Maison Française hosts trilingual speak-out for Haiti

With the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti in January no longer making front-page headlines, some Columbia professors say the time has come to remind the public that the relief effort is not over.

On Friday night, La Maison Française, the French cultural center on campus, hosted a Read-In/Speak-Out on Haiti, and organizers of the event say that the timing of this effort—months after the disaster—is key.

Huewayne Watson, a first-year graduate student in the Institute for African-American Studies who works with La Maison Française, said the speak-out in three different languages aimed to create an intellectual atmosphere for people with interests in Haiti and its relations to the Francophone world.

“Within all the media sensations from the catastrophe in Haiti, there’s a need to understand the antecedent,” Watson said, adding that there is also a need to explore “what Haitian culture might have been, considering that it’s probably now disrupted, and how it intersects with French culture.”

Organizers also reached out to the larger neighborhood in Morningside Heights, according to Shanny Peer, the director of La Maison Française.

“There are a lot of Haitian New Yorkers who live in the surrounding neighborhoods, and I think it’s really important to cultivate good relations with our neighbors,” Peer said.

Madeleine Dobie, an associate professor of French who helped spearhead the event, said that it is important to bring the Haiti disaster back into the spotlight.

“We’ve gone beyond the initial stage of rescue and recovery, but people are living in tents in unsanitary, dangerous conditions,” Dobie said. “It’s important for everyone to remain engaged with what’s going on. Not to be cynical, but we have a kind of news cycle where everything lasts for seven days and then it’s gone.”

Readings and speeches on Friday were heard in English, French, and Kreyol. The event included three readings in French, one of which was spontaneously translated into Kreyol, and one reading used both English and Kreyol.

Dobie said that this trilingual element was also important for the speak-in, because it allowed participants to express themselves in any language relevant to Haiti—whether tied to French literature, the oral culture in Kreyol, or the Haitian Diaspora in the United States.

At the event, Dobie announced an initiative of the French department to teach a summer course in Kreyol. “We hope this will be a good resource for people who can’t go to Haiti as part of a relief effort of any kind,” she said.

The event turnout was expected to be small, Watson said, adding that La Maison Française is meant to be an intimate space. “We interact very closely with each other."

La Maison Française publicized the event with the help of the Haitian Students Association, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Columbia-Paris Alliance. The HSA has been constantly “involved in a lot of initiatives and shown a lot of leadership,” Peer said. The organization collected donations after the readings.

Dobie said that, despite her discontent over the blame that Haiti has received for the dire situation after the earthquake, it is important to be united in the support effort.

Some people, she said, “have decided to stand in judgment and not in solidarity. … Today, we stand in solidarity.”