Dany Laferrière - The World is Moving Around Me: a Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake

DANY LAFERRIRE was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1953. He is the author of fourteen novels, including I Am a Japanese Writer, Heading South, and the award-winning How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired. Laferrire is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Prix Carbet des Lycens, the Prix Mdicis, and the Governor Generals Literary Award. He lives in Montreal.

DAVID HOMEL, born and raised in Chicago, is a Governor General Literary Award-winning translator and writer who lives in Montreal. His recent books include the translations of The Last Genet: A Writer in Revolt and The Inverted Gaze (both Arsenal Pulp) and his own novel Midway (Cormorant).

Originally published as Tout bouge autour de moi

Copyright 2011 by ditions Grasset et Fasquelle

THE WORLD IS MOVING AROUND ME

by Dany Laferrire

Translation copyright 2013 by David Homel

Foreword copyright 2013 by Michalle Jean

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

This translation, including the section How It Came to Be, is based on the Quebec edition published in 2010 by Mmoire dencrier.

The quotation from Amos Oz, The Same Sea, was translated by Nicholas de Lange.

Publishers note: During the course of the translation, the writer used his authorial privilege to make certain changes to his original text.

Cover photograph by Getty Images

Book design by Gerilee McBride

Editing by Susan Safyan

Printed and bound in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Laferrire, Dany

The world is moving around me [electronic resource] : a memoir of the Haiti earthquake / Dany Laferrire ; translated by David Homel.

Translation of: Tout bouge autour de moi. Electronic monograph in EPUB format. Issued also in print format. ISBN 978-1-55152-499-3

1. Haiti Earthquake, Haiti, 2010. 2. Laferrire, Dany. I. Title.

QE535.2.H34L3313 2013 551.22097294 C2012-906804-7

For the little group at the Htel Karibe

who faced the wrath of the gods with me:

Michel Le Bris, Matte Chantrel, Mlani Le Bris,

Isabelle Paris, Agathe du Bouys,

Rodney Saint-loi, and Thomas Spear

In the face of death

There should be neither joy nor sadness

Just a long astonished gaze

Renaud Longchamps

The Right Honourable Michalle Jean

Special Envoy for Haiti for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and former Governor General of Canada

The tonnants voyageurs international festival of books and film was about to take place in Haiti in January 2010 when, suddenly, all hell broke loose. The deadliest earthquake in the countrys history threw the nation into shock and horror.

Dany Laferrire was among the novelists, poets, and publishers staying at the Htel Karibe, overlooking the city of Port-au-Prince.

Not only did the ground beneath their feet betray them, as the earth let loose a deafening growl, but words failed them when it came time to describe that moment of truth, when brutal reality left the voice of fiction speechless.

The only solid things that remained in their lives were those everyday actions that helped them hold onto what had collapsed: the few landmarks still standing amid an inferno of rubble; the few loved ones left among the survivors, who were themselves damaged, riddled with cracks.

Dany Laferrire, faithful guardian and watchman, would work to recover his senses and his stability in the face of this catastrophe and try to make meaning of it.

One day he wrote, No one can tell a story exactly as it happened. We piece it together. We try to find the essential emotions. In the end, we fall into nostalgia. And if theres one thing thats far from truth, its nostalgia. So thats not your story.

I read The World Is Moving around Me with this premise in mindthat this is a story thats not his to tell. In the way he follows the stream of events, and renders impressions, images, scenes, and conversations in the midst of tragedy or on its periphery, on the path of nostalgia for places that have been destroyed, for those people who have vanished, for memories wounded and devastated, we feel his restraint, something akin to prudishness. There are no special effects. Nothing literary.

And yet, when a journalist asks himas a man of letters who has witnessed all of thiswhat the value of culture is, when faced with such suffering, he answers, When everything else collapses, culture remains. In Haiti, nothing is truer. Witnesses will say, and Laferrire will confirm it, that after the initial shock and for the nights that followed, as the tremors continued to punish the city, people joined together to sing as a way of fighting their misfortune. He reminds us of the lesson and the imagery of Haitis nave painters, who choose to portray nature at its most generous, a Garden of Eden, a paradise lost, while all around them, desolation reigns.

The original French-language edition of this book is published in Quebec by Mmoire dencrier, Rodney Saint-lois company. Dany and Rodney were sitting at a table at a hotel restaurant in Port-au-Prince when the earth started shaking like a sheet of paper whipped by the wind. This book is filled with a sense of fraternity, informed by the love of a country that never deserts its sons and daughters who live far from it. And Im one of them.