltimore public schools for thirteen years, and served as Goucher College’s Spring 2017 Kratz Writer in Residence. Drifting, a collection of short stories, drew high praise from literary critics. She is currently at work on another short story collection. Mouths Don’t Speak is her latest novel.

Reading List:

Katia’s books
Mouths Don’t Speak (2018)
Drifting (2014)
Fabiola Ale Lekòl/Fabiola Goes to School (2016)
Fabiola Konn Konte/Fabiola Can Count (2012)

Authors who Katia mentioned:
Yanick Lahens
Roxane Gay
Edwidge Danticat

Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer
Robert Palmer performing with James Brown

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 00:00:06 You're listening to writing home American voices from the Caribbean, with Kiama Glover and Tammy Navarro, Speaker 1 00:00:18 They will fill dump trucks in wheelbarrows, destined for mass graves. Someone said a prayer on that remote mountain range where vicious dictator wants disappeared. Those who uttered his name without the proper measure of reverence, the dank smell of despair, pervaded the air as more trucks stacked with corpses arrived in high above the carnage few clouds obstructed the tranquil sky. Speaker 2 00:00:49 That voice you just heard was Katia D Lee's reading from her work at a critical Caribbean feminisms event back in 2018. That Speaker 3 00:00:56 Was a wonderful event that we had at the grad center here in New York. And we're so excited to have the chance to talk with Katia again now. So let's dive right in I'm Tammy Navarro Speaker 2 00:01:07 And I'm Kiama Glover. Welcome to writing home American voices from the Caribbean. We're here today with Katya, who is a fiction writer and educator born in Haiti, but living here in the United States, she's the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection drifting the novel mouths. Don't speak as well as two children's books, among many other writings. And we are absolutely delighted to have her peer in the virtual studio to talk with us today. Speaker 4 00:01:32 Kacha welcome to writing home. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so happy I feel at home. Speaker 2 00:01:39 Oh, that makes us feel very good. We've started to feel at home in this weird, this weird virtual reality. So thank you for joining us here. So, you know, we're going to ask you a few questions. Hopefully you'll find them interesting enough to answer and, and engage with. And we'll start off with kind of what brings us here together. This question of writing. I tend to be always the one to put this on the table, but I want to hear about your incredible versatility as far as the genre is concerned. So I mentioned, right, so you've written poetry, a novel short stories, children's literature. And if I understand correctly, you are also a musician. So I'm wondering if you can talk to us about kind of how you make those decisions, if they are decisions or what inspirations you follow. When you decide to put a story in a certain sort of genre category, I don't want to throw a couple of other things in there too. Speaker 2 00:02:30 You can decide if you want to answer. Isn't part of your, your thinking about this. You can talk to us about your writing language, right? You are at least trilingual from my understanding. So deciding when and where the Creole or the French or the English may make most sense in the mouths of a character or in a certain context. And then lastly, to wrap it up kind of the place of the autobiographical in your choice of genres and in your writing. So any, and all of that, if you wanted to throw a couple of answers, we'd be grateful. Speaker 4 00:03:01 Thank you. That's an awesome question. It's awesome questions and got layers in it in a stack. I hear the questions and I see a big stack of pancakes, like delicious, delicious pancakes, delicious. As far as the language is they come with the story. You know, I I'd like to speak first about the music, believe it or not, because I think that, you know, I was born with it, into it. My great-grandmother and Haiti always had drummers in her place of worship. And so we always had these drummers. And so music was always a huge part of my life from as far back as I can remember and melodies and the call and response at all times. And you know, that our country is in such still great relationship with the beginnings of our introduction, to that land from our, the place where we originated. And so that music, that whole call and response system is still within me so many times. Speaker 4 00:04:22 It's like, like I wrote. And, uh, I think drifting, you know, I wrote this character who is a whole lot, like somebody I know, wakes up in the morning with a song in her head with the entro, you know, the, the, the melody, you know, th th the whole thing, just a whole entire song. And I'll wake up in the morning and I'll say, I just, I woke up with a song that's melody lyrics that love music, everything. I woke up with a complete song in my head. I woke up with a song in my head and I in writing is similar. The reason why I stopped singing, it was because I was very, very, very shy. I was singing with the last scene band in Brooklyn for years, for years, but I was very shy and I would hide behind the guitar player who loved the spotlight. Speaker 4 00:05:21 So he's on the floor, kicking his legs up and doing like that with a guitar, you know, I'm in the background, you know, and, and the background. But I, when I, the more I think about it, music is probably my first love in that it's innate it's in me, and it's a way of telling stories. And so when things, when I realized that I simply could not be on stage as a singer, could not. I just, I just couldn't do it. It was, it was problematic and in many, many ways. And then I remembered that when I was 12 years old, I started writing. I need it to communicate. I've got, I've got things that I need to communicate. Communication is so important that, that I had to, that I went back to writing stories that had stopped writing when I was 16, because I had a banker's box full of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of writings that the rain destroyed. Speaker 4 00:06:21 Rain just fell on the box and everything was just gone. Hundreds of pages. And I stopped writing because my, I was so heartbroken. And then, then I was singing. And then when that went, the way that it went, and then I decided, you know, writing, I don't need a bass player. I don't need to be on stage. We don't need to do a sound check. Do we now, Tammy? Well, we don't need to check for the levels of the microphone or any of that stuff. Do we? And so writing is a solo act, and that's why it's become like breathing to me. I have to write, I just, um, I don't know any other way to live. I don't know. I don't know any other way. Speaker 2 00:07:17 So I love that. So basically writing was this sort of safe Haven, relative safe Haven for you with a need to express yourself, but kind of not having exactly figured out what was the right space or medium for that. Yeah, I understand. And thank you for answering that. We also gave us a bit of autobiography in an era, which I had asked him about, right. So bring us back to this, I guess what, must've been a traumatic experience of the loss of this, of this Corpus really. Um, but then obviously the musical tradition that informs you to this day. Thank you. Speaker 4 00:07:50 Yeah. Thank you. I mean, it, it stays with us. The story stayed with me. A lot of those stories that I wrote in English and some were in French because I'd just come to the United States of America. My English was not that, you know, I, I learned English in six months, but it was not the type of language that I could use to make to. Right. And so, and so a lot of it was in French and a lot of it were, uh, I wrote a lot of love letters because I, you know, I, none of my stories have any romantic, anything in them, but growing up some of the girls at school, even in high school, in Montclair, New Jersey, they wanted to communicate with, you know, their people that they love. Hey, can you write me a letter? Can you write a letter for, so I really should have charged him, but, but that's a genre. I didn't know about <inaudible>. I was like, yeah, sure. Boys and girls who thought they were reading feelings of from the girls who were boys who sent them the letters. They actually came from me and they were so beautiful because I didn't know who they were and I didn't care. So I love you. I love you. I love you. I love because I don't know you and I've never met you and everything is beautiful. Speaker 2 00:09:16 Katia, Siano, the Belgium. Okay. Got it. Speaker 3 00:09:29 Well, I'm going to transition because I want to ask you a question about your novel, about milestone speak. Because what I was struck with as I was looking back at it again, is the bonds between women that you write in that book. So I'm thinking about Jacqueline and her mother, but then I'm also thinking about Jacqueline and her own daughter, Amber, right. And that is one of the sort of central grounding relationships in, in that novel. And then what goes on to happen to Amber kind of shifts everything. So I guess I just wanted to hear you say a bit about how you approach and write those kinds of relationships, that kind of mother-daughter bond, because they're very different. Those two bonds, Speaker 4 00:10:06 Thank you for, for that question. The mother daughter bond. And I'm going to make that plural because there are so many facets to that, right? And, oh my, is this the part where I say, I'd rather not answer that question, but <inaudible> oh my, my mind, you know, as women, we experience our relationships and such diverse ways. Our relationship with our mothers, with sisters relationships, with our children, and particularly in math, don't speak. What I went for was very specific, Michael, for that relationship between Jack clean and a mother, one of the things that was very important to me was to try to do something about that narrative that we have, that everybody in Haiti, so poor and everybody, you know, it's, it's so horrible and mother's always struggling and so on. But here we have this family that is very well to do. And that character was important for me to write about and their lifestyle. Speaker 4 00:11:30 They enticed me the place where they work, where they live was very important to, for me to introduce to readers who are not familiar with that aspect of Haiti, that such a place such as space actually exists. So I was offering the story of a mother who actually didn't want much to do with her daughter, you know, not because she was because she, you know, she, she basically wanted to not be a mother. When the child turned 10, she decided that, you know, I don't want to be a mom anymore, but the girl was 10 years old. So what she did, and that didn't happen as it happens in many countries throughout the world, children are sent away to, to, to very good private schools and geometries is that you're going to be there until you are 18 or whatever. But what happens in my story, what happens in milestone speak is mom and dad's specialty moms, specifically, mom had decided you no longer want it to be a mom that she, that she, she was young. Speaker 4 00:12:40 There was so much life left for her. There was so many places in the world. She hadn't seen that. She wanted to see that. And the one thing that was keeping her from being able to do that, though, the one role keeping her from, from accomplishing all the other things that she wanted to was motherhood. So she had to somehow detached herself or get rid of that role or pass it on to somebody else in order for her to feel more complete or to accomplish the goals that she wanted for herself as an individual. But then Speaker 3 00:13:18 You swing the pendulum right. To how Jacqueline approaches motherhood. So her embrace of Amber is the complete opposite of that. Speaker 4 00:13:27 Yes, yes. And I, and I think women, pardon me, it's not just women, parents, moms, dads, everywhere can understand what we do. And I mean, we giving myself away, giving my story away when we are not embraced by the parent. And when we have our own child, we tend to embrace that child and just try to, to the best of our abilities, unmake what had been, I'm going to give my child what I never got, not just the shoes and the barrettes and the pants that actually reached their ankles. Speaker 5 00:14:31 What's the love, you know, as Speaker 4 00:14:35 I was watching, something was 20 Morrison recently, it was an interview with a very famous interviewer. And what 20, I love 20 Morrison. Who said that when children walk into the room, they expect the, and I'm, I'm paraphrasing 20 Morrison. These are not my words at all. I mean, they are, but they're not, but I'm paraphrasing. But the children expect us to just look at them and sort of just, just say, oh, you know, your hair's not done. Right. You know, your pants are just not done. Right. You know, not, not on properly on your dresses is not, not right. So instead of that, the children look for the, for the light in our eyes to say, wow, look at you. You're here. Even if their hair is a skew, even if things are just, who cares, look at you, you know, you are in this room now with me. Speaker 4 00:15:32 Wow. I'm just so happy to have you here for this moment. You are perfect in this moment. Yeah. And that's what I wanted. The relationship between Jackleen and the baby to be like, baby was perfect in that moment. And Jack clean was a woman who had left Haiti when she was 10 as a little girl, obviously a little girl, a little girl of 10 grew up here, forgot everything most of us. And so, but the music stayed with her. The music stayed with her so much so that when she wanted to go back and relearn, well, learn Creole. And she was learning from someone who had worked as a missionary in Haiti and said, Hey, I can teach you girl. And the person said, by the way, are you familiar with, in music? Are you familiar with <inaudible>? Are you familiar with, are you familiar with said, well, well, yes, even though Jacqueline was not. Speaker 4 00:16:47 And then she started playing the drums for her and said, do you know what this music is exactly and said, well, how dare you? Because this music is my heartbeat. It's, it's the thing inside me that you and everybody else who goes to Haiti for five minutes and come back and take you more Haitian than I am. You. You don't get to do that. You don't get to play that role because no matter how far I've gone, no matter how long I've been away from home, Haiti remains inside of me, the music of Haiti and all of its downbeats and all of its sad notes stay inside of me. And I own them. And you, you can't teach me that. Speaker 2 00:17:44 Gotcha. That, that brings me to another question. I was going to ask you a bit later, but I'll it now, first of all, Tammy, isn't it, it's amazing to me how, the way that Katia just described mothering and motherhood, it made me think of Alexis talking about revolutionary motherhood, that what you said about wanting your, her daughter to have an experience or wanting one's child, to have an experience of the things that you remember as being lacking in your own childhood, just kind of the radical nature of motherhood, that, that is about completing the self through the child. And that being something that's as wounds incredibly generous, but also, you know, a little bit narcissistic is too strong a word, but, but it's about the self as it, as much as it is about the child. And so I, yeah, I noticed that, but, but I wanted to turn to, in fact, something else that you said there, which was about, you know, having Haiti inside oneself in ways that maybe someone who's been there, as you said for five minutes, might think, well, you don't live here. Speaker 2 00:18:44 So let me teach you something and Jacqueline pushing back and be like, no, you can't teach me something. That's, that's part of who I am. And so that makes me ask you a question about like trans nationalism and this question of freedom of movement between spaces that you can claim as home, both your home, let's say in Baltimore city, but also your home that will forever also be in Haiti and ask you maybe a bit of a sticky question about sort of diaspora privilege, right? The privilege that's part of that freedom of movement. And then, and please feel free to reject this implication. But if that privilege brings with it for you in a personal way, any sort of thought of responsibility or obligation in the work that you do as a writer, right? As someone who represents this home to people in your other home, Speaker 4 00:19:39 Thank you for that question. Also, I'd like to go back to one part that you spoke a little bit, uh, just before that, and you said that narcissistic would be too strong, a word in terms of a mothering and being a mother. I, what, what, the way it works for myself and my daughter and the way it works for Jack clean and Zach Clean's daughter is that it's, it's something that I know I will, I will speak for myself that I, oh, my child, my child never knocked on any door and said, I want to be born now. You know? So she's here and she's more than our responsibility. I believe that I'm babysitting her for the ancestors. Speaker 2 00:20:31 I love that line. I'm going to have to write that somewhere. That Speaker 3 00:20:34 Is such interesting take on time and the bonds we can form across generations. Yes. Speaker 4 00:20:40 So she gets mad. She says, mom, you know, you always say that, but I'm not yours. No, no, you're not mine. You are, you know, you're here for me. I'm I'm, you are my responsibility. I'm responsible for you. I'm taking care of you and showing you until the way until you can take care of yourself. My job is to just keep you whole and safe because we've got hundreds of years and thousands of men and women who came before you got here. There's a reason why you are here with me within this line of people. I have a responsibility, not just to you, but to all the people who came before you. And that is just so important to me. So, so maybe it is in a way of, uh, an attempt to find completion. But when I really think about it and I have really thought about it, it has very little to do with me, but just almost all to do with my child. No, thank you for clarifying that. Can I, can I ask and deserving Speaker 2 00:22:03 In innocent and deserving? You are, children Speaker 4 00:22:05 Are innocent and deserving. Speaker 2 00:22:08 We'll have to send you the transcript of this because these are beautiful. Just such condensed, beautiful ways of thinking that that deserve to be preserved innocent and deserving. I really like that. Can I, can I push you back to the question of movement and migration and, and you know what I've called diaspora privilege, but you can feel free to reject that qualification. Speaker 4 00:22:29 Never. I love all your questions and they push me to think to, to move a little bit further, the aspect freedom. Well, I'll tell you what that looks like right now. My uncle died suddenly and I do mean suddenly March 26 about, I guess that's, you know, a couple of weeks ago, right? I'm very sorry. No, that's okay. He died because he did not have $50, Speaker 2 00:23:01 Which is not okay. Speaker 4 00:23:02 That was in his pocket, which comes with like about $7 us. Okay. That isn't okay. And he told my cousin who came to pick him up. He said, I'm out of here. Those were his last words. He said, you know what? I'm gone, goodbye fell out on his face. Boom. My cousin said, you know, you know, when a coconut falls from the tree and he hits the ground, well, that's how you know, y'all uncle fell. Boom. That was it. So my mother's here. That's her brother. When are we talking about the aspect? Freedom. Right? Freedom to move. And our literature, freedom to spaces and so on. We've got a passport. And so, by the way, man expired 20, 20 March 10th, 2020 at that time, what will we all thinking about the pandemic? Nothing else not moving. And that pandemic was trans national and it was everywhere. Speaker 4 00:24:02 Everybody was impacted by it. Right? So then I can't let my mother go to Haiti by herself. She's in her eighties. I just, can't not let that happen because her brother just passed away. Her little brother. So I know she's, I know what she's going through. I can stop being, I know, I see her she's falling apart. I cannot allow her to go as a member of the diaspora. I was lived in this country for a good 40 something years, but she's still more Haitian than that. Then the flag, the Haitian flag. And so I call the state department and I said, well, you know what? My passport expired, but I've got, my uncle just died. My uncle, my mother's brother just died. I've got to go to my country and take my mother. And the very nice gentlemen had state department said, well, ma'am, you're not an immediate family member. You're not considered immediate family. And you guys, those of us who know Haiti, we know that got shot. He leads who died in 2010 whom I never met somehow. She was family. Speaker 4 00:25:15 Somehow. I don't know the woman, but somehow we'll relate it somehow. But he was my mother's brother who died. And the state department tells me, Hey, you're not immediate family. So you're a little Americanized national, you know, naturalized south can just go drop some water somewhere. See, I play a lot of candle and call it done. You know, you, we cannot help you. We can't do anything for you. We cannot help you. So I could not go because they could not renew my passport because as a member of the diaspora, with all of my amazing rights as a naturalized American or Haitian, I don't know, naturalize, I'm naturalized, whatever it is. Um, my freedom. And it's not exactly what you meant, but I'm just giving you an example of how I interpret it. And this particular instance, I was completely shackled. I couldn't go anywhere. Speaker 4 00:26:29 My uncle's funeral is today and here we are. And I'm grateful. I'm really grateful because here it is. This is another example of the, the aspect freedom, because I can have conversation. It lifts my uncle's name, flux email, fuck, see mail, fuck, see mail. And I can Memphis name up right now in this conversation. That is part of the diasporic freedom. Being able to move in space because I cannot go to my country to see my uncle off, but here we are and I can lift his name. I can speak his name right now. And I suppose that is the beauty of it all. That is the freedom. That is what it, that is what it means to have that privilege. That is, this is the privilege because if I were in Haiti right now with whom would I speak about my uncle, another dead black Haitian man on the soil who fell? Who else would care? Speaker 2 00:27:55 Am I putting words in your mouth? If I ask, I mean, the follow up that, you know, are you in any way suggesting that the freedom you found and even maybe more so, you know, referring to what you said about who else would care, the audience that you found as like a place to put your stories and you know, as, um, listeners, readers who care ultimately, is this the kind of freedom that you're you're implying is, is something you found in, in diaspora? Or am I doing that? Like literary theorists stuff where I'm deciding what you mean? Because you said it and now it belongs to me. Speaker 4 00:28:40 No, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're correct in so many ways. Okay. In so many ways, do you know what a political act it is for a woman in, in Haiti to write a book and who reads it? You know, one of my favorite authors Yannick, Lohan's right. Who's reading her books. You know, we are people in other countries. First of all, Speaker 2 00:29:16 Translating her book right now. You know her, Speaker 4 00:29:20 I love her. I did something for Miami, the Miami book fair last year, something for the children. And I wrote a little story called the spinners. And it's about a story that's being judged by a very famous writer. And the writer was Madame Yonic subtle, subtle, you know, it's funny. Cause it was a mad man, Madame lions, but, but it's really so, so oh my God, she is just Speaker 6 00:29:56 So phenomenal. Speaker 4 00:30:00 He'll be going again. They brick freedom that I can just speak. Yeah. That's his name right now? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. You know, I was reading something by Roxanne gay now that I know exactly who Roxanne gay is, I subscribe to her newsletter and she wrote about, I don't know if you guys do, but it's called the audacious audacious newsletter. And I just read something too. We've got elders that some people don't have an elder someone to look up to. And you know, we, many of our, uh, young writers in Haiti and Yannick is young and I'll never forget how, when I was in Miami, met her in Miami a few years ago, she was just, she was just wonderful. She embraced me. She called me a writer. And it's as from those people when, when the people said, oh wow, you know, you're writing. Speaker 4 00:30:58 And I think, cause I don't really feel like, you know, I've got that imposter syndrome, which we'll probably always have. But um, when we have wonderful people like, and I'm unique and so many other wonderful people, she was at fat loss who passed away a few years ago, you know, who, uh, sees yeah. You know, you're, you're, you're a writer and it's, it's, it's, it's those, it is those people who, who are so important for us as writers, as children of Haiti. And as you guys know, our elders are almost no longer, you know, what, what, what is the life expectancy, maybe Haiti. And I was like thirties, late thirties or something like that, late thirties. So if you're 50, 60 years old, you and elder, you know, when that was a time, you know what I remember sitting in my grandmother's feet, I mean, she was a storyteller. She was a storyteller. She's the one at whose feet. I learned how to tell stories and those stories I have shared with my daughter because I cannot let those stories die. We have got to keep passing them on. And I know it's wonderful to I books, but not all of us can read. Speaker 4 00:32:31 And many of those out, many of our elders, those who still remain with us who can still tell us the stories that were brought down or passed down from the great, great, great grads. And we know where they came from in west Africa, those were not written anywhere. So those of us who are lucky enough to remember a remnant of that story, pass it on, tell your kid. My daughter says to me, mom, every time you're telling me that story, it sounds kind of different. Well, because goes, every time I don't even remember because every single time, I only remember so much of it. And so mommy has to just add a little bit more and this is what you know, helps us, helps me as a writer because my grandmother, she was patching like a quilt stories from what she had learned. And I'm sitting at her on her feet, listening to her stories, the quilt, the patchwork we've we that's what we have to do, um, Speaker 3 00:33:49 Was that was beautiful. And I want, it's so interesting how this, these conversations can sort of take us on these beautiful kind of avenues because you talked so movingly a minute ago about your uncle and today being his funeral service and lifting up his name and speaking his name to the audience of people who will be hearing this conversation. And in such an interesting way, it's tied into this question. I wanted to ask you about your children's writing because you have chosen Faviola as your character in your children's series. And so I I'm interested in your, in your children's literature because I have a little one at home who I'm teaching to read by myself cause there's no school now. And so we've been reading a lot of counting books, right? And so usually they feature these kind of anthropomorphized animals or inanimate objects, you know, count the fruit, count the this, but here you have Fabuloso can count and Fabuloso goes to school, um, and she's carrying a five gallon bucket of water to haul water for the family. And she's walking eight streets to go get food at the market for the family. After she drops the children off at school who are able to go to school while she is not in that first in that first book, which is very purposeful, right? This is not your traditional counting book. So you've chosen Fabiola. Who's a very particular young woman. And I just wanted to hear you talk about that. Why you chose to tell her story who, your envisioned audiences as you lift her name up and her experience up. Speaker 4 00:35:24 Well, whatever reason last night, my, my husband and I and my husband is from Iowa corn country. You sound like you barely believe it yourself. Well, yeah, like there's a person Speaker 2 00:35:36 From Iowa in my, but yeah. All right, go ahead. Speaker 4 00:35:39 Go. When I went to Iowa, I was like, ah, where am I? You know, I'd like to see somebody who looks like myself in Iowa and then I just had to go find a mirror. Um, so we were having this big discussion about Robert Palmer simply irresistible, actually. No, what what's what's the other song? It was Robert Palmer addicted to love. So, you know, husband and wives, we've been married now 20 years, we married 21 years and the big argument was about what color dress the ladies were wearing. He said red. I said black. Well, of course I'm the Haitian woman. I'm correct. Correct. The Mundo. End of story. It turns out it's two different videos, but Hey, oh yeah. Addicted to rub to love. And then I remember watching, uh, a program with James Brown when he welcomes Robert Palmer onto the stage and Robert, Robert Palmer, they, they, they, they sing together. Speaker 4 00:36:49 They have this duet of one of James Brown's songs. So I was watching that last night and James Brown was, was just calling out, signifying all these greats and saying, you know, so-and-so is dynamite, uh, Aretha Franklin dynamite. Everybody's dying to might not. Uh, Robert Palmer is dynamite is dynamite. So that's something that perhaps we don't do any more because there's such a sense of V you know, that, that, that tight tightened Palm, the fist, the zero sum game. Like if I, if, if I, if I open my Palm just a little bit, then you might get some in level leave nothing for me, which by the way, I must say, I must say that people like it reached out to is dynamite. Okay. Uh, Roxanne gay is another one. And the most successful writers whom I've met, I've been V most the most generous. And, and it's, you know, it's very interesting. Speaker 4 00:38:05 It's, that's very, very interesting. But as far as lifting up the names of people who we think are just so fantastic Fabiola is, was, oh, they're stuck. And that's something people don't want to believe in so many. Let me, let me just walk that back a little bit. Not say people, cause that means so many people, certain people believe is not true. And I know it is. And I believe it is a fact because I'm from a family that some of my family members were actual their stomachs. So you can't tell me about the not exist because I know those people. Okay. And they paid the price so that somebody like myself, my child, people would be funny, would not have to do the same thing. They slept on the caves in a cemetery that was their bed. That's where they slept. Because in, and plug up this, which was built all 50,000 people at a certain time at 2 million. And that helps us to explain a little bit about the numbers of dead we had doing after the earthquake. Speaker 4 00:39:39 So fabulous. I lifted her name up because Fabiola was an actual guest of mine. And that was not her name. They called her fabulous because the mother of the house, the girl's name was something else. Let's say the girl's name was Katia when Nicole or whatever, the mother, my dad moved the house. Her daughter happened to have the same name as the girl. She took far less. She said, whoa, we can't have that. We can't have you. Your mom came in, left you here. So you can be <inaudible> because mom couldn't afford it. Couldn't afford to live. Okay. So mom drops. Let's see the girl's name is Mary. Okay. So mom takes Mary to this family member who also has a daughter named Mary. When Mary, the worker, the child slaves comes to live there. She says, whoa, we're going to have to change your name because you absolutely must not have the same name as my daughter. So we're going to call you fabulous. That's where that name comes from. That's why I lift up that name fibula. Unfortunately for me, you know, it's not the kind of story that people say, well, you know, let's just, here's a nice little story to read about, you know, here's a nice, it'll go to sleep story. You know, you're going to sleep and that's a little bedtime story. Uh, unfortunately it's, it's, it's it's reality, fabulous. Five gallon buckets. So count to 5, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 gallon buckets. Speaker 3 00:41:37 I read it as so political Katia because I, as I say, I'm reading a lot of children's counting books. It's not, it's, it's very purposeful to me that you insert. It's very political that you insert this story into what is so often seen as this kind of banal neutral category. You know, one banana too, you know, it's, Speaker 4 00:41:57 It's, it's very clear Speaker 3 00:41:59 That there's a sort of deep desire there to tell this important story in this realm, it's sort of, it's an unusual realm to find her story. Speaker 4 00:42:13 Well, everything happens for a reason, call me crazy. But when I wrote Fabiola, I can count for one more books with Wyatt Moore, who is awesome. I was in Miami. I was just about living in Miami because my grandmother was passing away, took her five months to do it. Cause that's the kind of woman she was. And I have to tell you now my grandmother passed away at 92 and I love my grandmother. My father's my paternal grandmother. My only regret was that I did not bury her in high heel shoes because, you know, I dream about my grandparents, my ancestors, but I have yet to dream about her. And I know she's mad. She's like, how dare you send me anywhere without my high heels shoes on walking into glory and flat boring. Must that be disrespecting me here because I don't have my cause. Speaker 4 00:43:21 My grandmother, you know, she wore her heels. She was teaching when the doctors give her a Walker, she looked at the back and she was like, ah, I can't do a Walker because the Walker and the heels don't go together. It's like, you kind of need a Walker. And she's like, but I really need my heels. So she made a decision and just didn't walk for a while, but she was just this amazing woman. So she was passing all we at the time in Miami. And I don't remember communicating with the, uh, with the, uh, uh, publisher saying, you know, I really cannot write anything because my mind is not, is not there. I'm back and forth between Jackson Memorial hospital. And I just can't think of anything. She says, well, we'll just, just write a little count counting book for, for, for children of that age. Speaker 4 00:44:10 And I said, okay. And Fabiola came to me. And that's what I wrote about it was that a decision was not something that I, you know, put on a board and said, you know, and, and, and just say lot fabulous. No five-year lack came to me. And I, and it was just, as I was saying with the James Brown and the addicted to love, uh, gentlemen, you know, Robert Palmer, you know, and they call out all these various artists names and lifted them up. And I just lifted up the name of fibula because of who she is and the person she stayed at the person for, for the millions, hundreds of thousands of childrens for whom she stands. Because whether or not we want to admit it, we've got, we've got far too many fabiolas and not just, huh, but the boy part too, we've got far too many and not just in Haiti. And that's the thing that bothers Haitian people. When I talk about Lestat acts, they say, well, you know, let's start back in Haiti. That's got that's all over the world, all over the world. We have events here in the U S none of Haitian descent, but from various countries in the world happening right now. So I do apologize, not really to those who find my little fabulous story painful. Speaker 4 00:45:50 No, but if the next one five-year-old goes to school, the family was sweet. They sent her to school, you know, instead of Fabiola like counting the number of trees between her house and the, and the mushy where she went to buy food for the family, the number of steps she took to go get to the river, to fetch water for the, for the family to bathe well, they sent her to school. They sent her to school. Speaker 2 00:46:21 Wow. That's yeah. Thank you. And thank you also for kind of concluding that by reminding us that sort of the, the mistreatment and marginalization of vulnerable people is not unique to Haiti, that this phenomenon of not caring about the people who needed deserve the most care is something that infects many different places. And so I really appreciate the way that you, yes, Haiti is exceptional in many ways, but it's also a human place that has complexity and layers and is not homogenous. And, you know, I appreciate you bringing that into this conversation. I think it's one of the most important things about your work that complexity and, and making us see the diversity of a country that's often flattened in most narratives about it. Um, and then also bringing that into this space. This is that's generosity. This Speaker 3 00:47:16 Has been such a wonderful conversation, so illuminating, and we're so thankful for your time. Speaker 4 00:47:23 I'm so thankful for you guys. Thank you so much. Speaker 2 00:47:28 And we look forward to speaking with you again in another forum, perhaps, maybe even in person. Speaker 4 00:47:35 Imagine that soon. I want to thank you. I want to thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to speak my uncle's name today. Foxy mail in Fabiola. Thank you so much. Speaker 0 00:47:52 <inaudible> writing home is produced by Kiama Glover, Tammy Navarro, Rachel James, and you're in the support for this podcast comes from the digital humanity center, the center for research on demons, the media center and the library at Barnard college. Our music is by <inaudible> from their album D Johnson, and the track is 3d. Last year. The outrun music for this episode is entitled going home. I can't <inaudible>.

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