Tag Archives: by Lia James

Out in the Field: A Chat with Garmalia Mentor William

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“He-hello? Can you hear me?”

“Uh…yes. Are you there? Yes.”

After many hellos over the crackle of a poor connection, I come face-to-pixelated-face with Garmalia Mentor. The smiling Mentor sits in a parked car in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, as that is where her internet connection is the best.

A medical doctor graduated from the Escuela LatinoAmericana de Medicina in Cuba, with a Master’s degree in Public Administration in Emergency and Disaster Management from the Metropolitan College of New York, Garmalia has many years of schooling under her belt.

Her path has not been a linear one, and it has largely been driven by her overwhelming compassion for her community. Born and raised in Haiti, Mentor earned a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba. After six years of studying to become a doctor in a foreign language, she returned to Haiti and began working with the Ministry of Health. She remained in that post until 2010, a year when the lives of many Haitians were indelibly changed.

The earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010, causing an estimated death toll of over 200,000, was devastating. It awakened in Garmalia, a desire to change the scope of her impact. She no longer wanted to work one-on-one with individual patients, but to reach entire communities.

She now works primarily on disaster preparedness, making communities aware of seismic risk, tsunami risk, and other hazards. She places a heavy emphasis on training representatives of the civil society, from women’s organizations, to social and economic organizations, to representatives of the media. Her approach is participative and inclusive, prioritizing institutional memory and inter-generational education. She acknowledges that public health, her original field, is still poorly served in Haiti. Her calling, however, is undoubtedly in the area of disaster preparedness and community training.

Garmalia is currently serving as a representative of GeoHazards International, a nongovernmental organization that aims to be “on the ground before disasters, helping communities prepare.” They strive to reach the most vulnerable communities, and prepare them for those disasters whose damage cannot be avoided, but whose impact can be mitigated through education, preparation, and awareness.

Through her work with GeoHazards International, Garmalia has thoughtfully tailored her outreach to the communities with which she works.

“Usually, projects are not conceived or designed in Haiti. This is the only concern I have. It’s nice, thinking about [developing] countries, and helping people, but it’s hard to know the real needs of a population without knowing them, without visiting the country. But, unfortunately, this is how projects, usually, are designed. People [elsewhere] read about the needs in Haiti and they just make a proposal. Once you’re working for [this kind of] organization you’re supposed to implement this project the way it is.” Garmalia adds that the difference with GeoHazards International is that the organization allows and encourages her to work in a more effective manner. This particular NGO has given her the opportunity and resources to tailor her outreach to the communities she knows well.

Garmalia believes in adaptability and in tailoring projects as thoughtfully as possible. She thinks that this is the best approach for communities in Haiti, and she raised this concern with her supervisors. “I’m the only one based in Haiti, and I’m the only one who knows the situation…so I tried to create some flexibility before implementing the project.” [Edit to add (23-sept-2019): Since our interview, Garmalia has been joined by other staff members in Haiti.] 

There are other organizations like GeoHazards International whose work involves similar disaster preparedness instruction. Garmalia’s approach is customized for each classroom, each church, each workplace that she enters. She teaches children to go home and teach family members who would not otherwise be reached. She believes in spending the time getting to know the community in order to foster long-term growth.

Garmalia’s passion is palpable. She has pushed herself beyond her comfort zone, fueled by a desire to reach as many people as possible. She has spoken on the radio, beginning to realize her dream of reaching whole communities and creating positive change. This mission of hers is also personal. As our video-call is dropped and I ring her once more to say goodbye, I recall what Garmalia said to me about her connection to Haitian communities compared to that of her colleagues who do outreach in other countries: “I’m based here. I’m just as vulnerable as the population. I’m vulnerable too.” Sometimes, advocating for a community means immersing yourself, being in the thick of it, and creating new and sustainable ways to overcome adversity. Garmalia Mentor is a magnificent example of what you can do to leave a community better off than you found it.

I am neither African nor American

Op-Ed

I often wonder why some people find the term “African American” so comforting. Does the repeated vowel sound have alliterative appeal? Has history made people afraid to say ‘the B-word’? Is it too harsh? Jarring? Abrupt? I have encountered an alarming number of instances in which people like me have been tossed into the African American box as though we B-words were some sort of monolithic group whose members could all be referred to by the same name. People like me aren’t a uniform group. Just ask the 1 in 10 people who are too-often identified as African American when they are foreign-born. This Jamaican woman is tired of being called African American. Here’s why.

Calling someone African American is reductionist. The complex reality of the personal significance of space and place is reduced to a label that is casually thrown around by persons who do not take the time to examine the words they are using.

Please tell me, dear white journalist/survey writer/commenter/friend, what is so scary about the B-word. Historically, yes, the B-word was considered offensive in the United States. So was interracial marriage. There are people alive today who were around when “negro” surpassed “colored” as the accepted term. “Negro” was socially acceptable for a very long time—in fact, until the Black Power Movement of the 1960s. The point is that this is a complex discussion that history cannot explain away. Historical context is no excuse for a lack of precision in the language we use. If the B-word is taboo, it shouldn’t be. No one should hesitate to say it, as though it’s something unkind or forbidden. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way that we talk about the members of the incredible melting pot that is the United States of America.

Tell me why, when I fill in a demographic survey, there are still places in which the B-word is associated with that “African American” modifier. Tell me why my white friend from South Africa is less African American than I am. Consider for a moment the conflation of race, culture, historical context, and geographical location that has resulted in the absurd fact that the term “African American” is associated with skin color and not country of origin. I am sensing a double standard here.

Yes, I know, it could be argued that this is a simple question of usage or verbal habit that has nothing to do with semantics. Why does it matter what we’re called if the intent isn’t racist, bigoted, or ill-meaning? Answer: it matters because “African American” is not who I am. Even if I did have an American passport—which I don’t—what gives you the right to label me as African? What about all the uniquely Caribbean aspects of my culture that are distinct from those of my African-identifying counterparts? If your point is that my ancient ancestors came from Africa, then I have news for you: if you go far enough into the past, yours did too.

The fact of my African ancestry should not determine the term by which I am to be permanently identified. Don’t call me a negro. Don’t call me colored. Hell, you don’t even have to call me a person of color. Please, don’t call me African American. For crying out loud, just call me black.

Wo[men]: Shirin Neshat’s Foray into Film is Allegorical Genius

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

In her first feature-length film, Women Without Men, the visual artist Shirin Neshat paints a complex picture of Iranian life in the 1950s. Based on stories by Shahrnush Parsipur, the movie follows the lives of four women who, for various reasons, are living their lives outside the status quo. Munis is almost thirty years old and refuses to get married, contrary to her controlling older brother’s wishes. Her friend Faezeh is a modest young woman who wants to marry Munis’s brother; he, however, is betrothed to someone else. Zarin is a prostitute who cannot bear to spend one more day in the brothel where she works. And Fakhri is so fed up with her marriage and emotionally neglected by her husband that she divorces him and moves out of the house. Munis, the film’s narrator, spends much of her time in the city, while the other three women meet in a safe house owned by Fakhri, where each finds her own form of refuge.

The women’s disjointed–yet somehow connected–stories are told against the backdrop of 1953 Iran. The power of Women Without Men, which began as a series of audio/video installations, does not lie in its narrative. It is a story told in moments, with the signature techniques of an installation artist visible throughout. The intensity and individuality of each scene can be appreciated as a piece of art; narrative is not prioritized. Were the scenes to be shuffled around and rearranged, not much of the story would be lost; it would almost be akin to walking the opposite way around a gallery. Like many other films in the genre of magical realism, Neshat’s creation weaves together the familiar, the uncanny, and the aesthetic, and the result is a work of art that is deeply moving. All four of the women transcend their environments and together they become an allegorical representation of the ways in which the male gaze oppresses women. And reciprocally, through each woman, we bear witness to the ways in which women fight back.

Neshat tackles the concepts of death as freedom, society’s definition of purity, the reduction of woman to her body, and the intellectual freedom of the independent woman. She invites viewers on a journey to investigate each theme through Munis, Faezeh, Zarin, and Fakhri. Remarkably, Neshat does this without succumbing to the temptation of an over-the-top, heavy-handed visual allegory.

Munis uses her death as power. Her brother cannot control her from beyond the grave, and the audience sees her resurrected with the power to participate politically and enter spaces in which she was not formerly welcome. Munis is our narrator, and through that role we see her freed from even the confines of the film, being the only character able to break the fourth wall. Munis establishes her agency when she closes the film speaking directly to the audience: “Death isn’t so hard. You only think it is… All that we wanted was to find a new form, a new way. Release.” Munis’s message–and Neshat’s–is that the concept of women’s freedom must be reframed. Munis’s independence lies not only in listening to the radio and going into male-dominated spaces; it is the power and the agency that she acquires when she takes her life, death, and resurrection into her own hands.

At the beginning of the film, Faezeh is adamant that her destiny lies in being a devout wife; her image of purity is tied closely to her virginity. When she is raped by two men from the town, she is plagued by painful memories and the knowledge that she has been irreversibly changed. It is through reclaiming her body in Fakhri’s sanctuary that she is able to transcend this suffering. Faezeh must remove herself from her everyday life in order to begin fully embracing herself, reiterating the independence and autonomy required to experience this kind of shift. Fakhri’s sanctuary gives Faezeh the space to explore herself without society pervading that exploration. Having been led there by Munis, with whom she has a profound connection, Faezeh is also an example to viewers of the power of two women working together for the betterment of their womanhood.

Zarin is the literal embodiment of the male gaze reducing woman to her body. This is especially true given the exclusively visual nature of her character: she does not speak throughout the film. Zarin’s fight takes a different form than those of the other women. In contrast to Faezeh’s life of religious modesty in which her body is constantly hidden, Zarin’s days are spent acting as an object of pleasure for paying customers. Her message is one of healing, in which she takes a journey away from the pain inflicted upon her by society, and replaces it with a kind of acceptance that she had not previously known. Zarin also represents the unity in adversity fostered by the women in the film, primarily Faezeh and Fakhri. For them, the silent Zarin provides spiritual and emotional healing. While, by the end, Zarin does not find bodily healing, we have already learned from Munis that bodily healing is not necessarily that which brings the most peace.

Fakhri makes the difficult decision to divorce her husband, who is a high ranking official in the Shah’s army. During such a politically turbulent time, Fakhri’s decision is seen as even bolder than it might have been without the surrounding social and political context. Her mystical orchard home is a safe haven for the women, and provides the physical space of escape in the film. The home is a liminal space, not connected with the politics or the societal turmoil until the very end. This space allows Fakhri to grow just as much as her counterparts. The last image we see of Fakhri is that of a woman who has finally carved out her space in a world dominated by men.

Shirin Neshat’s stark images and intense scenes largely ignore the chronological, placing much heavier emphasis on the allegorical. She powerfully highlights concepts of death, purity, physicality, and oppression in Women Without Men, inviting viewers into the art gallery that is this film. Not only does she show us the power of each woman by herself–she shows us the meaningful connections and small community that form within the confines of an oppressive society. Through each scene, Neshat paints a picture of the visceral feelings associated with witnessing the radical agency of women who do not operate according to the rules of men.

“They are just doing their job”

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor,

Racism is alive and well in Great Britain and clearly, Twitter isn’t helping. The racist online abuse of Meghan has put royal staff on high alert by Max Foster, (cnn.com, March 8), calls attention to the ways in which the media, social media, and other modern public discourse are making it difficult for the royal family to navigate this moment in its history. I appreciate the article’s informative, to-the-point departure from the sensationalist norm that appears to be controlling British media.

The social media din raised by online trolls has made it harder to tell the factual from the merely inflammatory. As Foster highlights in the piece, “The pressure to produce ever more dramatic headlines to drive traffic is intense,” and it’s what  gives the trolls a platform.

Monarchy implies monolith in the eyes of many, and a break in the pattern of whiteness in the royal family (the marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle) has shown the British public’s true colors. Surely I am not the only reader who is outraged by how much the color of Meghan’s skin influences the online discourse in Britain. Unfortunately, the historical composition of the royal family implies, as Foster notes, that racism is built into the fabric of British culture. And so despite their efforts at projecting an image of normality, the royal family has continued to face challenges in welcoming Meghan into the fold.

Foster’s careful article reminds us that it’s the job of the media to present an accurate report of what’s happening with the royal family, while at the same time emphasizing the humanity of the often-superficially portrayed people who comprise this iconic group. Some in the media, like your writer, are working to make their reporting reflect the ideal of racial tolerance. With luck, this will one day become the norm.

Days in the life of Augusta Forrer Bruen

Feature Report

By Lia James

“Every day […] makes me long for the time that I will hope is to come, when […] we may live quietly at home, no more wars to disturb us in our endeavors to make all good and happy.”

Housed deep in the archives of the Wellesley College Special Collections is a series of handwritten letters. Composed by friends and loved ones of the Bruen and Forrer families of Dayton, Ohio, they are part of The Catharine Mitchill ‘31 Collection of Family Letters, some of which are also available in the special collections digital archive. At first glance, these letters seem quite ordinary, each regaling readers with tales of children’s playdates, the weather, and the ever-present shadow of “the war”—that is, the American Civil War. In fact, these letters are a testament to the complexities of the lives of homemakers during the Civil War, through the specific lens of Augusta Forrer Bruen.

While the collection includes letters to and from a number of family members and friends, one correspondence is of particular interest to me: the letters sent by Augusta Forrer Bruen to her husband, Luther Barnett Bruen, who was fighting in the civil war. Passion and propriety can both be felt in Augusta’s careful penmanship. Between the first “Dearest Luther,” and the last “Goodbye, darling,” she provides a plethora of detail that gives unique insight into the domestic life of a nineteenth century white woman against the backdrop of a war for black liberation.

____

“Our last news is so threatening that I fear your time has come; I cannot but hope not; but if the worst comes will try to be patient and hopeful still; believe me dearest, I will do my best to keep up my spirits and take care of the little ones left to my charge.” (16 June 1863)

Fear is one of the more poignant threads that run through Augusta’s writings to her husband. Layered among uneventful stories of children’s playdates and visits from friends are increasingly despairing comments regarding Luther’s safety. It is as though Augusta is playing a tug-of-war with her opposing emotions. She is trying to remain hopeful for her children who often ask eagerly upon waking up, “Is Papa home?” while also being honest with herself and her husband: “…I’m trying to prepare myself for disappointment” (11 July 1861). These are no peacetime musings.

On the surface, the mundane updates that recur in Augusta’s letters to her husband do not appear to be anything special. Yet domestic concerns are more than they seem when juxtaposed with the uncertainty and instability begotten by war. These concerns are quite different, of course, from those of the black men and women for whom the war was being fought.

____

“I forgot to tell you I believe, about Joe Crane’s change of politics. He has become a great abolitionist.”  (21 June 1863)

Though I have not come across a letter in which Augusta explicitly discusses her own racial background and positionality, her superficial references to “the ‘darkey’” (31 July 1861) and “the slavery question” (12 March 1864) make it clear that she is not part of the black struggle. Despite the fact that her husband is at war, risking his life for this cause, Augusta’s quiet, distant life as a housewife in Dayton, Ohio spawned an unyielding ignorance to such issues.

In a time when becoming an abolitionist is no more than a “change of politics” to people like Augusta and her friends, who “watch the War with a sad interest” (30 November 1862), it strikes a modern reader as extraordinary that there were persons fighting and dying for this cause. These attitudes demonstrate just how distinct the divide was between the politics of slavery and its inhumanity. They suggest, too, how difficult it is for someone who is not on the battlefield to comprehend its horrors, and how far removed the idea of war is from the everyday American consciousness. In today’s society, ‘war’ is a spectacle watched—perhaps with Augusta’s “sad interest”—on screens that show bombs falling in faraway lands. In the mind of a western civilian, the experiences of Luther Bruen seem utterly foreign, and therefore all the more valuable.

____

The discussion of race and abolition in the letters is particularly fascinating today, likely because of the fact that race is still a live issue in mainstream discourse. Reading private exchanges regarding race during Civil War-era America provides remarkable insight and offers a more candid account of the historical events of the civil war than the narratives with which the public has become familiar. I wonder which of the billions of humdrum messages that we exchange each day will be preserved in the archives of the future, and how we will be understood by generations to come.

As the delicate letters are tucked away for safekeeping, I find myself eager for Augusta’s next correspondence, feeling acutely connected to the snippets of her daily life that I have explored thus far. After a final farewell from the curator, I reassess and decide that my original evaluation of the letters was accurate: they are indeed ordinary. However, ‘ordinary’ implies no lack of value or merit—they are ordinary, but extraordinarily so.

 

Collections such as The Catharine Mitchill ‘31 Collection of Family Letters may be consulted in the Special Collections reading room of Clapp Library. Readers are required to register and present photo identification. The catalog is online. The collections are available for research, free of charge to students and faculty of the Wellesley College community. (Source: Wellesley College Special Collections webpage) 

(Featured image: The beginning of one of Augusta’s last letters to Luther. He would pass away due to complications of a battle wound a few weeks later.) 

 

 

Tradiksyon

Blog Post

“My mom is a great translator.”

As a child, I’d often say this to my friends who asked me how I managed to navigate trips to Haiti and long phone calls with relatives that I sometimes hardly remembered and most times couldn’t understand. Growing up as a child born to parents from different nations was an interesting experience. Having lived in Jamaica all my life, I found that claiming my Haitian heritage could be a point of pride, but could also be largely unsettling, as I began to wonder whether I had the right to claim it. I have visited Haiti very few times, and each time I have felt a distinct separation, like a long pause, between myself and my Haitian heritage. The disconnection has not been helped by the fact that my first few years learning to turn my rudimentary French into Haitian Creole (Kreyol) were far from smooth sailing. Throughout my childhood, whenever my feet finally did touch Haitian soil, I would squander the opportunity to connect with my culture by hiding within the pleats of my mother’s skirt. I was afraid that my relatives would laugh at my hesitant speech…and they did. All of a sudden, I felt that the simple French I spoke freely with my mother no longer sufficed, and the chuckles of aunts, uncles, and cousins only highlighted my scant vocabulary and poor grammar. I resorted to whispering into my mother’s ear and hearing my words flow out in the beautiful legato of her voice, her patient translation quieting the echoing laughs of my family. I could not understand what was so funny about my incompetence. Having always had a relatively firm grasp on the English language, I came to see the seemingly-negative reaction to my inadequacy as something uniquely Haitian. I never laughed at my cousins when they would trip over their tenses or stumble across superlatives, and so that laughter was the Haitian legacy imprinted on my mind. To my self-conscious ears, the laughter sounded hurtful. Somehow, my mother’s laugh never felt malicious.

My mom was a great translator.

The last time I landed on Haitian soil was to attend the memorial service for my mother. I remembered how she would translate my weary eyes as “Momma, I’ve heard enough Kreyol today. I’m ready to go,” and how my jittery demeanor would say to her, “Momma, I’m itching to ask you what so and so meant by what she just said”.  She was no longer there. There was no one left to transpose my shyness into words that others could understand. However, as my tired eyes became teary, a memory emerged within me. It was the memory of my mother’s familiar Haitian laugh blending beautifully with the formerly unfamiliar strains of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Slowly, my uneasiness began to fall away. I started to grasp the phrases of Haitian Creole that now came more naturally to my ears. I tested out a note here and there, slowly creating my own melody. I sang songs of my mother and the legacy she left. I connected with my family through our shared love of a remarkable woman. When I began to listen correctly, Haitian culture no longer sounded like the clashing, unharmonious, muddled mess that had kept emerging as I was searching for my connection to this place that I wanted so badly to know. I learned that Haitians share a joy that allows them to laugh at themselves just as much as they had laughed, lovingly, at me.

My mom is still a great translator. She is so great, in fact, that I am now able to be a conduit that translates her love, joy, and Haitian laughs to all those I encounter. She taught me to embrace the connection that I was once afraid to claim. I realized, finally, that the chorus of laughter sounded so unfamiliar because it was missing a key voice: mine.