SOURCE: “Léspoua fè viv: Female Identity and the Politics of Textual Sexuality in Nadine Magloire's Le mal de vivre and Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory,” in Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1997.

In the following essay, Chancy examines the manner in which both Magloire and Danticat demonstrate the extent to which Haitian women have been rendered “invisible in a society itself typified through their sexualization and denigration.”

Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. 

—Audre Lorde, “A Woman Speaks”

Je viendrais à ce pays mien et je lui dirais: “Embrassez-moi sans crainte. … Et si je ne sais que parler, c'est pour vous que je parlerai.”

[I would come back to this land of mine and say to it: “Embrace me without fear. … If all I can...