Moderator, Dr. Cécile Accilien, University of Maryland, College Park, Professor of French & Francophone Studies, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Center for Global Migration Studies

In her 2010 essay/memoir: Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work award winning Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat writes:

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

Haitian immigrant writers often feel the duty to create in spite of their often vulnerable and even fragile status. This panel of distinguished Haitian contemporary writers will address the politics of language among writers who must negotiate histories of colonialism and empire in order to tell their stories. They must navigate the challenging aspects of a publishing world and reading public that is organized around languages of colonial powers and in the process must find their voices in a complex space marked by ongoing forms of oppression. How do writers of Haitian/Haitian diaspora narrate issues around language, immigration, migration and social justice? What are some of the ways they create in an in-between space?