http://idiommag.com/2010/02/art-and-culture-in-haiti-after-the-quake/

Site for Hong-An Truong article  Art & Culture in Haiti after the quake.

Gina Ulysse's Article

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives Now More Than Ever speaks volumes about how the world views Haitians and Haiti.  The stereotypes about Haitians that are brought up in this article are sadly very true.  I don't want to say that I ever viewed Haitians to quite the extent that this article says that people view them around the world, but I will admit that before taking this class, I had a very skewed view that all Haitians lived in poverty and all Haitians were dark-skinned, which is obviously not true and a very ignorant perspective on my part.  Though now I feel much more educated talking about Haiti and it's native people, I still feel there's a lot left that I could learn. 

The fact that reporters went over to Haiti after the disastrous earthquake and then had the nerve to portray them as "indifferent" to the dead bodies laying in the streets just shocks me.  You go into someone else's home territory just to get your news story and take it back to where ever you came from without even thinking twice about making these innocent people look heartless and apathetic to the devastation they have just witnessed.  The example where the reporter asked the woman if she had a chance to bury her children and the only word he could understand was "jete" so he just assumed that she "threw them in the trash".  That made me so mad.  How could you write a story about a woman throwing her kids in the trash when you aren't even sure that's what happened?!?  And then to find out in reality that she actually never got a chance to bury her two children because they were thrown into a mass grave.  That breaks my heart for that woman.  Then a totally separate example where the reporter asks someone "Why don't you Haitians cry?".... That is the most racist, ignorant question I've ever heard.  No matter what race you are, we all cry and we all hurt.  Maybe he never stopped to think that the person was in shock and couldn't even fathom what had happened.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans ?

As another natural disaster hits with a Typhoon in the Philippines I can’t help but wonder how the US will plan on stepping in. In class we discussed the delayed help that was received in Katrina and how it changed our perceptions on the US. The ulterior   motive it brings to the surface, why was the US so slow in getting the fellow aid to its own state of Louisiana. Once again we can look at this issue through the spectrum of race, class, and gender.

I encourage everyone to read this article; I was extremely impressed with it written in The New Yorker entitled “ Do You Know.” This is in regards to “ Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/neworleansjournal

My favorite quote from the article,  

“It’s the American way to focus on the future—we are dreamers and schemers, always chasing the horizon. Looking forward has made us great, but it comes at a price. (Mexican immigrants often describe life in the United States as puro reloj, or “nothing but the clock.”) New Orleanians, on the other hand, are excellent at the lost art of living in the moment.

As Americans we always want what we can’t have in the sense of ownership of land and bodies of people. While it is a great way to think in becoming successful and being powerful, the bulldozer effect doesn’t always work in regards to creating equal classes of people.  The line about the immigrants reminds me of the movie we watched in class, taking about how the immigrants were painted in the light that the US was the best thing for them and there family because America gave them so much opportunity to work hard and make money. However the reality of it was that they suffered in regards to equality that is the core of what this nation was founded on. 

Power is Powerful

This course has been the most eye opening experience since I have been in college. From learning about the Sugar Production to Tourism in Jamaica to the ongoing hatred of the DR/Haiti and finally to the Earthquake in Haiti, every lesson contributed to my growth. I’m definitely taking something away from college this semester. The movement the course took throughout the semester taught me one thing, the importance of power. Having power is POWERFUL. Everything we read in class related back to who had control and power over the situations. Katz’s novel, The Big Truck Went By, sums of the course on power and its importance. Many privileged nations that “helped” Haiti after the earthquake did it for political reasons. They contributed to the relief post-earthquake because that is what a powerful nation is supposed to do. They did not contribute enough in order for Haiti’s nation and economy to prevail. The importance of Power is to have one person or nation at the top and have a few remain on the bottom. Power is about money and control.

Picture Haiti

also, i thought it would be interesting to illustrate my point about misconceptions about Haiti being a blackhole of suffering. i image googled "Haiti" and came up with a number of images. interestingly (or rather, not so interestingly or surprising), most of the images are of vast amounts of trash, mass graves, dead bodies strewn on the ground, children surrounded by trash, children in casts, tent cities, and foreign aid workers helping Haitians. it just further highlights how powerful images are and how we are impacted by them before we even fully realize (or acknowledge) it.

federal aid in foreign countries

So this week we are reading The Big Truck That Went By by Jonathan Gatz.
As we discussed in class, countries have good intentions to help countries in need, such as Haiti after the eartquake disaster in 2010. But to better tell of the relief efforts made, the author, Jonathan Katz, gives a speech about his book and relief efforts.

http://www.viddler.com/v/faaa1004

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/11/three_years_after_the_quake_how

It wont let me insert the videos but go check them out!
Theyre full of information!

Presuppositions on Haiti and Fathoming Suffering

The situation detailed in The Big Truck That Went By makes me think about the ways in which I thought about Haiti prior to situations like this (more so, for me personally, it was prior to living in a majority Haitian/Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn). prior to those experiences and the people I came to know as friends and close co-workers, was that of all-around devastation; a black hole of suffering. every time Haiti was on the news, it was in reference to some horrible situation and the only time it was spoken of in school was in reference to the Haitian revolution. I didn't even know about the U.S. occupation there until maybe 3 or 4 years ago, reading it in a course here at the university. The more i learned about Haiti, largely through my friends and co-workers, was one of much more....relevance; familiarity. now i could put faces and names onto people and imagine that those i saw on television were my coworkers in their younger years, were their cousins, children, and parents. around the time that i was living there, i also began to learn much more about Haitian Vodun. a Black feminist organization i was a member of had co-founders from Haiti and for one of the events we hosted, it was a Haitian day festival in honor of its independence say (i believe). the spirituality that she invoked and incorporated (visually, verbally, etc.) in my dealings with her really showed me how beautiful and complex of a spirituality it is. all that changes how i viewed Haiti.

i can recall (maybe around this time) hearing someone say that Haiti was the first independent Black nation in the Americas, and that it has been paying for it ever since; meaning that for such a defeat for Black people comes with it unimaginable suffering because of global racism, colonialism, and exploitative business practices. and it certainly seems to be the case. on a spiritual level, i've heard some say that (as Elizabeth mentioned in class) that the improper burials that have been forced to happen (mass graves, no funeral, mutilation and dismemberment of bodies, spiritual ceremonies and rites that don't take place, etc.) due to corruption (large numbers of murders, assassinations, mass shootings) or natural disasters has made Haiti a place that is spiritually unbalanced. i'm learning more, at the present time, about the concept of the Vodun god known as Damballah Hwedo, which is a serpent god that represents ancestors whom are not known by name. it is also symbolic in the US and throughout the diaspora as representation of those lost during the middle passage and the general trauma of enslavement. i think (for Haitians) it's important to look into those types of healing spiritual cosmologies and beliefs to help restore Haiti and Haitians and their well-being - be that spiritual or other. it may even be argued that this concept was elevated to a high level of importance (coming from African traditions) after enslavement and such traumatic experiences.

This is also related to the article: "Suffering and Structural Violence". the article makes me think about the ways in which suffering, for long durations of time (for Haitians, it's scarcely been a calm and stable time since Africans were brought to the island) and how it's difficult to even fathom, really. in this video (around 6:10), J. Lorand Matory, a professor at Duke who studies African diaspora religions/spirituality makes sense of the idea that Haitians are untrustworthy or, by some accounts, even paranoid (in reference to political bodies, the west, governmental structures, and society in general, even their own and in reference to Haitian Vodun). suffering produces emotional scars that are sometimes irreparable. when there's atrocity after atrocity after atrocity, how does one even live? and if someone who lives through such an ordeal, how do they come to terms when their life becomes stable and healthy and more than just survival? it's difficult to even think about.