One Word at a Time: Sifting through Debris, Uncovering Memory

Abstract

Maladi pa tombe sou bèt (“Illness befalls humans”) is a Haitian proverb that foregrounds the precariousness of human life and acknowledges our vulnerability to illness and death. Sayings use few words to express a great deal. As I reflect on the translation of Rosalie l ’ infâme by Évelyne Trouillot, this saying comes to mind precisely because my translation into English of this evocative Haitian novella coincided with the Haitian earthquake in 2010.1 This is why I've been sifting through both words and debris. During the winter and spring of 2010, I spent months in Boston poring over words that captured, in vivid detail, the dreadful conditions under which the enslaved women, men, and children lived in eighteenth century Saint-Domingue. By that summer, I was clearing rubble in Léogâne, the epicenter of the earthquake. The rubble’s material characteristics began to take on a visceral quality, its coarse brittleness infusing my words, thoughts, feelings. The presence of rubble was overwhelming. It was everywhere, a constant reminder of the lives lost. Working in rubble and handling rubble connected me to the destruction: I looked at it, I touched it, I pushed it around with my feet, I carried it around in a wheelbarrow, the contents of which I would dump by the side of the road, away from the site. I stepped over it and around it to reach a friend’s house. Rubble became mine to consider, to cry over, to break into small pieces, to transport, imagining its reuse for new roads, for essays