The Misunderstanding of Haitians with Juliana Lamy

[00:00:00] I just love writing about voodoo. It's literally one of the most important pillars of Haitian

[00:00:04] culture. There's this saying that Haiti is about 80% Catholic and 100% voodoo and it's

[00:00:09] completely true because it's cultural.

[00:00:13] What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams and this is Black and Published, bringing you

[00:00:19] the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights and storytellers of all kinds. Today's

[00:00:25] guest is Juliana Lamey, author of the short story collection You Were Watching From the

[00:00:31] Sand. The collection explores what it means to be Haitian and the honesty of that differential

[00:00:37] experience through the eyes of mothers and daughters, friends and siblings who are ostracized

[00:00:43] and othered, sometimes within their own community.

[00:00:47] My primary audience is always Haitian people. It's also making me think even as I'm

[00:00:51] writing in English, is this a story that would feel true or honest if I were to tell

[00:00:57] it to my mother or tell it to my father?

[00:01:00] A graduate of Harvard and Iowa, Juliana says when she's writing her characters are always

[00:01:07] Haitian and she's always preoccupied with language. How she creates a rhythm and

[00:01:13] lyricism for an American audience that still translates into the two other languages

[00:01:18] she speaks. Plus, the reason she isn't ready to commit to a literary agent despite having

[00:01:24] published a book and how she's correcting the record about the cultural and spiritual

[00:01:30] importance of voodoo. That and more is next when Black and Published continues.

[00:01:51] Juliana, when did you know that you were a writer?

[00:01:53] I've actually been writing since I was very little. I think that this is a pretty

[00:01:57] common thread between lots of writers. Nikesha, I'm sure that you can probably relate.

[00:02:01] I feel like I've been writing since I could string words together and hold a pencil in my

[00:02:05] tiny little hands. I've always been drawn to just the idea of story, especially coming

[00:02:11] from Haitian culture, which is so oriented around a lot of oral storytelling particularly.

[00:02:17] The way that emotional moments are communicated between people through story, I think that

[00:02:21] I've just always been very used to that. The convergence of my fascination with

[00:02:26] story and just my exposure to this wonderful culture was really what made me realize that I was a

[00:02:32] writer even as I was very little.

[00:02:34] Can you talk more about how being Haitian and having an oral storytelling tradition from

[00:02:43] your background helped influence the kinds of stories that you tell on the page?

[00:02:49] Yeah, so I think that something that is very particular to oral storytelling is just

[00:02:55] the efficiency of communication. It's not just in the sense of being able to communicate

[00:03:01] actual technical story events to people. It's also being able to communicate a feeling to

[00:03:06] people. It's about being able to communicate a state of being to people. I think that

[00:03:11] that efficiency of communication is something that I'm always trying to replicate in all

[00:03:16] of my stories. Even when I try to be very adventurous with language and it's something

[00:03:22] that has continued in sort of all of my writing posts to this collection as well.

[00:03:26] But I think that it's something that I'm always preoccupied with, that I think Haitian

[00:03:29] oral storytelling and oral storytelling from lots of other different cultures do very

[00:03:33] well. That ability to make your reader understand something subconscious.

[00:03:41] To me, that sounds like your goal is to always use the language to tap into the

[00:03:46] emotionality, to make people either see something about themselves in your characters

[00:03:53] or ponder on some larger idea or topic of the world that you have created in your

[00:04:01] stories. When you have gone through the process of writing the stories and

[00:04:07] workshopping them to get to the collection that you have today, what was the

[00:04:12] feedback like?

[00:04:13] Something that I've always gotten from every single room is that your approach to

[00:04:18] language is very adventurous. But we have to square that with just the

[00:04:24] simplicity of communication. Can your reader actually understand what's going

[00:04:27] on around all of the very adventurous language that you're playing with?

[00:04:32] I think that that's something that I'm always conscious of when I'm editing.

[00:04:35] Now, I'm not really conscious of it when I'm actually writing because of the

[00:04:39] fact that my initial drafting process is so driven by language itself, that I'm

[00:04:44] more preoccupied by the way that the language is moving and sort of like

[00:04:47] that linguistic momentum. But I think that the common critique that I get

[00:04:52] that I apply later in my edits is to try to maintain the integrity of the

[00:04:56] language while also making it so that readers can actually understand

[00:05:00] what's going on, which I think that is very important for any story, I

[00:05:04] suppose.

[00:05:05] I guess I'm struck by the feedback of being able to effectively communicate

[00:05:11] because the language is too adventurous.

[00:05:13] And I wonder, I didn't find the language too adventurous.

[00:05:17] I don't know if I even understand what that means, honestly.

[00:05:21] But what I did notice in all the stories is that the point of

[00:05:25] view is very much grounded in that of black and brown people who

[00:05:31] have Haitian or Dominican backgrounds who might be newly American

[00:05:37] or immigrant or migrants.

[00:05:38] And so there is an otherness to the perspective and to the storytelling.

[00:05:42] And then there's also some surrealism as well.

[00:05:46] And so for some that could be off-putting.

[00:05:52] Yes, I don't necessarily know that that's adventurous, just a different

[00:05:57] perspective. Yes.

[00:05:58] I would love to comment, Nikesha, because something that you brought up is

[00:06:03] just I was attempting to be tactful.

[00:06:06] But I think that what I've encountered in a lot of rooms that have edited

[00:06:11] or read these stories that are very, very particular to Haitian culture

[00:06:17] when I'm writing all of my characters are Haitian.

[00:06:19] I'm not really thinking outside of that.

[00:06:21] I think that kind of like feeling of otherness that you've pointed out

[00:06:24] here, which is just like the mode of speaking.

[00:06:28] Because I'm trying to essentially replicate modes of speaking in English

[00:06:33] that would make perfect sense in Haitian Creole.

[00:06:36] I think that sometimes that might be the let's say the difficulty

[00:06:40] that some people who've read my work have encountered is just sort

[00:06:43] of the difference.

[00:06:45] I think that it is.

[00:06:46] Yeah.

[00:06:47] You don't have to be that tactful here.

[00:06:51] But I wonder and just out of curiosity,

[00:06:54] how many languages do you speak?

[00:06:56] I speak three.

[00:06:57] I speak Haitian Creole, Spanish and English.

[00:07:00] I ask that question because I've had friends who speak multiple languages

[00:07:04] and they talk about the difficulty, not only the difficulty of learning English,

[00:07:09] but then translating from whatever their native tongue is

[00:07:13] into English every time they speak.

[00:07:17] And so I ask about the number of languages you speak, because I wonder

[00:07:22] if trying to translate for an American English audience,

[00:07:26] but to convey the feeling that is used with maybe a different type of lyricism

[00:07:32] in Haitian Creole or in Spanish, do you think that that might be some of the

[00:07:36] difficulty or is it just perhaps the unwillingness of the reader

[00:07:41] of some readers

[00:07:44] to trust you to not lead them astray?

[00:07:48] I'm for real, though.

[00:07:51] I love the phrasing of that last part, especially.

[00:07:54] That's why I laughed.

[00:07:55] But yeah, I think that it's a combination of both.

[00:07:57] I think it's both like some of that unwillingness on the part of certain readers

[00:08:01] and then also me trying to again replicate those patterns of speech

[00:08:07] in Haitian Creole and Spanish, which you know, both share very similar

[00:08:11] grammatical patterns, by the way.

[00:08:13] I'm trying to replicate those grammatical patterns in English.

[00:08:16] I think it has to do with both of those things.

[00:08:18] Something that I've been trying to do to kind of get around that is to

[00:08:23] really, really focus on particularly the lyricism itself of Haitian Creole.

[00:08:29] So when I actually have those moments of language on the page,

[00:08:33] there's this natural lyricism that kind of like bleeds into English itself.

[00:08:37] And it kind of makes the language that I'm that I'm bringing about

[00:08:40] in English like even, even clearer.

[00:08:42] Oh, no, I don't want to make an excuse, but I do find that as a reader

[00:08:48] when you're coming to a writer's work who you may not know or you don't know

[00:08:54] a lot about or their background, if you've never read anything from them before.

[00:08:57] There is a learning curve to understanding their voice

[00:09:04] and how they heard the sentences that you're reading

[00:09:07] and really trusting them to not lead you astray or waste your time in a story.

[00:09:14] Right? Like I read a lot of books, a lot of short story collections.

[00:09:16] So sometimes it takes me a little longer to get into some works than it

[00:09:21] than it does others.

[00:09:24] But I find that if I take the time to go through it and to get into it

[00:09:30] and to try to understand what the writer is doing,

[00:09:35] even if it's not something that I am immediately drawn to that I can get it.

[00:09:41] And so I understand that there can be a

[00:09:44] a reticence or a reluctance on the part of some readers

[00:09:48] to invest that type of time, especially for cultures and backgrounds

[00:09:54] and ethnicities that they may not share.

[00:09:57] All of that to say

[00:10:00] when you got to your publishing process and you published the Red Hen Press.

[00:10:05] What was the feedback from now?

[00:10:07] Your editors and your team about not necessarily how to make the book

[00:10:12] palatable, but to make it the best that it could be

[00:10:16] while also still honoring your intention.

[00:10:19] Yeah, I think that I was remarkably lucky with my process with Red Hen Press

[00:10:23] because of the fact that it's an independent press and it's smaller.

[00:10:26] I just got the sense that there is a lot less like strong arming me

[00:10:31] into making this collection more palatable to a wider audience

[00:10:35] because I think the focus just as I was publishing this collection

[00:10:38] was to maintain the integrity of the language,

[00:10:40] because I think that the very first thing that they said to me

[00:10:43] when they got this collection was that they were particularly struck

[00:10:46] by the motions of the language, particularly.

[00:10:48] And they could tell that this was probably

[00:10:51] definitely one of the strongest facets of the collection itself.

[00:10:54] And they could tell that it was something that I was really very preoccupied with.

[00:10:57] So I think that they were always really concerned

[00:11:00] with the actual like clarity of orienting narrative events.

[00:11:05] And it wasn't really a matter of how do you pare down this language

[00:11:09] to make it more appealing to a wider audience?

[00:11:12] Or how do you pare down the intensity of these characters

[00:11:15] to make them more appealing to a wider audience?

[00:11:17] And I think that I was remarkably lucky in that respect.

[00:11:20] How did you get connected with Red Hen Press?

[00:11:22] I know independent presses can be as mysterious as Big Five.

[00:11:28] In around December of 2020, when we were all stuck at home,

[00:11:34] you remember this well.

[00:11:35] Yes, we were inside.

[00:11:38] It was literally just, you know, me and my computer

[00:11:40] and my parents in the other room.

[00:11:42] I think that during that time I was doing a lot of writing

[00:11:44] and I was doing a lot of submitting,

[00:11:46] but I was submitting a lot of short stories

[00:11:48] to different presses that I admired.

[00:11:50] And then I came across Red Hen Press and I was

[00:11:55] you always have to approach these some of these independent presses

[00:11:58] with like a certain level of weariness.

[00:12:00] So it's like Red Hen Press.

[00:12:02] It sounds a little suspicious.

[00:12:04] So I did my I did my research and it seemed like

[00:12:07] you know, a legitimate outfit.

[00:12:09] And I looked at some of the collection that they had collections

[00:12:11] that they had published and something that you can always kind of tell

[00:12:15] how an independent press is legitimate is the book covers.

[00:12:18] So I was looking at a lot of the book covers of their collections

[00:12:20] that they'd published and of the novels that they'd published.

[00:12:23] And I read some excerpts of the novels and things that they published.

[00:12:25] Now, I was thinking, oh, like this is a really interesting press.

[00:12:30] At that point, I still wasn't sure about,

[00:12:33] you know, submitting anything to them

[00:12:35] because I was not agent at all.

[00:12:37] And I thought that was like pretty much the only way that you could get published.

[00:12:41] Actually, I'm still not agent.

[00:12:42] Because I'm trying to like really kind of absorb the commitment of that

[00:12:47] as a concept, but that's another thing.

[00:12:50] But I found out that Red Hen Press had this short story

[00:12:55] collection prize that they were starting actually in 2020.

[00:12:58] It was called the Anne Petrie fiction prize for her book length collections

[00:13:03] of fiction. And I love Anne Petrie.

[00:13:06] I love the street.

[00:13:07] I think she's phenomenal.

[00:13:08] And I felt comfortable enough to submit a collection of the stories

[00:13:12] that I'd written up to that point to this prize.

[00:13:16] And part of the prize was a cash prize, but it was also publication

[00:13:20] as part of the thing that you won.

[00:13:22] So this collection actually was published as a result

[00:13:25] of that publication addendum to the prize itself.

[00:13:28] I've had two previous Red Hen Press authors on

[00:13:31] Khaleesa Ray in the first season who had the poetry collection

[00:13:34] Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat.

[00:13:36] And then last season, Carlos Allende with Coffee Shopping Murder Love,

[00:13:40] which I loved.

[00:13:42] But I want to go to what you said about not being sure that you wanted

[00:13:46] to make the commitment to find an agent and all that that entailed

[00:13:51] because I don't know if I've ever heard an author say those words

[00:13:54] in life to my face.

[00:13:57] Well, that's so much of the writing process and then

[00:14:02] establishing yourself as a writer is working to get the agent

[00:14:06] because it's first hurdle, but it can also be maybe one of the hardest hurdles.

[00:14:10] Absolutely.

[00:14:11] And so to say that, you know, maybe I don't want that.

[00:14:15] Can you explain?

[00:14:16] So I'm not saying that I never ever want an agent absolutely like

[00:14:20] get get every single agent out of my face.

[00:14:22] That's not at all what I'm saying.

[00:14:24] I'm saying that I don't think that I'm ready for that sort of like commitment.

[00:14:29] It definitely feels like a commitment to me.

[00:14:31] And I actually I recently got my MFA back in May, which I'm proud of.

[00:14:35] But I think that particularly in my second year of my MFA,

[00:14:38] we had a lot of visits from agents and I got the chance to hear

[00:14:42] the way that they were conceptualizing relationships with authors.

[00:14:46] And the impression that I got is that it is a very serious sort of endeavor.

[00:14:51] And I think that when I am ready for that endeavor, I'll definitely know.

[00:14:56] But I think that the primary concern that I had for myself was that

[00:15:00] I want to approach an agent or come to an agent with a novel length work.

[00:15:06] That is one just fluid story that I have like a pretty good.

[00:15:11] In general, I'm very opinionated and stubborn person.

[00:15:14] That doesn't mean that I'm completely uncompromising, but I want to sort of

[00:15:17] like, you know, come to an agent with a pretty good idea of the story that I have

[00:15:22] in hand. And I think that part of my reluctance to initially get an agent

[00:15:27] was because I didn't yet have sort of like that book length story in hand or in mind.

[00:15:33] For some reason, I never thought of kind of, you know,

[00:15:36] assembling all of my stories into a collection to go on the market for an agent.

[00:15:42] I don't know why it never came to me.

[00:15:44] But then I submitted to the prize and the collection was getting published anyway.

[00:15:48] So it was like, I mean, we are.

[00:15:49] No, I was like, well, I guess.

[00:15:53] But yeah, that's that's that's a little bit of my thinking around around the subject.

[00:15:57] No, I appreciate that.

[00:16:01] And I do understand that thought process because I think

[00:16:05] before you really get into the publishing

[00:16:10] business side of writing from the outside, it's a goal.

[00:16:16] But you may not understand the the depth of what that means.

[00:16:22] And which is that, you know, having an agent is a business relationship.

[00:16:26] Yes, it's not just oh, I have an agent to brag.

[00:16:29] It's a business relationship.

[00:16:30] And so you don't want to enter into a business deal of any kind

[00:16:36] when you're not ready.

[00:16:38] And I think it takes courage and honesty to admit as a writer

[00:16:44] when you're not ready for that and to know that maybe you should wait a little while

[00:16:48] until you you think you are ready.

[00:16:52] But I also think there is a disservice that publishing has done to tell short

[00:16:56] story writers that you're not serious until you have a novel because we know

[00:17:02] that that's not true either.

[00:17:04] So I see both sides of that there, but I was I was just kind of curious.

[00:17:08] Well, so then once you and your team,

[00:17:13] your editor, editors decided at Red Hat Impress that you didn't have to make

[00:17:16] too many changes or do too too much with the language because that was very

[00:17:21] important to you. What has the reception been now that the collection is out?

[00:17:26] I've been really just kind of shocked and floored by the reception.

[00:17:29] I think that because of the fact that I was going into this publication experience

[00:17:34] with no sense of what it would be like, especially because I could only think

[00:17:40] of publishing in the sense of those very kind of rigid steps that I'm sure

[00:17:43] that we're both familiar with.

[00:17:44] It's sort of you write something, you get an agent, the agent sells it.

[00:17:48] The publication house puts it out.

[00:17:51] That was the formulation that I was used to.

[00:17:54] Like going on this journey where I like I submitted these stories and it

[00:17:57] was a surprise and it was being published.

[00:17:59] I was I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

[00:18:02] And I've just been really, really shocked at how kind and excited people have been

[00:18:06] about this collection.

[00:18:07] I remember I had my book launch party in Iowa City because I got my MFA from

[00:18:13] the Iowa Writers Workshop and I had a lot of friends who were still there.

[00:18:16] I thought it was going to be like the super sort of intimate thing with

[00:18:19] maybe four or five of my other friends just celebrating this collection

[00:18:22] of stories that I put out.

[00:18:24] I was really, really shocked at just how many people showed up to this book launch.

[00:18:28] I didn't have a sense maybe of how much reach this collection would potentially have.

[00:18:35] Like just initially going to that book launch party and seeing like so

[00:18:38] many people there really, really shocked me.

[00:18:41] And then also just like going to other bookshops and book signings and just

[00:18:46] seeing the way that people were open to the way that I was describing these

[00:18:49] stories and just kind of seeing like the spark of fascination kind of light

[00:18:52] up in people's eyes.

[00:18:54] And they hadn't even read a single story from the collection.

[00:18:56] But I think that I've just been so, so grateful at just sort of like the

[00:18:59] openness of the literary community to just like I'm essentially a baby author.

[00:19:05] Right? So just I've just been like so grateful and just so shocked by

[00:19:10] the openness of people, the willingness of people to engage with these

[00:19:13] stories and then they're actually taking a lot of the subject matter that

[00:19:16] I'm talking about in this collection in hand and analyzing it in ways

[00:19:21] that are so interesting to me and sort of like making me think of the stuff

[00:19:25] that I have written in a different way.

[00:19:28] So yeah, so just just yeah, I've just been overall to sum it up just so grateful

[00:19:33] about the reception that I've received.

[00:19:35] All right. So with that said, let's get into the collection.

[00:19:38] If you could read a little bit from one of the stories and then we can

[00:19:42] talk about it a little bit more.

[00:19:45] You were watching from the sand is a collection of stories

[00:19:48] featuring Haitian men, women and children who find their lives in flux due

[00:19:53] to the environments around them or situations of their own making.

[00:19:57] From horror to surrealism, the stories tap into the perspective of living

[00:20:02] on the periphery even when you're the main character in your own story.

[00:20:06] Here's Juliana.

[00:20:08] So the story I'll be reading from is the oldest sensation is anger.

[00:20:13] And this is a story.

[00:20:14] This is the second story of the collection.

[00:20:16] This is a story about a mysterious girl who emigrates from Haiti.

[00:20:22] She is a adopted child of a family friend and she moves in with the daughter

[00:20:28] of that family friend. So this is the oldest sensation is anger.

[00:20:32] Claudette's girl shows up to Nadia's

[00:20:34] apartment with a Simpson suitcase and a broken arm. It's May.

[00:20:39] She has ropey scars on her arms in the part of her chest that Nadia can see.

[00:20:43] Ribbed pauses that turn her into a body stuttering.

[00:20:47] Her adoptive mother, Claudette, a family friend,

[00:20:50] once drank from the river where panic seems to sit once tossed the cocaine.

[00:20:54] Corrupt Haitian kernels expected them to so into soon to be exported quilts.

[00:20:59] Claudette blames the cocaine water for the hysterectomy that hitched her

[00:21:03] to two kids when she'd wanted three and she swears to this day

[00:21:06] that she can feel poison fattening inside of her.

[00:21:09] She is the orphan she adopted as her third.

[00:21:14] She's head is shade.

[00:21:16] Nadia can see the tiny stalks of her follicles.

[00:21:18] They're the same age, 20, but she looks younger.

[00:21:21] Her 20 powdered across curtain, rock collar bones and around her face.

[00:21:25] Here, she is now the first time Nadia has ever seen her in person.

[00:21:30] Around her neck, she wears a choir lady's

[00:21:32] roast pink scarf tied like an ascot fiance killer.

[00:21:37] Nadia has heard the rumor, but it doesn't scare her like it should.

[00:21:41] All it makes her want to do is stare, stare and stare till she's maybe killing

[00:21:46] part would have to run through the back of her head, tear the crown of her skull

[00:21:50] off its hinges to escape Nadia's notice.

[00:21:53] Nadia stares at her head for so long that she rolls her eyes and says,

[00:21:57] you want to rub it for good luck?

[00:21:59] Nadia reaches a handout to do just that and she smacks it down.

[00:22:03] The hit makes Nadia forget that she's the taller of the two.

[00:22:07] Shay, face carefully still, except for the up down, up down twitch of her bottom lip

[00:22:12] as she speaks, says, don't touch me.

[00:22:15] You offered Shay cuts her eyes at Nadia and says with not a bit of her joking

[00:22:20] from before, don't you ever touch me?

[00:22:23] Nadia leads Shay to the back of the

[00:22:25] apartment with this new immediate tenseness beneath between them.

[00:22:29] This is the room will share, Nadia says, opening the door to the bedroom.

[00:22:34] Nadia has issues with the room that she's strangely too embarrassed to admit to Shay.

[00:22:39] The room runs warm, the paint peels and the latch key middle school kids whose

[00:22:43] parents work until dawn hours use the drop ladder at the base for fire escape as

[00:22:48] monkey bars for fun on weekends and sometimes on weekdays.

[00:22:51] Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night to balls,

[00:22:55] melting in moon glow and catches the drywall mid vanish while disembodied

[00:22:59] clanging and talking ring out from somewhere outside.

[00:23:02] In those moments, she swears that she's caught without her permission,

[00:23:06] waist up in the jaws of something and I think I'll stop there.

[00:23:10] Thank you.

[00:23:12] So that particular story was from the point of view

[00:23:18] of a Haitian immigrant arriving to stay with the family in America and

[00:23:24] working and learning.

[00:23:25] And then there's a big secret reveal at the end.

[00:23:28] It talks a lot about injuries and things of that nature.

[00:23:33] I believe the story we fill it in Putacana is about what it's like to be

[00:23:38] a Haitian immigrant in the Dominican Republic.

[00:23:40] Yes, exactly.

[00:23:41] And even though it's the same island, which I also have questions about.

[00:23:47] And then you have a lot of other stories of just about that immigrant

[00:23:50] experience in South Florida, which is very specific in the community

[00:23:55] that is made amongst each other.

[00:23:57] But then also the otherness that happens between parents who may have been

[00:24:02] the immigrants and their children who are born there or the children who,

[00:24:06] because of going to school, become much more Americanized than their parents

[00:24:10] would like and covering so much of that ground about what it means to be.

[00:24:17] I don't want to be offensive, but that kind of different.

[00:24:21] What does being Haitian mean to you?

[00:24:25] Writing for.

[00:24:27] Not just an American audience, but a black American audience as well.

[00:24:31] Well, that's such a huge question.

[00:24:35] No, I'm sorry.

[00:24:36] No, no, no, it's a big question, but it's very, very important.

[00:24:40] I don't think I think that I could spend the rest of my life trying to find

[00:24:44] the perfect answer to that question.

[00:24:46] But I think that all all attack this question from the angle of sort of

[00:24:51] what it means to me to be a Haitian person,

[00:24:54] you know, writing these stories not only to Haitian people, but to other groups

[00:24:59] of people who are also going to be reading them is that I am exploring

[00:25:04] a variety of different Haitian perspectives.

[00:25:07] Because even though in a lot of ways, the experience of being Haitian

[00:25:10] in the United States is very similar for a lot of Haitian people,

[00:25:14] particularly when it comes to labor and just sort of the way that immigrant

[00:25:17] labor is exploited in the US and then just sort of the ways that I'm kind of

[00:25:21] sometimes Haitian people themselves, silo themselves off from other groups

[00:25:25] of black people, even though those similarities do exist between Haitian

[00:25:31] people and groups of Haitian people.

[00:25:33] I think that my primary concern as a writer, as a Haitian writer,

[00:25:37] is to always explore different perspectives on the page that make it clear

[00:25:41] to anyone reading that Haitian people are not a monolith.

[00:25:45] But at the same time, there is just sort of like this shared cultural

[00:25:48] understanding that I'm always tapping into because of the fact that I'm always

[00:25:53] aware of the realities of my audience.

[00:25:55] I think that my primary audience is always Haitian people.

[00:25:58] That's always my focus.

[00:25:59] I was actually talking to my brother the other day about how eventually

[00:26:03] I want to get to a point where I am able to translate my own English

[00:26:07] stories to Haitian Creole, even though I'm fluent in Haitian Creole.

[00:26:10] I don't have like the literary Haitian Creole down pat quite yet.

[00:26:15] But having that as like a long term goal for myself, it's always it's also

[00:26:19] making me think, even as I'm writing in English, is this a story that would feel

[00:26:24] true or honest if I were to tell it to my mother or tell it to my father?

[00:26:29] How would they feel about the way that Haitianness being represented

[00:26:34] in the story and would they feel that this feels Haitian?

[00:26:38] So I think that sort of like my primary audience is always, always going to be

[00:26:44] just other Haitian people.

[00:26:46] And then my primary objective on the page is to explore a variety of different

[00:26:51] Haitian perspectives.

[00:26:52] I'm listening to you speak and I think what I'm wondering is that as a writer

[00:27:00] of Haitian descent, Haitian writer, do you feel the need to correct

[00:27:04] the record about what it means to be Haitian?

[00:27:07] Because I feel like there's a global misunderstanding of Haiti,

[00:27:11] of what it means to be Haitian and how the first black nation was

[00:27:19] exploited and taken advantage of to the point where now it's seen as

[00:27:23] the world's charity case.

[00:27:25] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:26] And a lot of ways I do feel that responsibility as I get older and as

[00:27:32] I learn more and more about just like the geopolitics surrounding Haiti

[00:27:37] in the broader sense, but I'm also learning more and more about these

[00:27:41] sort of specific things that have happened to my parents, both inside of Haiti

[00:27:46] as a result of those geopolitics and outside of Haiti as a result of those

[00:27:50] geopolitics.

[00:27:51] You know, again, going back to this idea of this idea of labor

[00:27:55] and just the way that they're exploited because of that.

[00:27:58] But the fact that there are so many undocumented patient laborers in the

[00:28:03] United States is a direct result of a lot of those geopolitics that have

[00:28:07] turned Haiti into like very good phrasing, the world's charity case.

[00:28:12] And just sort of like the way that it's being seen in that light.

[00:28:16] So I think that as I get older, I'm definitely feeling more and more

[00:28:19] responsibility to kind of correct the record about Haiti.

[00:28:22] But I think that that is a responsibility that's always in the back of my mind.

[00:28:27] It's not something that I think ever kind of governs the types of stories that I

[00:28:30] tell, especially because of the fact that I think that if I let that feeling

[00:28:37] govern it too much what I write, I wouldn't write certain things because

[00:28:41] I write a lot about the more unsavory parts of Haitianness.

[00:28:44] I write a lot about voodoo, especially now.

[00:28:48] And I think that like coming from even like an evangelical Haitian family

[00:28:53] as I do, it has been a little bit like a culture shock within my own culture.

[00:28:57] Learning so much about voodoo because of the fact that I didn't grow up with it.

[00:29:01] So I think that if I let that sense of like responsibility, even though I do feel

[00:29:05] a little bit of responsibility to correct the record about Haiti,

[00:29:08] if I let that sense of responsibility kind of rule me too much,

[00:29:12] I wouldn't be talking honestly and compassionately about all of the

[00:29:16] different aspects of Haitian life that I want to talk about.

[00:29:19] I think that it would limit me if I wanted to paint Haiti as this sort of like

[00:29:23] like see, like we're not scary and we're just like you.

[00:29:26] And sort of like, yeah, like come visit, give us your tourist dollars.

[00:29:31] I think that it's definitely a line that I'm trying to balance.

[00:29:35] And I just like I just love writing about voodoo.

[00:29:37] I think that it's literally one of the most important pillars of Haitian culture.

[00:29:41] There's this saying that Haiti is about 80 percent Catholic and 100

[00:29:45] percent voodoo, and it's completely true because it's cultural.

[00:29:49] Mm. Yeah.

[00:29:51] You brought it up, so I'm just going to go with it because I called it surrealism.

[00:29:57] I didn't want to put no labels on anybody.

[00:30:02] I was like, what you called it voodoo?

[00:30:05] So here we are.

[00:30:07] Yes.

[00:30:08] In talking about spiritual practices,

[00:30:13] religious ways, you just mentioned a statistic, you know,

[00:30:16] that Haiti might be 80 percent Christian, but 100 percent voodoo because it is cultural.

[00:30:21] Yeah. Can you talk about how voodoo is

[00:30:25] severely misunderstood?

[00:30:29] Because I've had people say, you know, I can never go to Haiti and I can never

[00:30:33] go to New Orleans because people say that they made a deal with the devil

[00:30:37] and did voodoo and that's how they won against Napoleon.

[00:30:40] And I was just like, wait, what?

[00:30:42] I don't even understand that logic.

[00:30:45] So let me just open up by saying that if any country or region in the entire world

[00:30:51] has made a deal with the devil, it is the colonial countries that took over

[00:30:55] the other countries because how do you do that without some evil force on your side?

[00:31:00] But getting into my actual answer, though,

[00:31:05] I think that the terror that is elicited, you know, just from these

[00:31:10] misconceptions of voodoo and of voodoo and other folk cultural practices,

[00:31:16] Santheir has the same experience.

[00:31:18] It's just really part and parcel of it almost feels like this centuries-long

[00:31:22] punishment that Haiti has been enduring ever since it was able to free itself

[00:31:26] from under the weight of colonialism.

[00:31:29] And I think that the way that voodoo is portrayed here in the modern day is

[00:31:33] an extension of this idea of just like black barbarism and Haitians being

[00:31:38] you know, barbaric and this idea that sprung up as a result of the Haitian

[00:31:42] revolution. Right after the Haitian Revolution, there was a lot of just

[00:31:47] sort of like academic talk specifically about how barbaric the Haitians were,

[00:31:51] obviously by anti-revolutionary camps and sort of like look and they would

[00:31:54] use voodoo as sort of like the proof of that barbarism.

[00:31:57] And it was much more explicit then.

[00:32:00] And now it's been happening for so many years and decades that it's

[00:32:04] become sort of implicit in a lot of cultures and sort of subconscious

[00:32:07] in a lot of cultures.

[00:32:08] It's almost become like an inherited fear of Haiti and in a lot of ways,

[00:32:13] I think, and then it's also just sort of the

[00:32:17] so there's we have like that kind of like that weight of history

[00:32:20] on the one hand of voodoo always being connected to this idea of barbarism

[00:32:25] from the late 1700s.

[00:32:27] And then now we have this extremely old idea of anti-blackness in general

[00:32:32] just writ large globally.

[00:32:33] And that is something that is also kind of injecting and shaping the way

[00:32:38] that voodooism in Haiti is being looked at.

[00:32:40] And then we have this third thing that is also that people look at the poverty

[00:32:45] and the suffering of Haiti, which is definitely an actual reality for a

[00:32:49] lot of Haitian people. They see that and instead of ascribing it to

[00:32:53] geopolitical forces and invasions and things like that, they're ascribing

[00:32:57] it to especially if you're a more spiritual person, they're ascribing it

[00:33:01] to Haiti must have made a deal with the devil and here is the proof.

[00:33:04] Look at how much they're suffering.

[00:33:06] How can any group of people suffer this much if they had done anything wrong?

[00:33:10] And that's the eternal question, right?

[00:33:12] So yeah, so we have these three things.

[00:33:13] We have just the historical weight of voodoo always being connected

[00:33:16] to barbarism, just like general anti-blackness.

[00:33:19] And then just like looking at the misery of Haiti,

[00:33:22] the misery experienced by some Haitians, I should say.

[00:33:24] And they say that essentially the reason behind all of that misery is,

[00:33:28] you know, the fact of voodoo, the fact of this darkness that is

[00:33:32] as this hanging cloud over Haiti, essentially.

[00:33:35] But the cultural and spirit ways of Haiti and Haitian people aside,

[00:33:41] you write a lot in the collection about

[00:33:43] familial relationships as well as relationships between friends,

[00:33:47] as well as some sexual identity stuff that I was not that I was surprised to see.

[00:33:53] But I thought it was very delicate in the way that you handled how

[00:33:58] some people from Caribbean West Indian backgrounds hide the queerness of their

[00:34:04] identity because of the cultural mowers around it.

[00:34:11] And writing those characters, the friends, the boys who are friends,

[00:34:16] especially as well as some of the mother daughter relationships.

[00:34:19] How important is it?

[00:34:21] As a Haitian person, but then also as a writer to render those relationships

[00:34:26] and have those relationships that do speak of community.

[00:34:30] And I guess for lack of a better word, hey, we're just like you in an

[00:34:35] assimilationist type of thing, right?

[00:34:37] I'm sorry, that's an ignorant question.

[00:34:39] Oh, it's not at all.

[00:34:41] I think that it's very important for me to explore these relationships

[00:34:45] because of the fact that we are like other people.

[00:34:50] And I'm speaking about Haitian people and Caribbean people as a monolithic.

[00:34:53] But we are like other people, but at the same time, we are very, very not.

[00:34:57] Like the experience of being Haitian or the experience of being Caribbean is so

[00:35:02] is so and I say this like with all love, it's so strange.

[00:35:06] It's so like we're such a weird group of people in the way that we

[00:35:10] interact with people in the way that we establish relationships.

[00:35:14] Just kind of trying to encapsulate the strangeness of that in relationships

[00:35:19] on the page has always been very, very fascinating to me.

[00:35:23] And I think that the reason why there is always like some sort of like weirdness

[00:35:28] between every single one of the relationships that I portray and each of these stories.

[00:35:33] Not only is it just like narratively interesting for me as a writer to write.

[00:35:37] I think that it's just sort of like it speaks to

[00:35:41] the actual experience of being in a culture that is so

[00:35:46] and then I say this again, lovingly weird, so strange and so distinct.

[00:35:51] So yeah, I think that I'm always concerned with that.

[00:35:53] And I think I'm always concerned with like the I like to call them like

[00:35:56] oblique relationships between people.

[00:35:58] So I think that even though I do write a little bit about mothers and daughters,

[00:36:02] I was really concerned, especially with the story that I read from The

[00:36:05] Oldest Sensation is anger.

[00:36:07] I was really concerned about focusing on the relationship between this

[00:36:10] adoptive child in this biological child and then in other stories in the book.

[00:36:15] I'm concerned about relationships that are a little bit not as straightforward

[00:36:19] as parent, child, even though they are present or sibling sibling.

[00:36:24] I think that I'm always kind of like interested about the strange ways

[00:36:27] that people wind up being related to each other or just close.

[00:36:31] Yeah, or just close exactly.

[00:36:34] Cool.

[00:36:35] So I want to go to a speed round in the game before I let you go for the

[00:36:39] afternoon. What is your favorite book?

[00:36:42] Oh my gosh.

[00:36:43] So I love The God of Small Things by Aaron Dottie Roy.

[00:36:48] And it is definitely a novel that has really influenced the way that I think

[00:36:53] about just literary language.

[00:36:56] And it's set in India from 1950s to the 1990s and encapsulates a lot of political

[00:37:01] shift, and it is just like unabashedly political while still having so much heart.

[00:37:07] I think that there's I just admire it so much.

[00:37:10] I also love The Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

[00:37:14] And I also love Viet Thanh Nguyen's work.

[00:37:16] So I was really, really obsessed with this sympathizer for a while.

[00:37:21] I think that whenever I remember it now, I'm still like just floored by that book

[00:37:27] and the way that just sort of like Vietnamese life and just sort of the

[00:37:29] Vietnamese war is is actualized and and just made very, very, very real in

[00:37:35] the lives of the characters in that book.

[00:37:37] Who is your favorite author?

[00:37:38] So currently I think that my favorite author is Louise Erdrich.

[00:37:41] She is an Indigenous author who is just like phenomenally prolific.

[00:37:45] She started off as a poet, but she's currently writing fiction.

[00:37:49] And again, the methods by which she

[00:37:51] like just like bends language, just like some of the most beautiful

[00:37:55] writing I've ever encountered.

[00:37:56] And then also she works a lot with the folk myths of Indigenous tribes.

[00:38:02] But I think that the way that she is sort of like encountering oral

[00:38:06] traditions and her writing is something that I really, really admire.

[00:38:09] So yeah, I think that she's currently my favorite.

[00:38:11] And because of your love of language and syntax and how you use it

[00:38:15] in which you just answered about your favorite author, who was your favorite poet?

[00:38:20] Oh, so I loved Inez Smith.

[00:38:24] I think that they are, oh, God, like I really don't have many words to.

[00:38:29] I don't even know how to put it into words.

[00:38:31] Just like the depth of feeling that I get from reading their work is just

[00:38:35] like something that I've never really experienced with other written work.

[00:38:38] I'm like, how are you doing this?

[00:38:40] Like they have a gift. It's amazing.

[00:38:43] They do. If money were no option, where would you go?

[00:38:47] What would you do and where would you live?

[00:38:49] Oh my gosh. So if I if money was no option,

[00:38:52] I have been getting like a really serious case of of like wanderlust.

[00:38:57] I want to like explore lots and lots of places.

[00:38:59] But I also have this weird thing with just tourism in general.

[00:39:04] Especially considering like just like the history of tourism in the Caribbean.

[00:39:08] I'm not I have a complicated relationship with tourism.

[00:39:11] But I think that if I could travel anywhere,

[00:39:14] I would travel as many places as I could probably starting with southern India

[00:39:19] and then probably just sort of like working my way slowly around the around

[00:39:24] the globe continent by continent.

[00:39:25] I think that that would be very, very cool.

[00:39:28] That sounds amazing.

[00:39:31] Name three things on your bucket list.

[00:39:33] I want to write a memoir about my father's experience in Haiti, but also

[00:39:39] just sort of like bouncing around the Caribbean as a laborer.

[00:39:43] And then second on my bucket list would be to help my brother with the stream

[00:39:48] that he has of building this sort of engineering school in Haiti for for other

[00:39:53] kids who are really interested in engineering because he's a mechanical

[00:39:55] engineer getting his PhD in Miami.

[00:39:58] And then the third thing on my bucket list,

[00:40:01] I think ultimately like I would really, really love to teach at a university.

[00:40:07] I think there's particularly something lacking in the academic understanding

[00:40:11] of Haiti and I think that that is something that I really, really want to kind

[00:40:15] of like roll my sleeves up and get into eventually.

[00:40:19] What brings you joy?

[00:40:21] Is it too hippie-dippy to say the sun?

[00:40:24] Because I spent six years living in so first I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[00:40:29] And then I was in Iowa, both notoriously very snowy places and also just like the

[00:40:35] I don't know, just like this experience of living places for six years where just

[00:40:40] for half of the year it's just dark and you just have to get used to it.

[00:40:44] Like it gets dark at 3 p.m.

[00:40:45] And that's just your life.

[00:40:47] But now being back in Florida, I'm like, this is I don't even know why I ever

[00:40:51] left a place where the sun is out constantly.

[00:40:55] And whenever it rains here, like every, I guess, like three weeks that it

[00:40:59] rains here, I'm like frowning and I'm pouting.

[00:41:03] But yeah, I think that I'm just really, really grateful for just like the sun

[00:41:07] and just sort of natural beauty.

[00:41:09] I take a lot of natural walks.

[00:41:10] So those things definitely bring me a lot of joy.

[00:41:13] And I didn't realize how much joy until I moved back.

[00:41:17] What brings you peace?

[00:41:18] Being able to be alone.

[00:41:20] I think that this is probably an experience of a lot of people who are

[00:41:23] naturally introverted.

[00:41:24] I think that the only way for me to reset really is to just like completely

[00:41:28] just be alone and in silence.

[00:41:31] I do all of my best work in silence.

[00:41:34] I feel rejuvenated when I am in silence.

[00:41:38] Honestly, like I could be like staring at a wall doing absolutely nothing.

[00:41:42] But if I'm doing it in silence by myself, I feel like I have reset.

[00:41:47] Awesome. And so our game is called

[00:41:50] Rewriting the Classics.

[00:41:51] Classic is however you define it.

[00:41:53] Name one book you wish you would have written.

[00:41:57] Weathering Heights by Charlotte Bronte.

[00:42:00] I think you're me out.

[00:42:04] I like the book, so I'm not mad.

[00:42:06] I love that book.

[00:42:07] I saw it in your face.

[00:42:10] I think that that book has probably had one of the biggest impacts on my life

[00:42:16] as a young reader and just sort of like being able to obviously it's written

[00:42:21] in like that old timey Victorian way that a lot of classics are written in.

[00:42:24] But there's something very almost like

[00:42:27] accessible and penetrable about the language there.

[00:42:30] And I think that I was just really struck by the beauty of that.

[00:42:34] I'd be really, really interested in trying to undertake that same level

[00:42:38] of searching for beauty and building character and building the story that

[00:42:44] spans generations.

[00:42:45] Name one book where you want to change the ending and how would you do it?

[00:42:51] Oh, I would really like to change the ending of the sympathizer,

[00:42:56] not because I completely disliked it, but because I think it might have been too

[00:43:02] much like a setup for a sequel and there was eventually a sequel to the to the novel.

[00:43:07] And I was just like, oh my gosh,

[00:43:08] this would have been such a phenomenal self contained novel.

[00:43:12] I was just like, why didn't you just leave it alone?

[00:43:14] I love that you have strong opinions.

[00:43:16] So I really hope you answer this next question.

[00:43:18] Name a book that you think is overrated and why?

[00:43:22] Oh my God.

[00:43:24] I have to go out to be alive.

[00:43:25] No, no, you don't have to go.

[00:43:30] I think that I'm like, I'm like talking in quieter tones now.

[00:43:36] I'm like, I think that are you familiar with Brit Bennett?

[00:43:39] I feel like it's impossible not to be.

[00:43:41] I am.

[00:43:43] I read the Mothers last year and I really didn't like it at all.

[00:43:51] I thought I thought it was.

[00:43:55] I thought it was heavy handed.

[00:43:57] I thought it was predictable.

[00:43:59] I was really kind of shocked because I had a really hyped it up in my head

[00:44:04] because I'd be I've been like reading reviews.

[00:44:07] But I also I've never I haven't read the The Managing Half yet.

[00:44:11] But obviously I've been here.

[00:44:12] I've been hearing a lot about The Managing Half in general.

[00:44:14] And I was like, oh, like if I'm going to read this novel,

[00:44:16] I kind of want to start with the other work on her resume, I suppose.

[00:44:20] But yeah, I really didn't like the Mothers and I really do think that it's overrated.

[00:44:25] It's very, very.

[00:44:27] It's a very, very breezy read in a way that I don't think it should have been,

[00:44:32] especially considering the subject matter that it handles.

[00:44:35] I was like, this should not be this is this should not feel like a beach read to me.

[00:44:40] But yeah.

[00:44:42] Final question.

[00:44:44] When you are dead and gone and among the ancestors,

[00:44:48] what would you like someone to write about the legacy of words and work that you've left behind?

[00:44:55] Yeah, I would like someone to to write that I moved them in some way.

[00:45:01] I think that sometimes, especially in

[00:45:04] the kind of irony obsessed culture that we live in, where earnestness is kind of seen as a weakness.

[00:45:13] I think that sometimes like as a modern writer, it feels a little too ambitious

[00:45:19] or too egotistical to say that you're trying to move people when you write.

[00:45:23] But I think I really I really want that.

[00:45:25] I want part of my legacy to be when I read the things that this person wrote,

[00:45:31] the things that this author wrote, I felt moved.

[00:45:33] And I think that that is like doubly important to me,

[00:45:36] considering just how much I love and care about the group of people that I'm writing about.

[00:45:40] Big thank you to Julianna Lamy for being here today on Black and Published.

[00:45:44] Make sure you check out Julianna's debut short story collection.

[00:45:48] You are watching from the sand out now from Red Hen Press.

[00:45:53] And if you're not following Julianna, check out her website.

[00:45:56] It's Julianna Lamy dot com.

[00:46:00] That's our show for the week.

[00:46:02] If you like this episode and want more Black and Published,

[00:46:06] head to our Instagram page.

[00:46:08] It's at Black and Published and that's BLK and Published.

[00:46:13] There I've posted a bonus clip from my interview with Julianna about the new

[00:46:18] novel she's working on.

[00:46:19] Make sure you check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

[00:46:23] I'll highlight y'all next week when our guests will be Vanessa Riley,

[00:46:27] author of the novel Queen of Exiles.

[00:46:31] I've always loved Regency Romance.

[00:46:33] I believe Jane Austen was my gateway drug.

[00:46:36] And when I read Sanditon, which is her

[00:46:39] unfortunately unfinished novel, the richest woman in the book is a

[00:46:42] lot of women from West Indies and everyone is scheming to marry her

[00:46:47] because of money, money trumps race.

[00:46:51] That's next week on Black and Published.

[00:46:53] I'll talk to you then. Peace.