The Arsht Center for Ethics and Leadership Presents: "Two Haitians on the Crisis in Their Country"

April 08, 2010 |

Goucher College’s Roxana Cannon Arsht Center for Ethics and Leadership is presenting “Two Haitians on the Crisis in Their Country,” featuring readings by Edwidge Danticat and musical performances by Manno Charlemagne, on Thursday, April 8, at 8 p.m. in the Hyman Forum of the Athenaeum.

This event is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved by calling 410-337-6333 or boxoffice@goucher.edu.

The evening’s program will interweave texts and song. Danticat will read from her works, as well as from samples written by other Haitians following the devastating earthquake, and Charlemagne will perform his politically charged folk music. There will also be a question-and-answer session about Haiti, the resiliency of the Haitian people, and the effects of the latest crisis to strike this impoverished nation.

Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was 12. She is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and Brother, I Am Dying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the editor of The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures and The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, known as the “Genius Award.”

Called the “Bob Marley of Haiti,” Charlemagne is a Haitian singer, songwriter, and folk guitarist who was the voice of the generation of Haitians who ousted the François Duvalier regime in the early 1980s. He was forced to live in exile twice — during the 1980s and again from 1991 to 1994, when his country was ruled by a military junta led by Raoul Cédras. Charlemagne returned to Haiti and, in 1995, was elected mayor of Port-au-Prince after running as a candidate of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas political party. He was mayor until 1999. He has since returned to music and continues to write and sing songs that protest the oppressive political and economic conditions that have plagued his country.

Supported by a $2 million gift from Adrienne Arsht in memory of her mother, the Roxana Cannon Arsht ’35 Center for Ethics and Leadership explores ethics and leadership across a range of liberal arts disciplines. Other Arsht visiting scholars have included Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; First Amendment lawyer and free-speech advocate Floyd Abrams; journalist Bob Woodward; and veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas.