Last Tuesday, Haitian author Marie-Celie Agnant presented a lecture titled “The Place of Women Writers in the Francophone Caribbean” in Craig Lecture Hall, hosted by Oberlin’s Italian and French Center.

After leaving Haiti in 1970 at the age of 17 Agnant moved to Montreal where she has resided for over 20 years. She worked as an interpreter there (she is fluent in Kreole, French, Spanish and English) in addition to publishing four novels, a collection of short stories, a book of collected poems and children’s stories.

Agnant emphasized writing as a privilege and that its use as a tool for oppressed peoples is a common theme within history. Throughout the centuries women have forged a place for themselves within the male-dominated realm of literature.

Throughout the lecture she discussed the ways that writing for women has been maintained as a medium for resistance and revolution. She began her discussion with an exploration of the commonalities of character in the works of authors such as Toni Morrison. One finds these black female characters as pillars of triumph, survival and determination: “[These] heroines plunge into the very heart of struggle.” The power of the female character and her obvious agency were her main themes.

Agnant went on to assert that female Caribbean women from former French territories often confront the colonial question, issues of class, as create a space to reevaluate the notion of the “unconscious black woman.” “This writing lends voice to women on the margins,” she explained.

With an engaging flow, Agnant explained the position that writing has held for women across the globe and throughout history. She argued that women use fiction to affirm their unique experiences as a gender.
When interviewing Haitian women, Agnant said most would begin by speaking of their birth and then quickly skipped to stories of their marriage. They barely mentioned their childhoods. This, she points out, testifies to the fact that childhood for these women in Haiti was short.

This lack of youth seems to both perplex Agnant and give her a reason to write children’s literature. She made it clear that children are the embodiment of future hopes. For her this nonexistent childhood marks the way the women write and conceive of fiction. Women like Nadine Godimer, for example, write because they wish to lend legitimacy to their experiences as women; this legitimacy is apparent in the acknowledgement of an experience unique to women.

Her discussion of writing was brilliant and eloquent. “The act of writing is first of all birth [then] an act of resistance,” she said. Marie-Celie Agnant proposed that writing is rhythms, passion, themes, visual images and sensation. Writing calls up memory. When Agnant expounded on the history of a Haitian literary tradition she mentioned that only two women were identified out of 30 early novelists. Women for the most part were excluded and those who were bold enough to write were, and are, often discouraged from doing so.

She marks the onset of Haitian literature as 1818, shortly after Haiti gained independence from France.

Writing to her is not a dry process of fitting together the right words, but conveying an emotion and an experience. She said “[when] writing onesfinds ones self driftingin a soft atmosphere of nostalgiawith all senses alert.”

The history of women in fiction is a history of struggle, redefinition, and resistance. Yet, Agnant is certain that women will continue to struggle to be heard and taken be seriously within dominant culture and a male dominated space. She ended the lecture assuring the audience that fiction “is a dangerous weapon” and in the hands of women, sharper than any two-edged sword.