VERO BEACH — The Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation and Haiti Partners will host Literature, Justice and Hope in Haiti at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 24, 2012 at the Emerson Center.
The event will present words of new hope for Haiti through the voices of renowned author and Haitian expert, Edwidge Danticat, and local author Kent Annan. A reception to meet the authors, purchase books and Haitian arts and crafts will follow.
The event is sponsored by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation in partnership with Haiti Partners.
Tickets are $25 for the speakers and $25 for the reception. For more information, call (772) 778.5249
The devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti focused attention of the world on a small country no more than 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives and as many as one million lost their homes. More than a million Haitians are still struggling to recover their lives.
And yet this earthquake is just the latest challenge in a history of injustices, dictatorships, natural calamities, and economic disasters following the breathtaking accomplishment of the Haitian independence from France in 1804.
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is the only slave colony – ever – to achieve freedom. Its people are steeped in the concept of justice, even as they live through injustice. Their story provides the world a rich tradition of art, music, and culture. These are our neighbors; they have lived and worked among us since the founding of our country. Every Haitian alive has hope for change in Haiti.
“I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to,” quoted from Edwidge Danticat, from Breath, Eyes, Memory.
Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat is the author of several fiction and nonfiction books and winner of numerous awards and honors, including the National Book Award and an Oprah Book Club selection. Recipient of the MacArthur “genius award” last year, Danticat received degrees from Barnard and Brown University. Her work appears regularly in The New Yorker Magazine and she is frequently heard on NPR. She has edited two anthologies, The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from The Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures. Her writings are regularly anthologized and translated into many languages. In addition to teaching creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami, she has worked with filmmakers Patricia Benoit and Jonathan Demme on Haiti-related documentaries and is active in various social causes. Danticat lives in Miami with her husband.
Kent Annan is the author of two nonfiction books, After Shock (2011) and Following Jesus through the Eye of the Needle (2009). His work has been published in numerous literary journals. He is co-director and co-founder of Haiti Partners, a nonprofit focused on education in Haiti. He began living and working in Haiti in 2003 after previously working for refugee ministries in Western Europe, Albania and Kosovo. His work with Haiti Partners has him traveling to Haiti regularly, including numerous immediate earthquake response trips in spring of 2010. Annan is a resident of Vero Beach, Florida, where he lives with his wife and two children. He holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.
About Haiti Partners
Haiti Partners works to help Haitians change Haiti through education, training, and resources for teachers, students, leaders, and disciples. One in three children never get to attend school, and the vast majority of Haitians live on less than two dollars a day. Haiti Partners strives to equip individuals to nurture dignity and foster the critical thinking, group learning, and self-confidence essential to making social enterprises flourish. Haiti Partners has responded to the earthquake by launching a program to build and provision Learning Centers. These Learning Centers shelter families, provide schools for children, and offer ongoing jobs to the Haitians who teach, build, and sustain the centers. Haiti Partners maintains a past, present, and future commitment to education in Haiti, not as an emergency fix, but as a long-term strategy for change in Haiti (www.haitipartners.org).
About the Laura Riding (Jackson) Foundation
Founded in 1992, the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation interprets its mission to “create awareness, understanding and appreciation of Laura (Riding) Jackson and her works” by emphasizing in its programs the skills and dedication required to be a good writer, and the value and possibilities in a life devoted to language and literature. The Foundation has preserved the author’s home, an example of Florida’s historic “cracker” style of vernacular architecture. The home is a focal point for the study of literature and history, an example of a disappearing architectural style, and a symbol of an older, more environmentally-sensitive way of life. The Foundation’s vision is to become a regionally significant provider of literary and humanities-based programs for a broad range of audiences (www.lauraridingjackson.com).