About the Contributors
Sonia Adams is an African American poet, educator, and cultural worker. She is currently pursuing doctoral study in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship are comparative women’s and American multiethnic literatures, contemporary avant-garde poetry and poetics, women’s and multicultural studies, and feminist, postcolonial, and race theories. In writing poetry, she is particularly concerned with how ancestral memory, history, culture, and social, political, and cultural movement inform women’s experience.
Kimberly Juanita Brown is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Northeastern University. A native of New York City, Brown received degrees from Queens College, CUNY, and Yale University. She is currently working on a collection of poems entitled Elegy for Roslyn’s Daughters. She lives and writes in Providence, Rhode Island.
Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian writer/scholar born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (PhD, University of Iowa). Her first novel, Spirit of Haiti (Mango, 2003), was short-listed in the Best First Book Category, Canada/ Caribbean region, of the Commonwealth Prize 2004. She is also the author of Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (Rutgers University Press, 1997), Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (Temple University Press, 1997; Choice OAB Award, 1998), and the novels The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press, 2005) and The Loneliness of Angels (Peepal Tree Press, 2010). She recently completed her third academic work, From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions from Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, forthcoming from Wilfred Laurier University Press. Her work as editor of Meridians (2002–2004) garnered the CELJ Phoenix Award for Editorial Achievement in 2004. She currently sits on the editorial advisory board of PMLA and is a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati.
Carolle Charles is an associate professor of sociology at Baruch College. Her present scholarly work focuses on three interconnected areas of research: labor migration and transnational patterns of migrants’ identities; the dynamics of race, culture, and history; and gender and empowerment. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Feminist Studies and Journal of American Ethnic History, as well as [End Page 163] in the anthologies The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, edited by Linden Lewis (University of Florida Press, 2003) and The Invisible Others/Active Presences: Self-Ethnographies Problematizing Blackness, edited by Jean Rahier and Pertzy Hintzen (Routledge, 2003), among others. She has served on the editorial boards of Gender and Society, Identity, a journal of transnationalism, and Wadabagei, a journal of Caribbean studies. She is on the executive board of the Haitian Studies Association (HSA) and will serve as President of the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA) in 2012. She is a founder and acting chair of DWA FANM (Women’s Rights), a non-profit organization in New York.
Jennifer Cho is currently a full-time visiting instructor of Writing at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. She received her PhD in English from the George Washington University.
Brunine David was born in Petit-Goâve and is the daughter of poet, writer, and dramatist Maurice David. She started her acting career at age four. A divorced mother of three, she actively worked in Haiti for ten years promoting human rights and women’s rights. Her poetry reflects her militancy, her dream for a better tomorrow for her country, and the beauty of her native town. She proclaims her passion for life, for love, and for writing. She is one of the main actors in the successful television series, Les Frères Djolè, broadcast in Florida and written by Elizabeth Guérin. Her poetry has appeared in Brassage: An Anthology of Poems by Haitian Women. An active performance poet, she reads regularly in various venues in Miami.
Linda Diane Horwitz, PhD, is an associate professor and chair of Communication and Women and Gender Studies at Lake Forest College. Her most recent scholarly work can be found in the anthologies What Do Women Want: Feminism and Contemporary Pop Culture (2009), and The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Reform (Michigan State University Press, 2008).
Nadève Ménard is a professor of literature at the École Normale Supérieure of Université d’Etat d’Haïti. Her research centers on the representation of political conflicts in literature. She has contributed to Conjonction, Le Cahier des Anneaux de la Mémoire, and International Journal of Francophone Studies, as well as to several collective book projects, such as Haiti Rising: Haitian Culture, History, and the Earthquake of 2010 (Liverpool University Press, 2010), Edwidge Danticat: A Reader’s Guide (University of Virginia [End Page 164] Press, 2010), and Dictionnaire d’écrivains francophones classiques (Champion, 2010). Her first book, Écrits d’Haïti: Perspectives sur la littérature haïtienne contemporaine (1986–2006) was published by Karthala in 2011. With several members of her family, Nadève Ménard is currently working on an earthquake preparedness guide for children.
Claudine Michel, a native of Haiti, is a professor in the Department of Black Studies and Director of the Center for Black Studies Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds BA degrees from the State University of Haiti and an MA and PhD in International Education from the University of California. Since 1997, she has served as editor of the premier academic journal on Haiti, the Journal of Haitian Studies. She is a founding member of KOSANBA, a scholarly association for the study of Haitian Vodou, and Kalfou, a journal of comparative and relational ethnic studies. Among other works, she is also co-editor of The Black Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004), as well as Invisible Powers: Vodou In Haitian Life and Culture (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006) and Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality (Indiana University Press, 2006). She currently serves as consultant for the Direct Relief International community-grant programs in Haiti established after the quake.
Deepti Misri is an assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her work focuses on gender, violence, and representation in postcolonial India, and has previously appeared in States of Trauma: Gender and Violence in South Asia, edited by Piya Chatterjee, Manali Desai, and Parama Roy (Zubaan Books, 2009); and in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Lenelle Moïse is an award-winning poet, playwright, essayist, composer, and performance artist. She creates intimate, fiery, politicized texts about the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality, culture, and resistance. Equipped with an MFA from Smith College, Moïse has been a guest artist at the Culture Project, the Louisiana Superdome, the Omega Institute, and dozens of theaters, colleges, and conferences across the United States and Canada. She has produced two CDs: Madivinez and The Expatriate Amplification Project. The latter is an all-vocal, poly-rhythmic fusion of jazz, funk, and soul based on her critically acclaimed, off-Broadway play, Expatriate. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution; We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches [End Page 165] from the Next Generation of Feminists; and Brassage: An Anthology of Poems by Haitian Women. She is the 2010 recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry and the 2010–2012 Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. http://www.lenellemoise.com
Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo is a senior lecturer in French and head of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. Her area of specialization is the literature and culture of the French-speaking Caribbean (Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe). Her articles and essays have been published in refereed journals, including Callalou, Caribbean Quarterly, Feminist Review, Francofonia, Journal of Caribbean Literature, Journal of Haitian Studies, MaComere, Small Axe, and Wadabagei, as well as in numerous anthologies. In 2004, she was awarded the distinction of Palmes académiques, at the rank of Chevalier. She is a past president of the Haitian Studies Association (HSA), as well as a Council Member of the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA).
Regine Romain is a photographer of Haitian descent who fuses her interests in travel and culture to explore both spiritual and tangible worlds. She is also a writer, performer, and educator who teaches photography, poetry, multi-media studies, and global history, seeking to stimulate artistic expression, critical inquiry, and social activism in her students. In 1995, she received her BS in International Studies from Bowie State University. In September 2006, she moved to London with her daughter to pursue an MA in Photography and Urban Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Upon returning to Brooklyn, Regine served as the Director of Education at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts and edited her first book, entitled Diaspora Diaries: An Educator’s Guide to MoCADA Artists. She is currently the Director and Founder of Urban PhotoPoets and the Brooklyn Photo Salon and serves as co-director of the Brooklyn Loves Haïti Campaign.
Mark Schuller is an assistant professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at York College (CUNY). He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on globalization, NGOs, civil society, and development in Haiti. His insights have been published in public media, including Huffington Post, Counterpunch, Common Dreams, and the Center for International Policy, and in media interviews, including the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Democracy Now! He is co-director/co-producer [End Page 166] of the documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (Documentary Educational Resources, 2009). He also co-edited Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction (Alta Mira, 2008) and Homing Devices: The Poor as Targets of Public Housing Policy and Practice (Lexington, 2006). He chairs the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Human Rights and Social Justice Committee and is active in many grassroots efforts, including earthquake relief.
Catherine R. Squires is Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity, and Equality at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Dispatches from the Color Line (State University of New York Press, 2007) and recent articles on post-racial discourse in the Journal of Communication Inquiry and the International Journal of Press/Politics.
Gina Athena Ulysse is an associate professor of Anthropology, African-American Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. She is the author of Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica (University of Chicago Press, 2008). She has published several articles and creative non-fiction in refereed journals, including Anthropology and Humanism, E-Misferica, Feminist Studies, Journal of Haitian Studies, PoemMemoirStory, and in several anthologies. A poet/performance/multi-media artist, Gina Athena has performed her one-woman show at colleges and universities in the U.S. as well as at various theaters. Periodically, she blogs for Huffington Post and Ms. Magazine.ginaathenaulysse.com
Katia D. Ulysse was born in Haiti. She holds a Master’s in Education from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Caribbean Writer, Phoebe, Poui, MaComère, Wadabagei, Calabash, Perigrine, as well as the anthologies Brassage: An Anthology of Poems by Haitian Women, edited by Claudine Michel et al. (University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006); The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (Soho Press, 2003); and Haiti Noir (Akashic Books, 2011), both edited by Edwidge Danticat; and MOZAYIK Yon Konbit Literè Ann Ayisyen (“An Anthology in the Haitian Language”), edited by Roger Savain and Drexel Woodson (Infinity Publishing, 2007). She is currently finalizing her second collection of post-quake stories. She teaches and lives in Baltimore. [End Page 167]
