All posts for the month June, 2016

9 Grams

Produced by Progressive Pupil’s Executive Director Robin J. Hayes, the 9 Grams play follows a Hollywood screenwriter (Maisha Yearwood) who is placed in solitary confinenent in a Turkish prison because of where she’s from and how she loves. The play is part of a transmedia project that aims to illuminate Black women and the LGBTQ community are impacted by mass incarceration. The next staged reading of the play is part of the ProudAF Theater Festival in New York City. July 16, 2016. Tickets available at thetanknyc.org.

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by Progressive Pupil on June 27, 2016 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by Progressive Pupil on June 27, 2016

https://progressivepupil.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/9-grams/

Limonade III: Healing the Haitian Diaspora

Haitian American musician Wyclef Jean with Haiti’s flag

During the Caribbean Studies Association 2016 conference I met a number of brilliant young Haitian-Americans, including a 20-something Cornell PhD candidate whose project focuses on Black feminist political theory in contemporary novels by Caribbean authors. Her mother emigrated from Haiti before she was born and left the country permanently in the early aughts. I had to admit to her my ignorance of the precise details of Haitian history that motivated her mom to leave Haiti.

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by Progressive Pupil on June 13, 2016 • Permalink

Posted in Activists, Allies, Artists, Authors, Black Resistance Reading List, Books, Field Notes, Parents, Scholars, Students, Teachers

Tagged #CSAHaiti2016, Aristide, Black Family, blackandcuba, Caribbean, coup, Diaspora, Edwidge Danticat, Haiti, Haitian American, immigrants, IS foreign policy, Reparations, Robin J. Hayes

Posted by Progressive Pupil on June 13, 2016

https://progressivepupil.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/limonade-iii-healing-the-haitian-diaspora/

Limonade II: Of Zora and Zombies

Clockwise from left: author Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston and her partner Percival Punter, and Haitian “zombie” photographed by Hurston during her fieldwork 1936-1937.

On the tap-tap (Port-au-Prince take on the dollar cab/combi/collectivo) from Touissaint Louverture airport yesterday, I had the good fortune of running into Prof. Daphne LaMothe of Smith College. An expert in African American literature, Prof. LaMothe shared with me that Zora Neale Hurston wrote the essential novel Their Eyes Were Watching God here in Haiti in just seven weeks.

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Limonade

Off to Haiti! Black and Cuba will be screening at the annual Caribbean Studies Association conference. I’ll be answering questions and hearing feedback afterwards. It is my first trip to Haiti and I’ve already learned so much in preparation.

Did you know:

Haiti has a lower homicide rate than the Dominican Republic and Jamaica?
Vodun which we call “Voodoo” accepts followers of all genders and sexual orientations?
The first place Columbus landed in Haiti in 1492 was renamed Limonade ?

Being a Black revolutionary often requires making lemons into Limonade. I’ll be sharing more of my journey during the next two weeks on The Progress and Instagram @robinjhayes.