Haiti’s Marassas Nicole Billitz College

Haiti has endured a legacy of suffering whereby slavery transitioned into one of the bloodiest wars in modern history. Despite winning their political freedom to this day the Western powers impose economic strangulation and denounce their nondiscriminatory citizenship, the legitimate form of democracy, of which Beckles asserts as a crime “greater than slavery”. From the trauma of history, Haiti has withstood debt, imperialism and dictatorship, of which all have imposed oppression and angst. Under the Duvalier’s totalitarian regime during the later half of the twentieth century, extreme measures were enforced so as to combat resistance from the government. These measures include, but are not limited to, the systematic rape and murder of numerous Haitian women to prevent communal resistance. Haitian women have been subjected to objectification and denied identity throughout the patriarchal nation-state. The female gender is perpetually denigrated by rigorous traditions and the male construction of the female identity.

In Breath, Eyes, Memory Edwidge Danticat depicts a twentieth century Haitian immigrant, Sophie that leaves her small village in Haiti at the age of twelve, to move to New York to be with a mother she has not seen...