Forces that bind and break apart friendship, sisterhood, nationhood (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Paris, Ohio, Arizona, Florida; 1941-2003): Can an early childhood friendship survive the “broader wars of color and class”? On a Caribbean island nation with its own history of fighting color and socio-economic class divides.

Village Weavers is steeped in pathos. In what once was. Between two best friends and a country.

Much of the happiness seen happens during the 1941 to 1943 years when Sisi and Gertie instantly bonded. Seven-year-old girls who met in first-grade at a private Catholic school, Haiti’s predominant religion. Along with the joy of Sisi’s family: a grandmother who teaches her godly spirits; the warm, generous heart of her mother, a seamstress on par with French designers; and her ten-year-older protective sister, Margie, the sister of one’s dreams.

This gorgeously written story takes a long view on the relationship between two different friends from two different families in the context of Haitian society. A friendship that lets us see and feel what it means to be an outsider versus an insider, and why, sometimes, beauty comes from the outside, not the inside. Sisi is the outsider, Gertie the insider. Sisi represents the overwhelming majority of poor Haitians, Gertie a tiny fraction of the “elites.” Both will later become homesick, but it’s Gertie whose loneliness hits rock-bottom. After decades of separation, she reaches out to Sisi in 2022, the first chapter, when she’s living in Miami, the second chapter. Can she win back their friendship late in life? The fictional question.

Would the novel be as emotional searing, steeped in Haitian revolutionary history, culture, and feminism had it not been written by Haitian-born Myriam J. A. Chancy? Who shows us why Caribbean Literature is surging.

A scholar of Afro-Caribbean, Postcolonial, and Women’s studies. The endowed Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College in Claremont California, whose exhaustive body of award-winning work includes “Best Book of the Year” votes for What Storm, What Thunder. Also published by Tin House, on the aftermath of one of Haiti’s cataclysmic earthquakes in 2010. (Not the 2021 earthquake Chancy notes was soon followed by the assassination of its president. Not the first time, either).

Deeply layered from a “seen world and “unseen.” Everything written, said and unsaid, has meaning. An intricate novel about differences, divides, secrets, and separations from multiple perspectives. Let’s count the ways:

As a story on Black freedom, we learn Haiti was the first Caribbean republic governed by Black people. A country that freed itself from the shackles of enslavement, separating from colonialism (French) to gain its independence at the dawn of the 1800s. Reference to the Negritude movement, which originated in Paris and spread to Haiti, embraced Black pride and dignity. Described elsewhere as rooted in literature, it also had cultural and political impact.

The image below on the left reflects racism, on the right an attempt to set the historical record straight: 

Haiti’s separation history was also with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic. Both share one island, Hispaniola, politically divided up. Among Gertie’s many separations, after her family sends her away to live with her shrewd absentee mother in a small rural village near Haiti’s seacoast, Léogâne, cutting her off from Sisi living in Port-Au-Prince, the capital, they send her to the Dominican Republic to attend a private boarding high school. She’ll live on that side of the island until she immigrates to Florida. Sisi will later leave Haiti too, first to Paris, then the Midwest and Southwest. Their leavings reflect Chancy’s, who immigrated to Canada and then the US, as well as hundreds of thousands who’ve also migrated, and those desperate to flee the unimaginable disintegration of a place.

As a personal story on Black identity, it’s Sisi and her family (her father unknown) who believe in Haiti’s spirit world: “clair – untouched by the sun.” (Not Gertie’s.) The Introduction features Iwa, “the spirit of the river gods.” The Simbi are the “misté – the “mysteries.” Water spirits are, “Of the sea before us and those of the rivers that course through the mountains behind us.” They come with a warning to “test the waters, make sure they are of pure heart.” Over the novel’s six decades, Sisi learns “not to fall for the wrong people” and the true meaning of benevolence: “We are sources of water for each other.”

As a story on Haiti’s culture, Sisi’s family also practices Haitian Vodou, a religion that “lives within us,” she says.

Others view Haitian Vodou as “devil worship.” You could say the devil has worked its cruelty on Haiti, a country that descended into political murders, occupation (after the 1915 presidential assassination US President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to quell the instability, lasting until 1934, depicted disturbingly), terror, lawlessness. Evil also worked a wedge tearing apart a friendship that had fit like “puzzle pieces.” Years later, Gertie wonders, “Can the spirits bring her to a better world?” 

Language is culturally significant. Sisi’s family speaks Haitian Creole or Kreyól. Nearly everyone in Haiti speaks the language Haitians made their own, French influenced but mostly West African. It isolated Haiti since few outsiders knew it. Whereas the Dominican Republic gained its independence forty years after Haiti separating from Spanish colonialism, speaking a common language spoken outside the island. The “upper-echelons” speak French, like Gertie’s family. French is also an official language in Haiti and the language taught in school, so Sisi and her family also speak French. One of the eye-openers is how the different languages set the two countries on divergent paths. The Dominican Republic’s economy is growing, whereas Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Shocking, since at one time we’re told it was one of the wealthiest Caribbean nations.

Culturally, you’ll also read about street vendors when they were lively, colorful, and gossipy. With today’s gang violence and humanitarian crisis, could anyone feel safe to have any fun? The resourcefulness of Haiti’s Rara bands reminds us, though, of Haiti’s energetic spirit. Gertie hears their music when she’s sequestered near the sea.

As a story on racism, Gertie’s skin color is darker than her light-skinned family. They let their prejudice separate them from their youngest sister, as if she wasn’t one their own. Chancy also wants us to see the beauty in black skin colors, poetically describing the variety of skin tones. “Sun-kissed,” for starters.

As a story on sisterhood, Margie counsels Sisi, “Your fortune is yourself.” A special friendship can feel like sisterhood too. In stark contrast to all four of Gertie’s superficial and repugnant sisters.

As a story on memory, the “present is the past.” The past residing within us. Past and present alternate throughout and within chapters.

As a story on the meaning of home, Gertie was miserably lonely inside her mansion-sized, “gingerbread house” with its pretty pastel colors. Sisi’s home has no running water or electricity, but it has real class. At one sad point Sisi realizes, “Home is not a destination” anymore. “Earthquake” forces left their marks and scars.

As a story on feminism, Chancy’s feminist advocacy shines, also showing: “We don’t need men to give us women value.”

Lorraine