Elvira Pulitano:
Landscape, Memory and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat
Elvira Pulitano brought to light the
ideology behind the meaning of landscape as it relates to the memory and
perhaps underlying meaning in the fictional writing by author, Edwidge
Danticat. Pulitano had an idea to submit a paper for a panel featuring island
and ocean representation during a convention in Philadelphia in 2006. Her idea
contained the works by Danticat and her descriptive narratives covering
discourse of islands and the ocean mainly Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Although Pulitano was turned down on account that Danticat wrote in English and
the Francophone writing is done in French. Pulitano asserts her idea that even
though Danticat used English for her works, the underlying language of the
landscape described and her use of native words familiar to those from the Caribbean
was ultimately the true culture representative of the islands and ocean.
Simple representation of various languages used to instill richness of
culture in Haiti and the Dominican Republic could be found from different
cultures which invaded and wreaked havoc over the borders. The Spanish word for
parsley is quite symbolic among the Haitian sugar cane cutters, although they
pronounced the word differently. There are references of their language also from
the French, English and Africa to describe life and landscape in the works by
Danticat containing the history of slaves taken from Africa travelled the
Atlantic to the Caribbean by European settlers.
The history of Hispaniola reclaimed by Danticat provided
voices to the victims of the 1937 massacre. This event is not only captured in
Danticat’s Farming of Bones, she also provides truth behind the underlying
narrative story of fiction, depicting the pain and joy experienced by memory of
actual people of that era and location permanently engrained in the landscape
and waters.
The river is quite symbolic representing both life and
death in Danticat’s Krik?Krak!. In both
Haitian folklore and accounts represented in such stories as Nineteen
Thirty-Seven and Children of the Sea, water represents both the idea of
re-birth and freedom of death. Many parts of the landscape could be dissected
in order to provide the collective cultures that blend and make up the
landscape for which the discourse of the Caribbean exists.
Lastly, Pulitano points out that, “According to an
ancient Haitian belief, a transnational historical community is powerfully
established in the fluid, borderless space of the sea.” (Pulitano, 12) The underlying message behind the works of Danticat is that in order to create a nationalist discourse of island identity, one must recognize the past and provide a voice to those that were not able to provide.
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