Haiti’s earthquake: a writer’s perspective
Following the earthquake in Haiti, the Baltimore Sun spoke with author Madison Smartt Bell, who has written a trilogy about the country and visited it often. Mary McCauley notes that Bell was "worried, heartbroken – and suddenly in demand as a media expert. As he wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian: ‘Haitians are expert in survival against all odds. They had been doing it for a century before their nation had a name. … And they are also fortunate in that their cultural treasure is not so much bound up in architectural monuments (most of which, in the capital at least, are now rubble). A spiritual resource is that much more difficult to destroy.’ "
Here’s more from the Sun article, which includes a Q&A with the Goucher College creative writing teacher: The Baltimore author has written 18 books but is best known for his trilogy on the 1791 slave revolution: "All Souls Rising" (1995), "Master of the Crossroads" (2000) and "The Stone that the Builder Refused" (2004). …
Q: How are you getting your news about Haiti? A: I belong to some private news feeds that give me privileged information. What I know, I know from them. I’m not calling anyone there, though. They don’t need to be hearing from me right now.
Q: How often have you visited Haiti? A: I can’t come up with a number. I made my first visit in 1995, and I’ve been back once or twice a year since then. Initially, I went for research purposes. Now, I go back as a journalist, to attend literary conferences, and for some little projects I have up north, which doesn’t seem to have been as badly hit.
Q: What about the country first intrigued you? A: While I was researching a different project, I read about Haitian voodoo. Then I stumbled across the story of the Haitian revolution and wrote three books about it. I fell in love with the place – the culture, the religion – and I have friends there. This isn’t a good day to say it, but one of the things that I do love about Haiti is that it’s a place where magical thinking can actually work.
Q: Is there some place in particular that you stay when you’re in Haiti? A: I have a base in the countryside that’s within 20 minutes of the spot where Pat Robertson claims the Haitians made a pact with the devil. It’s actually a very nice spot.
Q: Any landmarks that are particular favorites? A: There are a couple of places around Port-au-Prince I worry about. There’s an extended community center, and it’s not built in a particularly dangerous way, but the people there have not been heard from. Also, quite near the presidential place is a compound run by the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. There is a fantastic collection of books and documents about the Haitian revolution, which I used a lot in my work. Their location is inauspicious. It’s early, though, I suppose, to be worrying about things on paper.
Q: Haiti has an infamously poor infrastructure. Are you concerned about the aftermath of the quake? A: This earthquake didn’t discriminate in terms of class the way some earthquakes do. The shantytowns were devastated, and so were the more developed areas, where there’s a lot of concrete that can fall on you. It’s hard not to be reminded of [Hurricane] Katrina at this time. Let’s hope it’s not as bad as that.
