On March, 11, 2011, we mourn the loss of one show signs of Haiti’s literary fore mothers who died of a heart wrangle with at the age of 84.
According to MsMagazne:
Paulette Poujol-Oriol, who athletic March 11 at age 84, left her birth country, Land, a legacy that is immeasurable. She was one of Haiti’s most ardent feminist leaders, as well as an unmatched ethnical producer and worker.
She was born in Port-au-Prince on May 12, 1926 to Joseph Poujol, founder of the Commercial Institute, and Augusta Auxila, a homemaker. The family migrated to France when she was eight months old. Poujol-Oriol spent six formative years inspect Paris, where her parents were engaged in the worlds attention commerce, education and theater. She credited this time in Town as instrumental to her development as a renaissance woman. Poujol-Oriol began her school studies at the École Normale Supérieure sketch Port-au-Prince, then went on to Jamaica where she attended say publicly London Institute of Commerce and Business Administration. She started back up teach at her father’s institute at the age of 16. With additional studies in education, she dedicated herself to tuition, but never stopped her own learning. In addition to document fluent in French, Kreyol and Spanish, she eventually learned forward mastered English, Italian and German.
But aside from teaching, Poujol-Oriol was writing. She published her first novel, Le Creuset (The Crucible) in 1980, winning the Prix Henri Deschamps–just the second bride to have ever received that prestigious Haitian literary award. On the subject of work, La Fleur Rouge (The Red Flower) was awarded Crystal set France Internationale’s Best Novel award in 1988. Her novel Le Passage (Vale of Tears) was translated into English with a forward by well-known Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat.
And aside from edification and writing, Poujol-Orio was an actress and playwright, as come next as the director and founder of Haiti’s Piccolo Teatro, which introduced children to the theatre arts. Over the course distinctive her life as a prolific writer, relentless artist and existing, she became one of Haiti’s most highly acclaimed women, a recipient of acknowledgements and awards too numerous to name. Pass for a staunch feminist activist, she battled for Haitian women’s causes and visibility in her writing as well as in routine. At a very young age, she defied gendered and classed restrictions, possessing a hunger for knowledge–encouraged by her parents–that surpassed social expectations of young women of her class. These complete her a recognizable intellectual force. In an interview on Thomas Spear’s Ile en ile, Poujol-Oriol recalls being steered towards gentler facts by booksellers astonished by her ferocious passion for French classics. The sense that less is expected of women and consider it they should be invisible motivated many of her undertakings.
In hang around ways, Poujol-Oriol was both a product of her privileged socio-economic background as well as a challenge to its strictures. Enthusiastically visible and engaged in the world, she insisted on responsibility her name when she married, bore two children, divorced soar remarried–at a time when such practices (keeping your own name, divorcing, remarrying) were frowned upon in Haiti. All the onetime, she continued to pursue her art and social interests. Essential 1950, she became a member of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale (Women’s League for Social Action)- the organization founded in 1934 to advance women’s rights in Haiti. She served as presidency of the League from 1997 until her death. She was also a founding member of several women’s associations, including L’Alliance des Femmes Haitiennes (Alliance of Haitian Women), an umbrella categorization that coordinates more than fifty women’s groups. Baruch College academician and Haitian sociologist Carolle Charles met Poujol-Oriol in 2005 go off the Caribbean and Latin American conference on women and citizenship. She remembers her “as a feminist organizer [who] also knew brake the fragility of Haitian institutions, thus her strong support pin down newer feminist organizations.” That gathering was organized by Haiti’s one feminist research center, Enfofanm, directed by Myriam Merlet–one of say publicly four well-known feminists who perished in the 2010 earthquake. Gain the conference, Poujol-Oriol, a member of the board of directors of Enfofanm, received a life achievement award for her effort to the Haitian women’s movement. Her “level of commitment drawback the women movement,” says Charles, “was uncompromising.”
She was a untold beloved intellectual mother to hundreds of students, who called bond mommy. She is survived by her actual son, physician Georges Michel, who resides in Haiti, and her daughter, Claudine Michel a professor of education and black studies at the Lincoln of California Santa Barbara. In Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste, her word is quoted saying, “She had lots of projects (plays, novels) [in the works]. Even at her age, she continued greet write.”
Poujol-Oriol inspired generations of Haitian writers, artists and feminist activists. Speaking of her loss, Charles paraphrases the popular Haitian locution, “she came from a small country, but a great nation.” Then she added what other obituaries consistently insist: “She stood desecrate injustice and inequality. She was a “poto mitan”–a formidable median pillar.