Torture: Haiti, Danticat and Bush

While a seemingly unlikely pairing, Edwidge Danticat and President Bush both speak on different sides of the line in regards to one heated issue: torture. In a September 2006 editorial in the Washington Post, the central trauma of the book The Dew Breaker is once again illuminated. At the time, President Bush was proposing to lift some of the facets of the Geneva Convention for the rights of prisoners when those prisoners, especially the ones at Guantanamo Bay, were terrorism-related. While the politically correct phrase "harsher interrogation tactics" was often used in Bush's speech, torture is truly the best word for it. It is in Danticat's book where the result of torture is seen from both sides; maybe a book that Bush should get his hands on.
In this piece Danticat tells the stories of two women who were tortured under the Duvalier Regime in Haiti, as well as Danticat's own research in Haiti regarding the regime that ultimately led her to write the book. In this piece, the question to be asked of President Bush seems to be, "Will anyone ever hear the voices of the tortured and the torturers when this administration is over, when the fear of terrorism hopefully subsides?" She begs that question throughout the piece, but more importantly Danticat urges the readers to understand that no one wins in torture situations, and in fact with these tactics America is coming dangerously close to regimes we purport to be against. "And now, when political leaders in the United States are asking us as a society to consider not only the legal and moral ramifications of torture but its effectiveness, we are brought closer to these regimes than we may think." The question at the time was, as it still is, "Is Bush overstepping his bounds to please right-wingers on the issue of terrorism?" In regards to the legislation passed in 2006, the answer is yes. And yes, torture affects everyone, regardless of whether you obtain the scars or not.
When speaking of the torture of her countrywomen in this piece and how it affected her society, she states that for those Haitians, "torture is not just an individual affliction but a communal one." For the United States, the torture system is something that is the "dirty little secret"; it is a communal secret. On the outside, just like Ka's father in the book, little information is given to the public so new stories about how prisoners are treated are created an glossed over. But those who torture and who are being tortured remember. Soon I feel America will come to the point where it looks in the mirror and remembers the scars of atrocities towards others from this current time in history. America, like Ka's father, will eventually have to "tell a lie, a lie that would further remind him of the truth" (228). Danticat in this editorial is making it known the central trauma of her country's life is running parallel to the way we are now treating prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This editorial speaks not only to the power of the author as a political force, but it asks the question of the necessity of torture to subdue humans.
It is in this political light where the idea of the novel as a living, moving, life-force is applicable. Novels are not just something to be taken lightly, and in the case of Danticat the only way to truly respect the novel is to understand the pain of the characters contained within it. But more than that, The Dew Breaker is a novel that shows us the issue of torture in the context of history but can be extrapolated to issues today. Torture is real and the characters of Anne, The Dew Breaker, Ka, and Dany (just to name a few) all have parallels in Haiti and around the world today. It is a blessing that a woman like Danticat was able to speak of the violence in Haiti that inspired her book, but also speak towards that violence and apply it to America. America should be scared of the morning dew of ignorance being broken by a woman who wants to expose the truth of torture- because it is real, and America needs to recognize that and fight it.

A link to the article by Danticat: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201304.html

Re-Creation in Morrison

A woman becomes a gendered woman, according to Judith Butler, "through the stylization of the body"; performative acts that eventually constitute what this certain woman is. This creation of what it means to be a woman is different for all women, but Butler reaffirms the notion of Simone de Beauvoir that, "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman." "Becoming" is a fluid concept, changing for women mostly due to the impact of prejudice on their lives from many different sources.
In Toni Morrison's Paradise the notion of re-creating what it means to be a woman is one of the strongest themes in the novel, especially when looking at the women of the Convent. They have come broken, drawn to this Convent in one way or another from a place of fear. Mavis, the woman who "wondered what it would be like [...] to have a husband who came home every day. For anything" (24), is caught in the role of a wife who has to constantly hold her family together. Yes, she wasn't the smartest of the lot, and yes, she ran away from her family because of both a warrant and her ensuing paranoia; but she was defined by her acts to be the woman who was continually put down. Gigi came from the culture of violence that seeped into every facet of her life, coming to Ruby as a destination. Because of her context, she was created to be the whore: the only way she was to get anything she wanted was to be the "bitch": it was one of the best ways to deal with the continual vision of the "boy spitting blood into his hands" (64). Coming to the Convent in a way was a place of protection, away from the man that she couldn't be with, away from the violence and loss that continually surrounded her life.
One, if not the, most profound example of those around a woman shaping her life and her "performing" her gender is Seneca. She is the peacemaker and has been since her sister ran away as a child. Abandoned, she's the one who always says, "I don't mind" because, "Otherwise- what? The might not like her. Might cry. Might leave" (130). Heaven forbid she would have to be left again, alone, and have to hitch a ride in the back of another pickup. Her place of sanctuary came in the form of the Convent, a place where slowly she changed to a woman who can say what she wants and who she wants to be.
All the women come to the Convent because it is for some reason the only place they have left to go. Because of Connie's own demons, the change of the girls into free women is slow. It is not until nearly the end of the novel where Connie truly takes the reins and puts the girls' lives under that self-reflecting microscope. The spiritual exercises, a mixture of voodoo and Christianity, were the turning point in the creation of the women's lives personally. Societally in comparison to the women of Ruby, they were already created far differently. But, it is the personal re-creation that is so striking. "Unlike some people in Ruby, the women of the Convent were no longer haunted" (266). The women, through their performative acts of what they believed a woman should be, changed the way they lived. Shackled to their pasts no more. Free to dance in the rain. Like all women should be.