DLCL Writer in Residence, Lyonel Trouillot, discusses Haitian literature and identity

"The Everlasting Struggle between 'We' and 'I'"
Thursday, February 10, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Stanford Humanities Center, Levinthal Hall

Le Montreur: Showing Haiti

Haitian literature and identity from the perspective of Lyonel Trouillot

By Alessandra Aquilanti

February 15, 2011

A novelist, poet, and scholar, Lyonel Trouillot, the DLCL’s Writer in Residence, confessed halfway through last Thursday’s talk at the Stanford Humanities Center: “I do not have much imagination and the many stories in my books come from reality.”  His tone, void of self-deprecation or irony, was instead fraught with honesty.  This was not an evasion but instead a call to openly discuss Haiti, a country that has been misunderstood and misinterpreted for centuries.

Trouillot began his talk entitled “The Everlasting Struggle Between ‘We’ and ‘I’” with the simple directive that to help Haiti one “should start by listening… by reading,” and it is clear that by “reading” he points towards a social and political engagement between text, author and reader which is often lost amidst the present’s obsession with superficial and disposable literature – novels read and forgotten in the same breath. 

Writing is the act of bearing witness, he said, and he argued that contrary to what critics have said, his novels are filled with much more than scenes of violence and poverty.  They are filled with Haiti. Trouillot was dismayed by the tendency of others to flatten Haitian history and society to the usual stereotypes of blackness, violence, voodoo and poverty.  Even more appalling is the blatant disregard by the ruling class of fundamental aspects of Haitian culture, such as Creole, spoken by 90% of Haitians. 

The problem of language is one which Trouillot has grappled with since his earliest days as a writer. Writing in Creole began as a political act – he recalled writing songs for the Catholic Church in Creole for the sake of using a language until then considered unsuited to literature.

Although Creole has only been recently recognized as a literary language, Trouillot could not hide his irritation with Haitian authors who continue to only write in French. Trouillot claims, “If you don’t write in Creole, it’s about yourself, it’s not about your community.” And although he lets each text he writes choose its own language, he admitted that “poetry comes now to me basically only in Creole.”

Regrettably, the Haitian government has been reluctant to invest in Creole literature, whether original or in translation, further isolating the majority of Haitians from the rest of the world. 

Haitian prose and poetry have reacted in differing manners in light of this disunity.  With the development of the realist novel emerged the literary representation of Haiti’s many identities and of the fundamental absence of a collective body.  “Haiti lacks a common sphere of citizenship – there is no ‘we the Haitians’ in the Haitian novel.”  However, since the final years of the 19th century, Haitian poetry, Trouillot argued, has taken upon itself the task of saying “we” to counteract this disunity, which, he believes, contributes to the nation’s instability and to an eventual political catastrophe.

As he wove between literary and political history he stopped abruptly.  “Are you bored yet?” Trouillot jested before introducing the inevitable: “the part I hate the most, to speak about my own writing.”  He continued: “there is not much to say, only that my writing takes place in the history and social context I just described.”  The fabric of Haitian society is innately within his works.  In the same way he avoids speaking of Trouillot the author who seeks recognition, Trouillot the writer, the craftsman, the montreur, he strives for anonymity and transparency: “the most important task for me is to disappear, to let the character develop his or her own voice and rhythm, the tension between the different voices creating a polyphony tending towards both unison and cacophony, always looking to bring out the untold, the unheard.”

Contact Alessandra Aquilanti at alessandra.aquilanti [at] gmail.com (alessandra[dot]aquilanti[at]gmail[dot]com)

About Lyonel Trouillot:

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1956, Lyonel Trouillot studied law but ultimately followed his passion as a writer.  A professor of literature and a poet, Mr. Trouillot has written numerous novels, including Thérèse en mille morceaux, Rue des Pas-perdus, and Les enfants des héros, with the latter two being published in English as Street of Lost Footsteps and Children of Heroes.  He has also founded and collaborated on a variety of journals.  He was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in June 2010.

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