ENGENDERING THE NATIONAL HISTORY OF HAITI IN EDWIDGE DANTICAT’S KRICK? KRACK!
ENGENDERING THE NATIONAL HISTORY OF HAITI IN EDWIDGE DANTICAT’S KRICK? KRACK!

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore how the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, who is a part of the Haitian diaspora in the United States, takes issue with the Haitian versions of Modernity and nationalism. Danticat’s collection of short stories entitled Krick? Krack! shows from a feminist perspective how Haitian history of the 20th century was negatively affected by some misguided efforts of Haitian leaders to modernize the country. Edwidge Danticat is one of the most acclaimed female writers from the region, and her writing has been fiercely committed to the recovery of the voices of Haitian women who were particularly maligned by the ideology of progress and nationalism. Her novels and short stories illustrate Alison Donnell’s comment that ‘‘[regardless] of what role or status [women] had in their traditional society, inclusion into expanding Western sphere in their countries usually meant loss of status [...]” (2006: 139). I will further argue that ‘‘for Caribbean women as historical subjects the struggles of nationalism were always gendered” (Donnell 2006: 147). Nationalism, as Boyce Davies persuasively contends, is ‘‘a male formulation” and ‘‘a male activity with women distinctly left out or peripheralized in the various national constructs” (1994: 12). Using selected stories from this particular collection, I will demonstrate that Danticat engenders the recent history of Haiti by offering both a feminist and post-nationalist understanding of nation and culture. She exposes Haitian nationalism as exceptionally misogynist, as it not only deprived Haitian women of their status and erased them from Haitian historiography, but also actively persecuted them in the name of the Western ideal of progress.

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