Walking on Fire

Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance

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by Beverly Bell,

Foreword by Edwidge Danticat

Cornell University Press

Due/Published December 2001, 272 pages, paper

ISBN 080148748X

Haiti, long and often noted for poverty and repression has a powerful and too-often-overlooked history of resistance. Women in Haiti have played a large role in changing the balance of political and social power even as they have endured rampant and devastating state-sponsored violence including torture rape abuse illegal arrest disappearance and assassination.

Bell, an activist and writer on Haitian social movements, brings together thirty-eight oral histories from a diverse group of Haitian women. The interviewees include, for example, a former prime minister, an illiterate poet, a leading feminist theologian, and a vodou dancer. Defying victim status despite gender- and state-based repression they tell how Haiti's poor and dispossessed women have fought for their personal and collective survival.

The women's powerful accounts of horror and heroism can best be characterized by the Creole word istwa, which means both "story" and "history." They combine theory with case studies concerning resistance gender and alternative models of power. Photographs of the women who have lived through Haiti's recent past accompany their words.

"Beverly Bell's remarkable book allows thirty-eight Haitain women to speak for themselves. Defying victim status, together they tell the story of how Haiti's poor and disposseeessed women have fought for their personal and collective survival. They weave together an inspiring study in resistance and alternative models of power."--Susan Sarandon