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May 2012 |
Uncovering historyThe work of Caribbean writers Usually the Writer-in-Residence arrives in time to participate in Campus Literature Week which in recent years happens in March. However, Professor Chancy was also due to take part in the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, the Trinidad and Tobago Literary Festival, at the end of April and so keenly was her involvement in the MFA programme anticipated, that Aiyejina patiently awaited her arrival. In addition to mentoring and, in particular, sharing the skills of her craft as a creative writer with the MFA students, Chancy spoke about Haitian writers and writing at a public lecture on April 20 at the University whose audience included undergraduate French literature students. GS: What have you been sharing with our UWI students? MC: I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of speaking to [the] students—we’ve discussed some of my work in terms of women’s literary tradition, both in terms of the Anglophone and Haitian/Francophone literary traditions. GS: As a scholar and novelist who has written extensively on Haiti, what have you personally uncovered about your birthplace that you wish your readers to see and understand? MC: Caribbean literature by and large, both by men and women, attempts to uncover historical moments that are not recorded in official history. What I’ve seen happening on the side of women’s literature is that they’ve had to really do some work to uncover what women have been contributing both at the national level—the community and their country of origin—and also in terms of aesthetic sort of considerations. In my early work, for example, I looked at women writers in exile, primarily the Anglophone tradition and how they re-defined the term exilic so differently from Lamming who talks about the pleasures and pain of exile. On the women’s side there is much more of an emphasis on the pain [...] that exile wasn’t necessarily only about having to migrate out of the Caribbean, but also being exilic within one’s country of origin as a woman—in terms of women’s issues, children’s issues. [...] GS: Do Haitian writers like you feel compelled to rewrite the image of Haiti? Is it a specific burden or responsibility you have to bear that distinguishes you from other diasporic writers from the Caribbean region and other parts of the world? MC: No, I don’t think so. [...] as a writer you write what you know and so [...] most of us write about the country we were originally from. But, if there is a burden I think it’s the expectation that one will look at particular themes [...] so in that sense it’s more about what others don’t know about Haiti that becomes a burden and can limit the reach of your work [...] they have a very narrow expectation about what a Haitian writer should be concerned about. At the same time I also have to say I don’t consider myself diasporic [...] and that’s a strange thing to say and I realize that because I live in the United States, but I think like many Haitian writers before me who were forced to live outside of Haiti there’s a sense in which we’re still in Haiti, we still are part of Haiti. [...] I live outside of Haiti, but I belong to Haiti. Much more of this podcast interview will be released in the coming months and can be accessed at www.spaceswords.com where interviews with and information on other Caribbean and non-Caribbean writers are also available. One reviewer has said that Chancy “may well become a grand dame of Haitian literature” and so we thank her for granting us the privilege of accepting our invitation to the campus and we eagerly look forward to her future fiction and non-fiction works. About Myriam Chancy Myriam Chancy, 42, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; grew up in Canada; and has had a career as a professor of English and Comparative Literature in the United States. She is the author of three novels, all set in her homeland: Spirit of Haiti (2003), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize 2004 for First Book, Canada/Caribbean region; The Scorpion’s Claw (2005); and The Loneliness of Angels (2010), winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award 2010 for Best Book of Fiction and at the 2011 Bocas Lit Fest it was shortlisted in the fiction category and long-listed for the overall OCM Bocas Prize. At present she is penning a young adult novel entitled The Escape Artist. She has lectured at Louisiana State University and now teaches at the University of Cincinnati. Her academic publications include Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (1997) and Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (1997). Both books are on the reading lists of French Caribbean and Anglophone Caribbean literature courses at UWI, St. Augustine. The journal of the American Library Association, Choices, awarded Searching for Safe Spaces a 1998 Outstanding Academic Book Award; and Framing Silence as stated on Chancy’s academic profile is deemed “the first book-length study of its kind in English […] instrumental in inaugurating Haitian women’s studies as a field of specialization in the U.S.” In March 2012 Chancy’s most recent endeavour From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic was released. Not yet completed non-fiction works include Floating Islands: Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism and Racial Identity Formation and a collection of memoir essays entitled Fracture. For her work as Editor-in-Chief from 2002-2004 of the Ford-funded academic/arts journal Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Chancy was bestowed the Phoenix Award for Editorial Achievement by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CLEJ) in 2004. She was also the Vice-President of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS) from 2008-2010. As is common with many contemporary Caribbean writers, she engages with her readership in an online environment on Facebook, and via her website http://www.myriamchancy.com that is worth visiting by the interested reader and scholar. |
Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian writer who was here in Trinidad during late April-early May as UWI’s Writer-in-Residence on the invitation of Professor Funso Aiyejina, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education and Coordinator of the MFA – Creative Writing programme in the Department of Liberal Arts, St. Augustine. This is adapted from an interview she did with Dr Geraldine Skeete for The Spaces between Words: Conversations with Writers podcast series produced by Dr. Giselle Rampaul and affiliated with the Literatures in English section of St. Augustine’s Liberal Arts Department.