“Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man’s face. I felt like saying: “What in God’s name are you doing to yourself.”  Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

Getting lost with in these pages as an early teen opened the doors to unfiltered emotion, understanding and duplicity. Through his story, I found mine.  These words not only uncovered the underlying’s of my present but those which had yet to be lived. 

Growing up in a predominantly black country it was easy to overlook the obvious. I was not unaware of the color of my skin, it simply didn’t consciously dictate the lens with which I had begun to understand the world around me. When I began university, I was met with a very different landscape; one saturated with people who visually held little resemblance to those whom had colored my journey thus far.

My father and I drove deeper and deeper into the hills of Pennsylvania. The air was mossy and foreign. With each second that passed by, my heart’s pace would quicken. As I let myself ingest the greenery which enveloped us, I found a fleeting security.   Armed with a map in hand, in search of the town I would one day call home, I found solace in my naiveté…

Moving to the middle-of-no-where Pennsylvania was probably the first time in my life that no longer felt as part of the majority. Now, the norms were olive toned and spoke in foreign garbled tones labeled “Americanized”. They were completely consumed by their milieu, as I had been of my own. With each step, and experience I became more and more aware of the skin I was in.

I was homesick within hours of stepping on campus. From the first day of orientation, to my first day of classes I couldn’t help but gaze at their monotony. My dark foreign tone was sparsely sprinkled across campus. Which brought about slight discomfort as even those which resembled me seemed as distant as the Caucasians which made up the majority.  I felt lost and exposed.  I was alone in a pool of  American students .I assumed their stares were as well intentioned as my own, as I couldn’t help but gawk at their mannerisms and philosophies while attempting to uncover their mystery.

While I was met with initial confusion and anxiety, my assimilation was seamless. As I quickly learned my discernment, education, and past experiences molded a fitting foundation. This became the natural step to my journey.  Each step, a step into the unknown... Unaware of how intricately prepared I had been to a soak up and unwarily understand that which I was met. 

Ayiti Cheri,

I arrived young and unaware, curious but also eager to quickly get what I had dismissed as an experiment over with. Haiti for a summer and then back to normal, to running water, 24/7 electricity and no darn mosquitoes. So imagine my surprise when my parents decided they liked being back home enough to stay. Fast forward through my six year stay to today and my mind often returns to that period. There are times when it is more present than my actual reality. I often dream of returning. This desire is always met with raised eye brows and looks of incredulity, the most comical of which come from our fellow Haitians, followed by the question: What are you going to do there? I always respond live. Live like the millions of others who inhabit the island live.

I don't know how to explain that I'm in love. That I could not leave you behind, boxed away in some dark corner of my mind as a time that was, a memory too infrequently unearthed any more than I could will myself to stop breathing. I am in love and like all real love I have accepted all of you: the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. And like all things beloved, when you have been apart too long the desire to be reunited becomes a gnawing, gaping, chasm between you and any real lasting sense of contentment.

More importantly, how do I explain the gift those six years turned out to be? My love, I would first have to explain how transformative it was spending some of my most formative years with you. How I know I am a better version of myself for having known you, experienced you. How I am much more self-aware, compassionate and better prepared for the uniquely wearying experience of being black in America. I know you wonder, how hard could living in America really be?  I’m not sure I possess the words that would accurately convey what I feel without sounding overly sensitive, ungrateful and more than a little entitled but I will try. 

Being born in America, if you are born black, gives you more than citizenship. And that something more is not a thing to be prized or cherished. You are handed labels without ever being consulted, you are branded different without ever being afforded the opportunity to define what makes you different. And if you are born a black woman, you are handed a whole other set of labels. At the age of 10, I was on the cusp of beginning to truly grasp what being black in America meant when suddenly we were uprooted and moved to Haiti. Those six year with you were a reprieve, a brief respite and I would later come to find, a shoring up of strength and self- worth so that I could better weather living black in America.

You are my comfort and shield against the sexualization, mammification, and overall dismissal of black women. You are my peace when I would rage against being followed in a department store or having my accomplishments be dismissed as affirmative action. You are the friend who understands how tiresome it is to play black ambassador, how tiresome it is to monitor your speech, actions, mannerisms, to be quiet when you would speak for fear of being branded the ‘angry black woman’. You are the lover who knows intimately all the ways I am different without questioning it, who knows I do not fit neatly into a stereotype, statistic or consensus box, that my blackness is not a one size fits all. You are the mother who knows I will not live down to anyone’s low expectations for I am the daughter of the First Black Republic. You are the father who knows why I say I am Haitian with such pride, and that this pride is not a rejection of black America. 

Ayiti cheri, you are home. And how I long to return to you, to where I can simply be, to where I can simply live. Until that day comes, I carry you with me in my mind, in my spirit and in my heart.

With Enduring Love,

-Charlene 

Poetry over prose is to ride over drown. 

I am at a fragile age of self-discovery. I am at an age when the most subtle changes in perception or the most seemingly insignificant decisions could define who I am for the rest of my life. Not to sound overly dramatic, but us women fresh out of college obviously have a lot more on our plates than figuring out the next step in our educational or career paths. It is at this stage in our lives that some of us will be more acutely aware of external and internal changes, some of which are explicitly outside of our control, that lead us to question…everything. It is when some of us will take a moment to witness our evolution, stepping outside of our skin to observe our metamorphosis in slow motion. It is at this point that some may decide to observe mindlessly, letting themselves be overtaken by the motion of things, while others would be knee deep into the arduous undertaking of trying to shift this process in their favor, rejoicing in every little victory knowing very well that it is impossible to win over it all. But that does not matter one bit. 

In other words, it is the stage at which some might choose “poetry over prose” - not an original notion but a very novel application of it. 

We all know that poetry is the most stubborn, unpredictable, and stereotypically capricious woman of all. But she can also be the most daring, the most passionate, and certainly the most selfless.  Those women who choose to live poetically, or embody poetry in every moment in their lives, are constantly fighting a current. They are fighting themselves and the oh-so human tendencies to give in to the narrow normalities of the world. They are fighting the people in their lives, quite often the ones that they hold or should hold the dearest, who insist on pressuring them to live according to their expectations. They are fighting intangible, macro social constructs that permeate every facet of their lives threatening to adulterate their own supposedly “rebellious” constructs. They are fighting the urge to just give up whenever they think of all of the wrong in this world and theirs. But there is no such a poet that would tell you that writing poetry was easy, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that living poetically would be just as hard, if not harder. 

Living poetically is to ride that current, gracefully, or awkwardly, surpassing every bump in the way, even those low dips that threaten to bury you underneath the ocean forever. Living poetically is to think with your head, your heart and your guts as you imagine a road map across an endless body of water and not giving one thought to its endlessness for fear of it slipping venomous doubt into your core. Living poetically is to support and challenge countless other women stranded as you are, trying and failing and trying again to find their footing on that narrow and obscure material negligently given to them at the start of their journey. Living poetically is also about drowning a number of times and having the humility to let yourself be picked up from the depth. 

I once saw myself drown and it was, sadly, a man that fished me out. The most tender moment was right before I panicked. Right about when everything seemed to be moving in slow motion as I was observing myself running out of breath. The tips of my fingers were reaching out for the surface. My legs hung on their own, swaying lifelessly with the movement of the water. My eyes stinging as they peered through a blurry shade of blue was the only indication that I was indeed still alive. I stood still in time … until my surroundings collapsed as the man dived in to rescue me. It has been the most vividly poetic moment of my life. It never occurred to me until now that that moment keeps happening again and again in my life and in the life of so many others. Now that we are noticing every pore in our bodies, every crack in our shells. Now that we are graced with enlightenment. Now that we have to make that choice.

Let us hope that we are among those that harbor that craving within, even subconsciously. Let us hope that we are among the chosen few who can and will choose poetry. 

- Patricia

Growing up in Haiti, my siblings and I had the opportunity to go to a small Christian international school (CLCS), taught in English, where many missionary kids (known as MKs) from different parts of the world also attended. While we were fully inundated in Haitian culture at home and throughout the weekends, during school, we had a taste of something different. At an early age, our exposure to the U.S through both the education system and our summer travel there, led us to cultivate an awareness and appreciation of American culture. While these experiences shape and shake you, it didn’t fully prepare me for the trials and rigors of being an international student in the US.

As I look back at my CLCS experience in Haiti, I cannot help but reminisce on the feelings the experience evoked. I am grateful to my parents, who patriotically decided to have all of my siblings in Haiti, but nevertheless chose for us attend CLCS both for its Christian values and for the American style education it allowed us to pursue. My experience was one of being caught in two worlds, worlds that interacted only when necessary; I was an American at school and a Haitian at home.

 There was an endless tug between my worlds as I went back and forth, and at points, the lines would blur.    At home my siblings and I would dialogue in English, despite still living and breathing our Haitian surroundings.  The MKs would go back to their North American, European, or African value systems after school, while my siblings and I and the other Haitian students would return to our Haitian homes. We lived in a dichotomy. I remember going to school in pants when we had a sports activity, but due to our societal expectations my mother would always making sure that I changed into a skirt before returning home, because after school we  walked by the Christian mission where to wear pants would be unacceptable.

Among our Haitian friends, we didn’t completely fit in enough because we were the kids that attended the “American school.” When we were in the US, among our Haitian-American cousins, we didn’t completely fit in either because we were the cousins from Haiti that spoke English well ,knew enough of the culture, but had a stricter Haitian upbringing, which didn’t always allow us to be “cool.”

I remember being stuck with my elder brothers in the US during the 1994 Haiti embargo and going to school in Florida for a short timeframe and doing relatively well in school but taking time to socially fit in.

For an international student this experience is unique.  Whether working through getting a visa  to financing your U.S education, this is only a fragment of the experience. As an international student born and raised in Haiti, it was while attending school in America,  when I realized that there were differences between how I perceived the world and what others’ perceived of the world.

 Maybe I was just too naive, but somehow I guess I took for granted my acute awareness of many cultures. I thought that it was normal to be aware of cultures and differences. For the first time in my life I had people asking me questions like: Where is Haiti? Is it in Africa? How come you speak English so well? Hmm, you don’t sound Haitian? Aww, you’re from Haiti, I hear it’s very poor there – how was life like for you? It took me a while to realize that my culture and experience, which I had assumed that everyone was aware of, required some major explaining for many.

 I also had to understand what it was like living away from my home in Haiti and integrating with the American culture while simultaneously learning to keep and respect my own nature. I wasn’t just on vacation and couldn’t just dismiss the differences and/or misunderstandings and I wasn’t just reading about U.S. history in a classroom - this was real life , in a real culture where people had different understandings of my culture and theirs and me vice versa.  Did I ever get it 100% right? No, but I think going through the experience of being an international student , as many would attest, is learning a lesson of a lifetime, expanding your view of the world, and reconciling the differences between your beliefs and experiences:

·         From dealing with roommates with different backgrounds,
·          To experiencing snow for the first time, to missing Haitian food and wishing you could be home,
·          Navigating two cultures, describing things in cre-english (mixture of Creole and English) without even realizing it,
·          Becoming too American for your parents but still being too Haitian in many ways,
·         Being in awe of the questions asked of you then somehow finding the “right” or fitting answer, celebrating your culture at international student activities,
·         Sharing your experience with others that genuinely want to learn about your culture, dismissing ignorant comments,
·         Learning about the American culture through the eyes of people from different backgrounds and experiences,
·         Trying new things,  

and finally, just appreciating the experience as a whole.

-Sophia