{"id":19184,"date":"2017-01-09T17:37:20","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/?p=19184"},"modified":"2022-11-09T12:12:12","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T11:12:12","slug":"jean-claude-charles-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/jean-claude-charles-haiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean-Claude CHARLES – Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Jean-Claude<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Jean-Claude Charles is born in 1949 in Port-au-Prince, HaIti, he died in Paris in 2008. Writer,\u00a0he has also collaborated in the daily newspaper 'Le Monde' where he writes travel stories. He was one of the contributors for the Revue Noire issue RN06-09 about Caribbean Islands<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Writings : 'Le corps noir', Ed Hachette POL (1980), 'De si jolies petites plages', Ed Stock (1982), 'Bamboola Bamboche', Ed Barrault (1984), 'Manhattan Blues', Ed Barrault (1984), 'Ferdinand, je suis \u00e0 Paris', Ed Barrault (1987), 'L\u2019Odeur des putois dans la for\u00eat', (1993).
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***
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In these Lands of Caribbean Childhood<\/h1>\n

[Original unpublished texts by Jean-Claude Charles written for Revue Noire
in the issues\u00a0RN 06 and RN 09 in September 1992-June 1993, unpublished texts written in French translated by Sarah Downing and John Taylor]
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

1 \u2013 Dances of the Archipelago<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
In these lands of Caribbean childhood, between the cheerful and unjust Cuba of Batista and the island of social justice drifting towards the intolerable iron-hardness of the (now aging) \u00ab Barbu \u00bb (Bearded one) ; in a world where messianic ideals are collapsing, it was not, at first, from images but from sounds, that came the revelation of our common History. To the dances of the archipelago, reverberated, what in creole - whatever the variations - was consistently called the \u00ab Tipiko \u00bb, the different musics of Cuba ; and this two-syllable word alone was enough to make us dream. The images came later : firstly photography and later television. Of course, there was Wilfredo Lam, but what about\u00a0 \u00ab foreign painting \u00bb ? In a country where local images were inflated to block out, almost completely, the pictures from outside. While an insane dictator, wearing the glasses and hat of Baron Samedi, tore bodies and souls into shreds ; terrifying the Anglo-cartesians in Washington and fascinating the Ethiopian Hail\u00e9 S\u00e9lassi\u00e9 to the point of undertaking a voyage to a country not unlike his own, there were many of us to fantasize about an historic awakening instigated by the appearance of the heroes of the Sierre Maestra. And there, once again the pre-dominance of sounds : from the crystal sets to the big American apparatus that we watched as well as listened to, (some-gag-poking around at the back of the set to see if someone was there). Then, in the homes of certain privileged people, there was television. For me, literature came later : Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n, Guillermo Cabrera infante... even later, the sculptor Cardenas. And the writers Jos\u00e9 Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo Arenas...
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2 \u2013 Caribbean -\u00a0The Identity Cops<\/h2>\n

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I have often wondered why the Caribbean Islands colonized by the British have never given birth to anything comparable to the Sant\u00e8r\u00eda of Cuba, the Voodoo of Haiti, the candombl\u00e9 of Brazil. All these forms of worship imported from Africa, re-adapted once arrived. (Of course, \u201cre-adaptation \u00bb is not the exact concept.) Digging into - as it is strangely put - the question of the Caribbean identity, one cannot avoid this dissimilarity. And that Jamaica has produced the Rasta movement has got nothing to do with it. And what signification should be given to the fact that Cuba (formerly colonized by the Spanish), Haiti (by the French), Brazil (by the Portuguese) form the parts of the three modern day Chinese puzzles : revolution, dictatorship, capitalism ?
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
And what on earth is Brazil doing in all that ? The writer Ren\u00e9 Depestre maintained that this country was part of the \u00ab Great Caribbean \u00bb. The academic who underlined this sent us an interesting study of \u2018Juan Bobo, Jan S\u00f2t, Ti Jan and Bad John\u2019 (*), mythic figures from Cuba, Puerto-Rico, Haiti and the West Indies called \u00ab petites \u00bb (small) who are given a renewed, singularly rich treatment by modernity and their alter-ego in the Brazilian character of Pedro Malasarte. Reminder, if it is necessary, of the existence of a Caribbean identity, certainly incongruous, plural, complex but also coherent, alive.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
This identity, more or less stable, more or less changeable, it is possible to grasp neither in terms of strict geo-maritime proximity - the 'kol\u00e9-s\u00e9r\u00e9' (squeezed tight creole dance) of what is called \u00ab the islands \u00bb, nor in terms which are stupidly administratives : \u00ab your papers, please \u00bb . From Louisiana and Florida towards Guiana, the cultural circuit is both dangerous and rigorous, the slide towards the continental coast, towards Brazil as logical as it is crazy, never blurred. And what are these migrating peoples supposed to do with the questions of the customs officers, calculations about machinery equipment, the coast-guard watches, the immigration officials interrogations ? Nothing.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Even less so, the creative artists. They are overflowing : from their origins, their biographic journeys, from national Histories. Jean-Michel Basquiat, from Brooklyn, New York moved up to Manhattan - originally from Haiti and Puerto Rico - dead before his time, alive for having painted his existence on every practicable surface, is there to prove it. You just have to open your eyes to the images.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
In the same way, in the field of cinema in this end of century period, Raoul Peck, an ex-New York taxi driver, born in Port-au-Prince, young emigrant in Zaire and France, based in Berlin, returned to Paris. Lately reported to be filming in Santo Domingo, a celestial nomad, crossing countries in the same way Godard said cinema does, that is to say : a film can never be anything other than just one shot after another. He reinvented in \u2018Haitian Corner\u2019 the city where the richest country in the world meets the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, that crazy megapolis clinging onto the Atlantic, the mirror against which all kinds of wounded larks still come to hurl themselves against : Nouy\u00f2k, Nueva\u00a0York\u2026
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
The identity cops are going to get exasperated : they move everywhere, by necessity and\u2026 \u00ab for a laugh \u00bb ! It\u2019s not different from what Jean Bernab\u00e9, Patrick Chamoiseau and Rapha\u00ebl Confiant spoke about, adventuring into a perspective that only those who do not pay attention to the movement of people and ideas would find excessive. In their \u2018Elogium to Creolis\u2019 : \u00ab The child born and living in Beijing, of a German married to a Haitian will be torn between several languages, several histories, caught between the torrential ambiguity of an identity in mosaic. This child must, under the threat of death of creativity, think it through in all its complexity. \u00bb (**)
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Visual arts and literature are already witnesses to this reality. Where should Kamau Brathwaite be placed ? In Jamaica where he lives and to which is bound his current image ? Or in Barbados where he comes from originally and which is an integral part of him ? The phenomenon of dispersion will certainly increase as it goes along and with it, will be born books, images without identity, carried along by the crossings, the journeys, the flow of signs without passports, the metaphors of dogs without collars in the hustle and bustle of the world and which will be rediscovered, nevertheless in the choice of creative artists, stubborn and yet open to the adventure of a new humanity.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
(*) \u2018Juan Bobo, Jan S\u00f2t, Ti Jan and Bad John\u2019 by Maximilien Laroche,H. Nigel Thomas, Euridice Figueiredo. Ed. Grelca, University Laval, Quebec, 1991.
(**) \u2018Elogium of creolism\u2019 by Jean Bernab\u00e9, Patrick Chamoiseau and Rapha\u00ebl Confiant, Gallimard, 1989.
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3 \u2013 Let\u2019s Look for Mathilde, 26 Years Old<\/h2>\n

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Face up to the striking figures. Let the world hurl the figures out. There are characters who disappear never to come back again.
Look for Mathilde, 26 years old, average build, curly lion\u2019s mane, quite plump, quite beautiful, yes, you wouldn't have seen her by any chance ? Behind the plague suddenly there appear things that are ill-perceived, badly expressed. A hail of clich\u00e9s : that the American marines had introduced homosexuality and the virus to Haiti in 1915 exactly \u2013 so Daddy says.
Before this date the 'Masisi'\u00a0 * did not exist. Which intellectual would dare to take on the burden of research into the leisure time of our slave societies ? Certain voodoo practices ? The fear of being ashamed to breathe confronted with the abject work of burdening the Negros with guilt by ideologists hiding behind the veil of Science finished by reaching our consciences. Thus no-ones dares to recall a widespread bisexuality throughout the Caribbean. Morals, unable to trust politics or social justice, rush towards the abysses where the Devil has always lurked. Only artists do not let themselves be intimidated. Well, many, not all. Often humour is involved : the painter T\u00e9l\u00e9maque titled one of his works against AIDS : \u2019Import-Export\u2019.
That reminds me of a brothel, wedged between the sea and a pathology laboratory under the coconut palms, that popular rumour snapped its fingers at ; I heard it said there that\u2026 \u201deven the coconut palms have AIDS\u201d.
It was not far from the side of surprising sign : \u2019God\u2019s Desire\u201d.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
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4 \u2013 \u201dI Never Played With my Father\u201d<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
I remember the women with or without \u00ab madras \u00bb, with or\u00a0 without scarves ; encamped since the night of slavery and colonisation, in the middle of the days, in the middle of the nights ; standing there obstinately deaf to anything that tried to negate us or pretending to lower their eyes or otherwise...
At a respectable distance from a Europe that, through Engels, Wilhelm Reich and others, wished to develop a virulent anti-family critique through which the ideologists of the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s would learn that institutions such as school, church etc... were \u00ab cells of ideological reproduction \u00bb ... Behind every Caribbean artist there is a mother against whom for better of for worse - no-one has ever thought of resisting.
Race blending has been inherited through her, languages (mother tongues - so aptly named), games...
As for the men, they bivouaked in other fields ; of battle, sugar cane, in the middle of the silences or the futile discussions, of feelings of humiliation or arrogance. Sometimes protecting their own by an oblique presence from the cross-roads, in prison or as slaughterers, beggars or manufacturers of beggars - or attempting to reinvent absence.
A friend told me : \u00ab I never played with my father \u00bb . Familiar words in fathers\u2019 mouths : \u00ab So go and ask your mother \u00bb ... I don\u2019t claim that it was like this every where. I\u2019m just saying that it prevailed.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

* Masisi\u00a0means faggots in Creole<\/p>\n

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5 \u2013 Letter To Vincent and To the Others<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
One leaves from Berlin. One leaves from Paris, to go to Fort-de-France. One stays a few days. One meets fascinating people. In Martinique I spoke about writing, cinema, love. And I remembered that Sh\u0153lcher was in the Panth\u00e9on. There were many of us to merit being in the Panth\u00e9on, I said. \u00ab All the same, it has to be a good speculation \u00bb.
Someone hurled laughing. Days and nights we spent talking.
We keep alog-book.
The man who has seen. For him, from now on, to tell what he saw. I am satisfied simply to relay it. Every man of woman in the Caribbean should have the courage to say one simple thing : I will not leave this world without having tried to throw some light on to one or two seemingly mysterious matters. Meeting by day, not far from la Savanne, with Patrick Chamoiseau.
At the bookshop where, I signed my books ; with Suzy Landau, at the initiative of the cinema festival images Cara\u00efbes, who first winner was my friend from Berlin, Raoul Peck.
Without mentioning the bookseller, Philippe Vall\u00e9e, a good natured man straight out of a Woody Allen film, an ink taster.
But by talking about those who have a name, one runs the risk of forgetting the anonymous people. It\u2019s part of my character, I really like those people of whom C\u00e9saire said he was \u00ab the mouth \u00bb. If I recall correctly, \u00ab I am the mouth of those who have no mouth \u00bb...<\/p>\n

Meeting by night. I remember the vagabonds who, seen from afar, were telling each other stories, one of them mimed the scoring of a goal and I thought it was a reconstruction of football match. Well, it wasn\u2019t.
It was the story of a beed room scene : the Guy\u2019s foot was a penis, the ball god knows what, in any case, it was a goal. (Later, walking about with Xavier Orville in the street of Stuttgart, we laughed about this way of telling stories).
There were also the near miss meeting. With Vincent Placoly ; he waited for me in the lobby of the hotel, la Bateli\u00e8re, and I was waiting for his call - I had told him that I would work in my room until his arrival downstairs and he should call me so I would go down straight away. We were supposed to have breakfast together. One of those absurd stories of writers mutually intimidated of absent - minded... Wherever you are, Vincent, up there of down there, in paradise or nowhere, greetings.
I realize that I am mixing up two different journeys. I might as well quote C\u00e9saire ; \u00ab At the end of the early morning... Go away, I said to him, cop mug, cow face, go away. I hate the flunkeys of order and the cockchafers of hope. Go away, bad luck 'gri-gri', bug of young whipper-snapper \u00bb. The first page of the Cahier (note book), when one rereads it, always leads to the last page : ...\u00ab The evil tongue of the night \u00bb ... Impossible to stop at a single word, one always raises on to what follows.\u00a0Towards the rest, Towards the end. Half a century later (the first version was published in 1939, in Paris, in the review 'Volont\u00e9s') : note book of a return to the native land \u00bb saved my life.
These thoughts come to me, in the warm air. As if I was walking around la Savanne. From my very first day in Martinique, I liked to wander around there. Chez Gaston, the only restaurant open in the city after a certain hour, is a blessing. From literature to rum, do we really change subjects ?<\/p>\n

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6 \u2013 Life Jazzes Like That<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
When the situation of the slave changed, an essential factor played its part in this change : the traditional relationship that African societies have with death. This relationship was preserved by slaves torn from their native lands. It does not belong to any one ethnic group in particular, nor to an Africa perceived through a hallucinatory impetus set in motion by literary production, the chronicles of travellers, the observations of navigators (vague space, blurred, laying itself open to a globalizing narration, space without history, without a pluralized anchorage point). A place strange and foreign. This relationship comes from the respect of a world order where the individual and ancestors, land and the celestial powers, participate in a harmonious entirety. It was just as much \u2013 in different guises \u2013 Yoruba (Nigeria, Benin) as Congo (Za\u00efre, Congo, Angola) or Mandingo (Mali, Guinea, Senegal). Formulated on the Black Continent, transferred to the Americas, this relationship with death was to undergo transformations determined by the specific histories of the social formulations. Beyond it is an imaginary edifice which is in question. It shows what an active re-appropriation of myths is capable of. The forms of the struggle of the slaves cannot be understood in any other way: from suicide (\u00ab to return Guinea \u00bb) to the warrior attacks which so marked the French armies in Santo Domingo (\u00ab the canon balls are made of dust \u00bb). From the time of negro-spirituals and blues to modern jazz, black mythologies reverberate, with these double ideas : memory and invention : \u00ab The hammers keep ringing on somebody's coffin... \/ The hearse wheels ringing on somebody's graveyard\u2026 \u00bb
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There is, amongst the Gwo'Ka in Guadaloupe, the same insistence in grappling, in a single movement, with both life and death. Go listen and see Guy Konk\u00e8c one evening shaking them up. Gwo'ka. A mass of agitated histories. Konk\u00e8t's performances always have their origins in esthetic rebellion. The man is seized by the rigor of seven rhythms : Mind\u00e9, Tumblack, L\u00e9roz, Kaladja, Roul\u00e9, Graj and Padjembel. And life jazzes like that. Rural music anchored in urban daily life but the myth is never faraway : \u00ab Pot-la t\u00e9 f\u00e9min... The door was cfosed \/ How on earth did you get in ? \u00bb As Jean Vautrin said, \u00ab a music to answer to. \u00bb Music of humour and challenge, but also of dash, of extreme tenderness. Both war and peace, Guy Konk\u00e8t likes to say.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
The son of woman who works in the sugar cane fields in Guadaloupe, he keeps alive a tradition that was forbidden at the time of slavery and bivouacs in the future : to the secular dialogue between the boula (solo drum), Konk\u00e8t adds drums, a piano, a bass guitar -whatever he wants. He's the boss. And as Guadaloupe is not the only one to dream about changing the dream, he travels with pleasure to Ha\u00efti for the repertory and to the Black Americans for some harmonies, refusing to replace \u00ab doudou \u00bb by \u00ab comrade \u00bb, to shout out slogans, manifestos. If this music is one of revote, that is in the energy itself. When distress becomes the creative emotion. The joyous energy of despair which livens you up in double quick time : \u00ab a Ka, it's a Ka, it's not anything else \u00bb.<\/p>\n

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7 \u2013 Diaspora<\/h2>\n

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\u00ab Negros gathering into insurgent groups must immediately be dispersed by means of staffs and clubs... \u00bb, Xavier de Charlevoix, Saint-Domingue, 1731.<\/p>\n

A little later, in 1764, \u00ab the Minister, having been informed of the disturbances occasioned, in France, by Negros and Mulattos, whose great numbers are increasing daily, orders each and every one of them to return to the colonies whence they came... \u00bb, Gazette de Saint-Domingue.
Towards the end of the next century, they still gather into insurgent groups : \u00ab In the evening, when strolling through the countryside, one could hear the joyous cries they made whilst dancing a few disorderly quadrilles, as well as the harsh sounds of their orchestra... \u00bb
A century later, in Paris, in London, at noon or at midnight, more of less anywhere and everywhere in the city, in those mauve-colored of neon-flagellated places, take a good look, listen carefully. They gather into insurgent groups, and the public applauds.<\/p>\n

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8 \u2013 Blues<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Here\u2019s the alphabet of our love affairs
others will come to pass
they will never be decomposed
there will never be enough room
for our love affairs<\/p>\n

There are also assassinations<\/p>\n

I will always remember assassinations
I remember the assassination of
Michael Smith in a cemetery in Kingston
stoned to death
imagine
let my mouth be in peace
imagine Mutaruka stoned to death<\/p>\n

At the beginning Africa
was Africa
this by no means implies
a return to
the mythical Origin
here\u2019s the cross of your father
here\u2019s the cross of your mother<\/p>\n

I have seen the boat people
from Cuba
from Haiti
I have seen wandering
between the Bahamas Porto Rico Miami<\/p>\n

I have seen dogs wandering
children of the Revolution and of the Dictatorship<\/p>\n

I have seen flowers growing on the dung heaps
of America and other dung heaps<\/p>\n

One day I saw the Caribbean Islands
in the Ivory Coast
in Agni country
in Betti\u00e9
on the banks of the river<\/p>\n

I saw Basquiat
lying on the lawn
his face turned upwards to the sky
portrait of Basquiat
happy man<\/p>\n

I have seen coups d\u2019\u00e9tat
in Ha\u00efti
in Grenada
invasions
don\u2019t feel like speaking
about coup d\u2019\u00e9tat
about invasions<\/p>\n

By speaking and speaking about Creole-ness
we end up pleonasming
one day someone told me
that I was a naive writer
naive my ass<\/p>\n

The model of Kapitalism
is in Brazil
are there any questions ?<\/p>\n

One day<\/p>\n

I dreamed of raising pigs<\/p>\n

I dreamed of being Henri Christophe
a monarch attached
to the rites of the Master
of being Dessalines proclaimed Emperor<\/p>\n

Get through the night of servitude<\/p>\n

Every Caribbean creative artist knows
well
there is a day when the hand trembles
drawing a line by hand
becomes hard becomes hell
a day comes
the line of celestial rectitude<\/p>\n

What does exile teach ?<\/p>\n

That a child a woman a man
and so what if the order is conventional
capable of leaving his or her country behind
is of redoubtable strength<\/p>\n

I remember Max Frisch, a Swiss,
would say :<\/p>\n

\u00ab Does one have a country only when one loves it ?
And if it does not love you ? \u00bb<\/p>\n

My friend Frank\u00e9tienne
tells crazy stories
he says
this country is finished
he says so and he\u2019s there
here
in this country<\/p>\n

My friend Michael Dash<\/p>\n

bites his tongue seven times
before saying
I\u2019m a Jamaican
I\u2019m a Haitian
I\u2019m a Trinidadian
I\u2019m from London
at the end I don\u2019t really know<\/p>\n

My friend T\u00e9l\u00e9maque
ah should I really speak
about T\u00e9l\u00e9maque ?<\/p>\n

As to Basquiat
the dead man who returns
the dead always return hey<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

9 \u2013 Playing Bones<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
For Jo<\/p>\n

What to do
with these six
baby-goat kneecaps
but are they your
kneecaps
sweet little goat
with seven
little bones
that into heaven
we threw
where the devil\u2019s the six
the front side\u2019s up
the back side\u2019s up
hey you
you\u2019re farce yourself
come on now get upset
stupid little baby-goat
so where\u2019s the six
come on now here\u2019s an S
here\u2019s an I
but you\u2019re missin\u2019an S
you sweet little bitch
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
(Kazoo hey poem)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

10 \u2013 Rivers and streams<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
you leave
your river
you leave
your stream
you go away
on the road
all kinds of people
ask you
all kinds of
questions
hey sir
what do you do
in life
I\u2019m married
to a stream
hey lady
what do you do
in life
I\u2019m married
to a river
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Jean-Claude Charles<\/p>\n

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***
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The\u00a0Ancestors' Ship On Fire<\/h1>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\u2013 But this Caribbean so choke with the dead
that when I would melt in emerald water,
whose ceiling rippled like a silk tent,
I saw them corals : brain, fire, sea Jam,
dead-men's-fingers, and then, the dead men.
[Derek Walcott, in 'The Shoener Flight']
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u00a0would be a story in which cockfights would be included, superposed on images of\u00a0offended virgins in thieves' dens, offerings to uncertain gods, between rivers and\u00a0forests, under not permanently extinct volcanos, blue skies laced with clouds heavy\u00a0with ravaging cyclones, and disarming gestures of tenderness, set to bolero tunes rising\u00a0from verandas hidden behind the hibiscus clumps, with the scene of lilac and jasmine\u00a0on Concordia Street, in Ponce, and uncontrollable fits of rage, flashbacks, strange\u00a0lapses of memory, and one could go on talking like this , on and on, until the day\u00a0dawns.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
It\u00a0would be a story, as if the day were nor dawning, with news releases. Cuba :\u00a0\u00ab Economic collapse of the island between now and July, according to a supposedly\u00a0confidential document. \u00bb Haiti : \u00ab Everything has failed. \u00bb Jamaica : \u00ab The National\u00a0People's Parry (in power) won the early legislative elections yesterday with 61 % of the\u00a0vote. Violent confrontations have taken place in the capital\u2026\u00a0\u00bb The backdrop : a\u00a0mountain of deaths in Kingston, the city of all the dangers, as has always been said. As if\u00a0a city without danger were not a misunderstanding.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
It\u00a0would be a story with the cold rhetoric of news releases, with fragments of tales taken\u00a0from school textbooks or from travelogues, or from not arial acts, and full of private\u00a0drama, of pains perhaps to the creative artist 's advantage and thus compensated for \u2013\u00a0perhaps. Revolution, dictatorship , capitalism, efforts towards democratization, advances,\u00a0regressions, a step forward , a step backward, the main figures of the Caribbean political\u00a0arena would (or would not ) stand up to the brush, the chisel, the lens, the sentence . It\u00a0doesn't matter.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
They would be things (call them works of art, if you're in the mood) : a painting, a\u00a0sculpture, a photograph , a film, a text. These creative artists did not wait for the\u00a0collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the Berlin wall, ideologies, the whole kit and caboodle, to make these things that carry out an elementary function of breathing , for\u00a0themselves as for others.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
It\u00a0would be a simple story in which anything could happen, even the exile returning to\u00a0his native land, and in the morning the ducks make a terrible racker, and the children\u00a0run after hoops, brandish water pistols, fly kites, and the adults ride in cars, run as well,\u00a0between impossible parentheses, after balloons, wearing bandages on their wounds from\u00a0too far away, stories of boats from across the sea, of horses, of iron chains linking up\u00a0heels, of iron balls dragged, of iron balls smashing into faces or dragged, of iron balls\u00a0thrown at, and eventually rum does the talking ; and when no one knows whether the\u00a0country exists anymore, that is when all together painters, musicians , writers step in to\u00a0say : yes, these lands exist, and in them, beyond them, here is the singular honor of our\u00a0artistic forms.
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
They would be tales full of laughter and tears, full of ups and downs, and languages\u00a0would get tangled up in order to untangle the inextricable. A story noisy with the\u00a0chirping of birds from everywhere : nightingales from Dahomey, woodcocks from India,\u00a0strange animals such as elephants from Spain, crocodiles from Gaul, dragons from\u00a0England, cicadas from Portugal, ants from Lebanon. And the beautiful 'Walcott tree', in\u00a0the Star-Apple Kingdom *, folding out the map of the Caribbean, sees more islands there,\u00a0man, than peas on a tin plate, all differents size, one thousand in the Bahamas alone\u2026 *
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
It\u00a0would be a story in which the Caribbean would find a symbol in the assembling of\u00a0singularities, in which the same ship would hold the historic and the daily, the collective and the private, in which strange codes and modern contracts, plotted out by the ancestors, would be negociated . And in which the ship of the ancestors would be\u00a0set on fire.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
Jean-Claude Charles
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
***
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean-Claude Charles, writer from d’Haiti, unpublished original texts ‘In these Lands of Caribbean Childhood’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,64],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22560,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19184\/revisions\/22560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}