The first time was when I was around age 8. My Haitian aunt was supposed to come to the States for a birthday party. She was proud, dignified. She had a very good life in Haiti. Never would she want to learn English or live in any homeland besides her own.
And yet, whenever she would fly to the United States, her experience at the border and going through customs would be hell: She was a third-class citizen, an unwanted immigrant. This was my early education on how my home country viewed my father’s home country.
The second time was when I was around 12. My mother drove me all the way to Chicago from Detroit to listen to some self-proclaimed expert who had sold a few books explain how he could help prep kids for college. My mother had his book and she thought I should hear him speak.
During the seminar, I’m not sure how Haiti came up; I just remember him saying, “No one would ever want to go to that hellhole.” And then he laughed callously, along with the audience.
I turned to my mother, enraged and confused. Why would he insult us for no reason? What did we do to him? My mother, also accosted, looked at me and said, “If you’re upset, then you let him know why.” So I started writing him a letter, sharing that he might want to choose his words more carefully because he never knew when Haitians might be sitting in his audience.
After the seminar, I slid my letter on the floor next to him while he was talking to someone. Before we returned to the car for our five-hour drive home, I saw him read it. His face turned slightly red. He laughed smugly and said to his assistant, “There’s one in every crowd.” And then he tossed my letter. My mother and I tossed his book.
There were third and fourth times: my brilliant grandmother being maligned because of her dialect; my mathematical genius of a father getting a perfect score in math on his SATs and being told to take the test again. (His score was perfect the second time too.) The underestimation and misrepresentation of Haitians are nothing new to me. That we are somehow a stain on the American fabric is an old mythology that has plagued my experience of being first-generation Haitian American since my youth. It is tired. Exhausting. And completely denigrating to justify and qualify our humanity.
This is why I find myself uninspired when biased accusations resurface—most recently out of the mouths of race-baiting politicians. How can we be surprised that we are once again the target of ridicule and xenophobia? When you’ve been conditioned to this kind of disrespect since childhood, you are less affected by false claims that are steeped in anti-Black and anti-immigrant stereotypes. The messaging has always been clear that Haitians are the unwanted immigrants of the American melting pot. We’ve since learned not to tether our self-worth to misconceptions of our people.
But then there is the danger. There are repercussions to disinformation. As much as it insults our dignity to respond to the insulting lies, it also jeopardizes our lives to let them go unaddressed. We are always in a defensive position. Anyone has permission to make up whatever they want, but it becomes our burden to disprove it. If we do not, we are more vulnerable to physical attacks and hate crimes. No matter how useful or beneficial we are to our communities, we can be slandered at any time, and our lives will depend on correcting the narrative.
As a Haitian American playwright and screenwriter, I do not feel the need to prove my worth, but I recognize that many in my family do not have this level of comfort. If harmful narratives are spoken about them, then harmful actions will be taken toward them. There is an urgent need for Haitian voices to be heard, and for people to see the Haitian experience for all the multitudes it contains. I am currently in the process of mounting the world premiere of my play Bad Kreyòl, inspired by a trip I took with my father to his home country several years ago. While the play immediately addresses a troubled relationship between two cousins—one Haitian-born and one American-born—it also holds space for larger conversations around the perilous relationship between Haiti and the US. My family hasn’t seen the play yet, but my father, who read all of my work, heard some pages before he died. For the first time in my playwriting career, I was writing about his side of the family heritage, and he was proud.
Bad Kreyòl is a deeply personal story, but it is also now, by default, a necessary opportunity to spend time inside of the humanity of Haitians. I do not know what my play will and will not solve. I do not accept the responsibility of changing minds and hearts and proving the value of my people. All I know is that theater provides opportunities for connection, and if ever there were a national need to find connections to the real and delicately complex lives of Haitians, that time is now.
Bad Kreyòl begins performances at the Pershing Square Signature Theatre on October 8.