Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

In this conversation, award-winning author Trouillot and literature scholar Ménard will explore how the stories Black women tell about our experiences, our lives, and the world allow for a fuller understanding of numerous issues affecting humanity.

This event is free and open to the public. This event kicks off Blackness 360°: Art, Culture, Health, and Futures, a series of curated experiences designed to deepen knowledge about the multiplicity and complexity of Blackness and Black experiences. The series is organized by UF Black Affairs in partnership with its 2020-21 Faculty Fellow. Support provided by co-sponsors: UF Center for Arts Migration and Entrepreneurship, UF Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research, UF Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, UF Center for Latin American Studies, and The Power Lab.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Évelyne Trouillot lives in Port-au-Orince, Haiti, and teaches in the French department at the Université d’État d’Haïti. She has published her first book of short stories in 1996. In 2004, Trouillot received the Prix de la romanciére francophone du Club Soroptimist de Grenoble for her first novel, Rosalie l’infâme. In October 2013, Rosalie l’infâme was published in English translation by the University of Nebraska Press, under the title The Infamous Rosalie. In 2005, Trouillot’s first piece for the theater, Le bleu de l’ile, received the Beaumarchais award from ETC Caraïbe. Trouillot has also published four books of poetry in French and in Creole. Her novel La mémoire aux abois, published in France by Editions Hoëbeke in May 2010, presents a compelling view of the dictatorship in Haiti and received the prestigious award Le prix Carbet de la Caraibe et du Tout-Monde in December 2010. In 2015, it was published by the University of Virginia Press under the title Memory at Bay. Her seventh and latest novel, Désirée Congo (Editions Cidihca, Montréal, December 2020), is taking place in Saint Domingue before the last battle against Napoleon’s army. In Désirée Congo, Évelyne Trouillot gives life to a young woman full of fantasy. Around her, a group of characters are living, each in its own way, this tumultuous and decisive era that will lead to Haiti Independence. Trouillot’s work has been translated into English, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. After the 2010 earthquake, Trouillot and her siblings have funded the Anne-Marie Morisset Cultural Center to help promote literature and culture to disadvantaged youth.

Nadève Ménard is professor of literature at the École Normale Supérieure of Université d’État d’Haïti. She is the editor of Écrits d’Haïti: perspectives sur la littérature haïtienne contemporaine (1986-2006) (Karthala, 2011) and the Journal of Haitian Studies’ special volume on Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2013). She is also the author of Lyonel Trouillot, Les Enfants des héros: étude critique (Champion, 2016) and one of the editors of the forthcoming Haiti Reader (Duke). Translation projects include Gina Ulysse’s Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle (with E. Trouillot, Wesleyan 2015) and the web exhibit Haiti: An Island Luminous (with E. Trouillot, 2016) hosted at the Digital Library of the Caribbean. She is currently working on an English translation of Le Fondateur devant l’histoire by St. Victor Jean-Baptiste and a manuscript tentatively titled Enduring Myths: Haitian Literature and Foreign Scholars under contract with Liverpool University Press.