Rasanblé

Abstract

This article offers some critical reflections on Womb-Words Thirsting, a solo performance by Haitian-American poet, actress, playwright, Lenelle Moïse. This work, which is “delivered, slam-style, from the gut” tackles issues of race, class, gender, immigration, religion and sexuality. I introduce the Kréyol term Rasanblé—a conscious process of gathering previously scattered selves for the sake of self-making to reveal the strategic ways Moïse expertly deploys her craft and her multiple identities to give herself full subjectivity and in the process pluralize notions of Haiti and Haitians in the diaspora.

Keywords:

• Blackness
• diaspora
• gender
• Haiti
• Haitian-American
• Kréyol
• Lenelle Moïse
• memory
• migration
• performance
• Rasanblé
• religion
• sexuality
• spirituality
• spokenword
• storytelling

Acknowledgments

I owe many thanks to E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon H Rivera-Servera for inviting me to respond to Lenelle Moïse's Womb-Words, Thirsting in 2010. This article stems out of that encounter and they provided valuable commentary on this piece early on. I am indebted to Lenelle herself for doing such inspiring work and for the virtual and in-person conversations we have had around this article. The Souls reviewers, Victoria Stahl, and Kate Ramsey also provided important comments that helped me better shape my arguments.

Notes

Haitian Vodou cosmology recognizes Bondye, Bon Dieu in French, or God as the supreme being and the spirits or lwas are ancestral messengers that work with humans. Their relationship is a symbiotic one in which humans acknowledge spirits who in turn respond to their needs. Recognition of the connection to spirits take many forms from the making of altars to ceremonies.

The trickster, warrior, siren, and spirit of love are lwas or spirits in the Haitian Vodou pantheon.

Online interview with Moïse, October 31, 2008.

Much has been written about Haiti as an oddity within the Caribbean and in the world. For example see Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean and the World,” Cimarrón. New Perspectives on the Caribbean 2, no. 3 (1990), 3–12.

Online interview with Moïse, October 31, 2008.

A set of critiques from an array of disciplines that rejects the validity of totalizing narratives (or single stories), which insist on recognizing that knowledge is always produced within the context of power and is situated.

Madivizez is the Kreyol word for lesbian. I elaborate on this point later.

Moïse e-mail response March 7, 2013.

For more on this topic, see Alexander (2005); Anzaldua (1987); and Lorde ([1984] 2007).

The public association and performance of Vodou that Moïse engages in actually has profound significance. Although in popular imagination, Haiti is synonymous with “voodoo,” in actuality among Haitians the stigma that is associated with the historical misrepresentations and the protestant attack on the religion has forced many practitioners of Vodou underground especially in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake (see Ramsey 2011).

Moïse e-mail response March 7, 2013.

“Dred” (acronym for Daring Reality Every Day) is a gender-bending performer whose work also deals with issues of gender, sexuality and spirituality. http://www.dredlove.com/ (accessed January 8, 2012).

http://www.lenellemoise.com/ (accessed January 8, 2012).

Legba's at the gates. It is he who carries the flag. It is he who carries the flag that will block the sun for the spirits.