Why Context Matters: Journalists and Haiti

Earlier this week, the Ms. Blog interviewed journalist Mac McClelland regarding the much-discussed online article she wrote about dealing with PTSD after a reporting stint in Haiti. One of our Ms. bloggers wanted to weigh in with her thoughts about the controversial story. As a Haitian American feminist anthropologist who has written much on both gender-based [...]

Mac McClelland Talks to Ms.: PTSD, Haiti and Women Writing About Sex

Human rights reporter Mac McClelland knew there would be controversy when she published her incredibly personal narrative last week, “I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me on This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease my PTSD.” “There’s a reason I almost threw up when this piece went live,” said McClelland, in an interview with the Ms. [...]

Click! Doing the Dishes and My Rock n’ Roll Dreams

It was the 1980s. I was an oddball. I loved Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, Cyndi Lauper, Eurythmics, U2 and the Rolling Stones. I was dreaming of becoming a rock star. My father wanted me to do the dishes. If you’d ask me back then whether I was a feminist, I would probably tell you to [...]

The Legacy of Haitian Feminist Paulette Poujol-Oriol

Paulette Poujol-Oriol, who died March 11 at age 84, left her birth country, Haiti, a legacy that is immeasurable. She was one of Haiti’s most ardent feminist leaders, as well as an unmatched cultural producer and worker. She was born in Port-au-Prince on May 12, 1926 to Joseph Poujol, founder of the Commercial Institute, and Augusta [...]

Book Review: Chills and Thrills in “Haiti Noir”

Even before the earthquake ravaged Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding cities Léogâne, Petit-Goâve and Jacmel in January 2010, Haiti was synonymous with abysmal poverty, destruction and disease for many people. “Life was not easy in Haiti,” award-winning Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat writes in the introduction to Haiti Noir, the latest addition to Akashic Books’ [...]

Haiti One Year Later: Edwidge Danticat Wants Us To Create Dangerously

“Truth is trouble,” wrote Toni Morrison in the 2009 anthology she edited, Burn This Book. Trouble for a comatose public, for a corrupt justice system: Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that … only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination. And [...]

Why I Am Marching for “Ayiti Cherie” (Beloved Haiti)

At 4:53:10pm on January 12, 2010, I was at home in Middletown, CT, when the ground below Haiti ruptured. I felt like I had been hit with a forklift; I was in a blur for days. There are many ways I could commemorate the one-year marker of the devastating earthquake that paralyzed my birth country–memorial [...]

Haiti’s Fouled-Up Election

The events that unfolded in Haiti’s presidential elections yesterday came as no surprise. There was  fraud, confusion and mayhem. It had been predicted. Voters showed up to polls and did not find their names on registration lists. In some instances, there were not enough ballots. In others, people arrived to find that polling centers were still [...]

Blog Roundup: Mama Grizzlies, Butch Intellectuals and More

The weekend is here, and that can only mean one thing: It’s time for the Ms. blog roundup! We bring you the feminist must-reads for the week of August 15th, from Dr. Laura (left) to ill-conceived makeup to Rachel Maddow, to … “What Mama Grizzly wouldn’t believe in school lunches, health insurance and quality childcare?”–Stacey Schiff, [...]

Rape a Part of Daily Life for Women in Haitian Relief Camps

Even after the aftershocks of the devastating Jan. 12 quake subsided, women’s bodies were still trembling in Haiti. The cause, according to a new report, is the systematic, persistent (and often gang) rapes that have become part of women’s daily lives in camps for internally displaced persons (IDP). The report, entitled Our Bodies Are Still [...]

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