Abstract
Black women and energies of resistance in nineteenth-century Haitian and American literature by Mary Grace Albanese, an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Binghamton, decenters normative Western understandings of power, energy (such as electricity, technology, animal, and fuel extraction), gender, and modernity by focusing on the role of Black women and Afro-Caribbean spirituality to rethink and challenge modern epistemologies of energy (i.e., power derived from the extraction of physical, technological, or natural resources). Engaging in and seeking to expand discourse in energy humanities (a growing academic discipline and methodology that studies how energy influences society) and modernity, Albanese argues that modern approaches to energy and the rise of urban centers are inherently limiting due to their cis-sexist and racist approaches to modernity. To achieve this task, Albanese uses literature with Black women as the protagonist, some of whom are historical figures such as Cécile Fatiman, Sojourner Truth, and Marie Laveau and others who are fictional characters such as Pauline Hopkins’ Dianthe, to illustrate the multiple ways Black women and queer people have historically used energy as a force in the political and spiritual realm as a means to access and demand freedom and bodily autonomy. The reduction of modernity and energy systems to industrial development, the extraction of human capital, and quantifiable power ignores and erases alternative energy systems that are Black, feminine, and queer because it denies the ways Black people used other forms of energy to resist and push back against slavery, colonialism, and racism; systems which extracted energy from Black people through forced labor, sexual assault, and reproduction. As such, Albanese highlights the role of Black women and gender-variant people in the rise of modernity by examining the energy practices or energy systems of rootwork, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, birth work, and care work. As Albanese illustrates, Black people challenged and disrupted systems of violence (such as racism, sexism, slavery, colonialism, and sexual assault) by controlling their body, challenging gender norms, resistance, and self-determination “through an energetic counter-discourse that centered survival, love, and care” (p. 8).
Albanese’s argument is diasporic and hemispheric in approach and is spread across five main chapters: Haitian Vodou and Revolutionary Haiti in Chapter 1, Marie Laveau in New Orleans, Louisiana in Chapter 2, the first known piece of African American short fiction “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” based primarily in New York in Chapter 3, Sojourner Truth’s cosmopolitan milieu in Chapter 4, and Pauline Hopkin’s novel Of One Blood in Chapter 5. While the chapters appear diverse in methods and methodology, unrelated in content, or too large in scope of analysis as it attempts to draw a web from Haiti through Louisiana, New York, Boston, and Maryland from 1791 to 1903, they are connected by the thread of the “Haitian Revolution and its energetic reverberations” during this period throughout the United States and Western hemisphere (p. 15). Moreover, for Albanese, the scope of time and place situates early African American literary traditions in a transnational, multilingual, and hemispheric discourse of freedom and nation-building with Afro-Caribbean people. In the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, Haiti represented a literal and figurative place of diasporic freedom for not only enslaved Africans but those considered formally free, and so these stories are evidence of the multiple ways the revolutionary fervor of Haiti reverberated throughout the continental United States and connected the African diaspora.
In Chapter 1, “Powering the Soul: Queer Energies in Haitian Vodou,” Albanese explores the religious and spiritual elements of Haitian Vodou and the intrinsic capabilities of energy in its function and practice. For enslaved Africans, Vodou, a West African-based religion, was developed within and against the violence of the French colonial plantation system which was predicated on the extraction of human energy for the capitalist growth and production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cacao which resulted in colonial Haiti being infamously known as the Perle des Antilles (Pearl of the Antilles). “In analyzing Vodou as both a spiritual structure and source of power,” Albanese locates Vodou as an alternative epistemology of energy and modernity by examining the multiple ways Vodouwizans (practitioners of Vodou) understood the interrelatedness of human relationships and energy. One form of energy extraction central to the violent plantation system was Black women’s body and reproductive labor which was codified in French colonial law. However, Vodou disrupts these paradigms of Black bodies, sexuality, and gender which challenged capitalist and Western conceptions of family, sex, and gender. For example, in Haitian Kreyòl and Vodou, the pronoun li (he/his, she/her) is gender nonconforming, introducing an “ungendered third-person” which does not conform to heteronormative understandings of gender, sexuality, and family (p. 25). The ungendered third-person represents the historical presence of gender-variant people in the African diaspora.
Further, Albanese centers the role of women people in the formation of the nation which has typically been reserved for Haitian male revolutionary figures. In particular, the Vodou ceremony at Bwa Kayiman on August 14, 1791, held a week prior to the start of the Haitian Revolution, was probably led by either Manbo Marinette Bwa Chèch or the mambo Cécile Fatiman, not Boukman Dutty. Further, “the significance of the black pig indicates that the presiding spirit of Bwa Kayiman was the lwa Ezili Dantò, the powerful Queen of the Petwo Nation, who often demands black, or Creole pigs, as a sacrifice” (p. 29). Even the source of the infamous “Boukman’s prayer” was reportedly recorded by a group of young Haitian girls. Importantly, repeating a question posed by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, Albanese asks the reader, “what would it mean. . .if we took seriously that the Haitian Revolution was launched not by a man or even a woman but by the spirit of women who love women?” (p. 33). Last, Albanese makes an important note that Bwa Kayiman reportedly occurred during a thunderstorm furthering the connection between energy, Vodou, and modernity.
In Chapter 2, “Marie Laveau’s Generational Arts: Healing and Midwifery in New Orleans,” Albanese crosses the Atlantic from Haiti to New Orleans to explore the complex and problematic archival narrative and racist tourist literature of Marie Laveau. By examining and attempting to piece together Laveau’s story, Albanese locates her role as a mother, herbalist, and midwife into a larger community of practices and discourse on Black women’s reproductive freedom which operated as a source of energy reclamation for all participants involved. For Albanese, it is important to read Laveau’s life outside of the archive, to “actively attend to archival silences,” especially as it pertains to Black women because passively listening to the archives allows for the repetition of racist narratives (p. 45). While often not viewed as a midwife, Laveau participated in a tradition that allowed Black women to exercise control over their bodies and family structures under a system that perpetuated violence against Black bodies and reproductive labor. Through different practices of reproductive justice (such as coitus interruptus, abstinence, prolonged breastfeeding, consumption of ointments and herbs to suppress ovulation or produce premature contractions to induce a miscarriage or abortion), Black women sought to control their own bodies and determine their reproductive future (p. 50). These practices of autonomy in Black women’s reproductive future operate as a strategy “to subvert capitalist modes of extraction and reclaim their own energy economies from their enslavers” (p. 49). Laveau, as Albanese emphasizes, was not unique but rather was part of a legacy and network of Black women who refused to allow White supremacist institutions of violence to consume their energy. Further, the myth surrounding Marie Laveau I and Marie Laveau II challenges White masculinist notions of motherhood by embracing Audre Lorde’s queer concept of Black women’s tradition of mothering oneself which provides an alternative narrative of Black kinship, femininity, and Black futurity.
In Chapter 3, “Freedom’s Conduit: Spiritual Justice in ‘Theresa, A Haytien Tale,” Albanese explores the first documented African American short story by “S” which was published in 1828 in Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper. The story follows the protagonist Theresa, who fled Saint Nicolas, Saint Domingue with her mother Paulina and sister Amanda, and her prophetic role in the Haitian Revolution as she searches for Louverture’s camp to deliver French military secrets overheard by her mother. Theresa engages in a series of prophetic dreams concerning the course of the revolution, and at the end of the story, she is reunited with her family. Albanese uses “Theresa, A Haytien Tale,” to illustrate discourse on a Black diaspora family and Black transnational solidarity through the reference to Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer’s emigration policy encouraging African Americans to resettle in Haiti and the role of prophecy and possession as symbols and acts of Black women’s energy and power. Further, Theresa walks in the tradition of historical women gender-variant figures from the Haitian Revolution such as Sanité Belair, Marie Jeanne Lamartinière, Toya Montou, Marie-Claire Heureuse, Catherine Flon, and Romaine Rivière, most of whom dressed in men or women’s clothing and participated in armed battle. Thus, the centering of Black women and gender-variant people (i.e., individuals who do not conform to modern definitions of masculinity and femininity) disrupts the traditional narrative of the Haitian Revolution which centers men as the heroes and defenders and a reminder of the various forms of gender expression present in Vodou, referenced in Chapter 1.
In Chapter 4, “A Wandering Maniac: Sojourner Truth’s Demonic Marronage,” Albanese highlights the cosmopolitan milieu of Sojourner Truth and the way Afro-Caribbean spirituality and energy systems shaped her worldview. Albanese defines Truth’s cosmopolitanism as her creolized background which refers to the influence of Dutch, African, and Caribbean cultures on her identity. Like Marie Laveau in Chapter 2, there are great methodological and ethical challenges to the narration of Truth’s life due to “the abuses of white women’s abolitionist culture” which often obscured “Truth as a historical and agentive subject” (p. 101). Despite these challenges, Albanese situates Truth’s mobility in Afro-Caribbean spirituality and spiritual kineticism (in particular, the Dutch holiday Pinkster) which offers an alternative understanding of energy reclamation and practices of freedom. While Truth’s mobility was limited to the United States, Albanese analyzes her story through a “genealogy of marronage” or “an archive of hemispheric marronage” which extends her movement beyond the confines of the 19th century United States (p. 122). By reading Truth’s story through this framework, Truth’s mobility, “nomadic identity,” and decision to walk away from the plantation with her child allows for a reclaiming of Black women’s bodies from the plantation system converting and repositioning their “reproductive energy into political and spiritual projects of freedom” (p. 123).
And in her final chapter, “Mesmeric Revolution: Hopkin’s Matrilineal Haiti,” Albanese explores Pauline Hopkins’ novel Of One Blood which originally appeared as a series in The Colored American from 1902 to 1903. The novel focuses on the matrilineage of Hannah (grandmother), Mira (mother), and Dianthe (daughter) and the revelation of a dark family secret(s) of generations of racial-sexual violence from the Livingston men. However, in the chapter, Albanese focuses on the energy practices, mesmerism (a practice invented by physician Frantz Anton Mesmer which suggests that all living beings possess an innate force or source of energy that could impact the physical, traces its roots from France to colonial Haiti and then the United States), rootwork, possession, prophecy, and legacies of marronage) of the three women. Because Hopkins never mentions Haiti and Haitian historical figures in the novel, Albanese draws on Hopkins’ previous and subsequent work on Haiti to argue that Haiti does indeed play a central role, even if only symbolically, in Of One Blood, illustrating the way “Haiti emerges at key moments of resistance” through her analysis of other work by Hopkins’ (p. 135). Further, normative narratives of family lineage are disrupted in the way Hopkins reveals heritage in the story, ultimately challenging linear modes of family lines by the insertion of ghosts and visions which alternate between time and place, future and past. The rejection of linear descent presents “alternative forms of kinship, relation, and care” which reject the forms of energy extraction present in the plantation economy and Jim Crow America (p. 155).
Albanese’s Black women and energies of resistance in nineteenth-century Haitian and American literature is a careful, detailed, and well-researched piece of scholarship that centers Black women people and disrupts conventional discourse on energy and modernity. Albanese’s book takes on Gina Athena Ulysse’s pledge that Haiti needs new narratives by focusing on alternative energy systems that are Black, feminine, and queer. It focuses on the people and their legacies and lineages across national borders, time, and place instead of a focus on the political discourse of failed state power. Further, by looking at the various ways revolutionary Haiti reverberated across the United States during and after the Haitian Revolution, Albanese’s book is in dialogue with recent books on the diasporic, hemispheric, and transnational relationship between Haiti and African America such as Sara Fanning’s Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement, Brandon R. Byrd’s The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti, and Leslie M. Alexander’s Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States.
Chapters of this book would be suitable for a graduate-level research methods seminar in Black Studies due to its decolonial, queer, and Black feminist approach to interrogating archival materials, reading secondary literature, and considerations of terminology. For example, on multiple occasions, Albanese challenges the use of global northern terminologies to define or view other cultures but instead emphasizes the importance of evaluating a culture or people according to their worldview which, sometimes, may resist a clean translation into other Western cultural constructs. An example of this is the use of li in Haitian Kréyol and the inability to neatly translate masisi, madivinez, and en kachet into English (the closest translation is “gay,” “lesbian,” and “closeted”) because “Haitian sexual epistemologies resist translation into ‘First World terminologies’” (p. 25).
Furthermore, Albanese challenges the archival records of Marie Laveau, Sojourner Truth, and other Black women (including those who managed to escape archival capture) who have been reduced to the relationship of their bodies with the violent systems of slavery, colonialism, racism as well as the violence present in the archives. Like Ula Taylor’s critique of the Works Projects Administration’s slave narratives archives, Albanese critiques the oral narratives from the Louisiana Writer’s Project which are equally violent in collection and dissemination (p. 41). Utilizing Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s theory on power and historical production, Albanese reminds the reader that the “archives are created by people embedded in uneven structures of power” (p. 45). For Albanese, she employs a methodology which resists the reproduction of violence and silence present in the archives concerning Black women and queer people. These approaches to reading, analyzing, and narrating the lives of Black people are critical, and the book allows an intimate examination of the decentering of traditional Western epistemologies of modernity in place of those which give voice, care, and space to alternative forms of energy systems practiced by Black women and queer people.
