Lecture, Session 8

Discussion of The Butterfly's Way

Edwige Danticat, editor

Marie Helene Laforest: Homelands

1. In how many subtle ways did an elite child like Laforest learn her privilege?
2. Relate her privilege and status to the legacy of colonialism.  Consider the structure of the economy and society, her families' "work," possessions, residence, consumption habits, etc.
3. Discuss her relationships and interactions with: parents, grandparents, servants, cousins and neighbors.  How did she accept and make sense of those gaps and bridges as a child, and later, as an adult?  What, do you suppose, are the long term effects of these contradictions on her subjectivity or sense of self?  Do they contribute to security or insecurity. . .
   
4. What was the relationship between phenotype and status in that context, and how did it contrast to her new identity in New York? (Compare to Fanon's analysis).
5. How did language/speech contribute to processes of symbolic domination?
6. When and how did she recognize how she used vision to reinforce her superiority?
7. How did Laforest find out she was "black"?
8. How did her parents react to that discovery?  Consider their reunion with their former servants in New York.
9. Describe how the different generations react to their new location.  Do they assimilate, do they practice long-distance nationalism?  Are they exiles or immigrants?

Annie Gregoire: Vini Nou Bel

1. How did Annie Gregoire learn about her identity/identities?
2. What sort of ethnic world did she experience before college?
3. How did she react to being called Blackie?  Who called her Blackie and later, Crispy?  Why?  What did it reveal, what did it mean?
4. How did she struggle with her insecurity over her dark skin?
5. How did Haitians already settled in New York initially react (during the 1990's) to the media representations of the boat people and branding Haitians as carriers of AIDS?
6. How did she become a different sort of object in France?
7. What do you think of the changing attitudes about color during the 1990 protest against the FDA (c.f., Richman's article about Aristide) and the influence of Spike Lee? (Esp. School Daze and Jungle Fever).
8. How did her visit to Haiti, her parents' homeland, affect her?
9. What do you suppose is the relevance of the title to her experience?  Vini nou bel, ale nou led.  (We arrived beautiful, we leave ugly).