It is worth noting that when my family moved to Haiti, in 1982, Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole) was not yet recognized as an official language. Kreyòl is a language of resistance that predates the Haitian Revolution. Predominantly French in vocabulary but African in syntax, it was created when slave owners forbade their captives from speaking in their mother tongues. Yet even after Haiti won its freedom in 1804, French remained the language of power; as of 2017, most maps retain colonial-era French place names, illustrating the irreducible complexity of Haiti's history. It was not until 1991, the year my family left Haiti, that Kreyòl was finally recognized as one of Haiti’s two official languages by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in an attempt to level the playing field between those who had traditionally held power and those who struggled to make their voices heard. The Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen was founded in 2014 to promote the language as an integral part of Haiti’s culture, in recognition of Kreyòl’s inherent power, music, and subtlety, and to standardize the grammar and spelling. For clarity, I have corrected quotations from missionary journals, letters, and newsletters to reflect these standards. In every other respect, however, I have endeavored to remain faithful to my original sources.
I am deeply grateful to the newsletters of Dr. Bill and Joanna Hodges, Steve and Nancy James, Alta Hodges, Dorothy Lincoln, Milos and Christa Dolesji, Sue Mionske Tyrrel, Cornelia Scheulke, Suzette Goss Geffrard, Laurel and Jules Casséus, Ivah and Harold Heneise, Ron and Susan Smith, Maralu Whitt, Jeremy Bagge, Logan Cook, Mark and Sandy Jo Thompson, Wayne and Katherine Niles, and my parents. By the Light of my Kerosene Lamp and Pioneers of Light by Ivah Heneise provided invaluable insights into the early years of the American Baptists in the Limbé Valley. It should be noted, however, that the cassette tapes, letters, newsletters, and journals quoted throughout this memoir reflect the observations—and, at times, misperceptions—of missionary expatriates trying to make sense of an adopted country; books by Haitian authors tell a very different story.
I cannot recommend highly enough the work of Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I’m Dying is particularly beautiful); Masters of the Dew by Jacques Roumain; Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Trilogy by Marie Vieux-Chauvet; Ayiti by Roxane Gay; and in response to the 2010 earthquake: The World Is Moving Around Me by Dany Laferrière and God Loves Haiti by Dimitry Elias Léger. Laurent Dubois offers an excellent introduction in Haiti: The Aftershocks of History.
Acknowledgments
I HEREBY RAISE my glass:
To the generous, extravagant spirit of Rona Jaffe and to Beth McCabe for the implausible gift of time and space to do nothing but write.
To Oregon Literary Arts, for your energetic support of an entire community of writers: conversations around the long table; Writers in the Schools; Oregon Book Awards; a literary fellowship. Thank you.
To my agent, Jin Auh, fiercely insightful and generous of spirit, for trusting my curiosity.
To Kate Johnson, kindred spirit and kindest of advocates. Thank you for missing your train stop.
To my editors and the extraordinary team at Simon & Schuster. To Leah Miller, who believed in this book even before it was finished. To Millicent Bennett for nudging me gently toward the slow, painful art of self-compassion. To Emily Graff, for incisive critiques and for pushing this final draft toward excellence. To the expertise of Elisa Rivlin, Emily Beth Thomas, Sam O’Hara, and Jackie Seow, to Carly Loman for the beautiful interior book design, Thomas Colligan for gorgeous cover art, and Sarah Wright for her impressive patience and careful eye.
To Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, and Sarah Koenig at This American Life for loaning me a microphone and for your masterful storytelling.
To Cécile Accilien, to whom I will never be able to adequately express my thanks for fifteen years of inexhaustible encouragement, for questions that invite nuance and complexity, for patience with my naive assumptions and misspelled Kreyòl. Mèsi anpil, zanmi mwen.
To mentors who sharpened my thinking and coaxed me into believing in myself: Alice Ann Eberman, Dr. Steve Cook, Bart Tarman, Dave Tomlinson, Michael McGregor, Debra Gwartney. Thank you.
To students whom I will never forget in Tennessee, Ireland and London, Bandung, Portland, and Gresham: I carry with me always your courage.
To patient readers who have given invaluable feedback on the many, many drafts of this manuscript: my family (particularly my father, who gave me copious notes on each draft), Kathleen Holt, Dan Deweese, Mary Rechner, Jamie Passaro, Kristin Kaye, Maude Hines, Heather Morton, Tyler Merkel, Kate McCullum Hall, Jacqueline Alnes, Marilyn Nichols, Kathy Cafazzo, Abigail Chipley, Laura Gibson, Steph Gehring, and Tom George (to whom I owe particular thanks for his insightful analysis of a fifteen-year-old narrator).
To friends who have shared kitchen tables and given me quiet spaces to disappear and write: Tristan Robinson and Mari McBurney, cosponsors of the Tanglewood writing retreat; Jennifer Creswell and Ian Doescher; Linda and Doug Sugano; Dina and Jason Guppy; and Heather Thomas, whose roots go deep. Thanks especially to Sister Marcia and the nuns at Bridal Veil for sharing your waterfall.
To grandparents, honorary grandparents, great grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great aunts (Myrna!) who cheered from the sidelines, shared stories, and distracted small boys. And to Grandma Lois, who saved a lifetime’s worth of family letters in Roman Meal bread bags. Without you this project would have been immeasurably more difficult.
To friends too numerous to count for your laughter, insights, and encouragement: long may you live. Here’s to lifting a glass in person next time we’re together. To the beloved community of St. Luke’s West Holloway; to Emily Cafazzo, Ryan Domingo, and Larch Provisions for transcendent meals; Hilarie Lesveaux, Liesel Swanson, Mallory Spanjer, and Kendal Hocking for transcription help and for giving my children wondrous summers while I holed up in the studio to write; Elise Astleford, anam cara, and Joe, for baking cookies; Evonne Tang, curator of stillness, for your kind welcome (always) and endless cups of tea.
To writers whose exquisite sentences made it seem worth the agony: Annie Dillard, Brian Doyle, Nikky Finney, Ben Fountain, Alexandra Fuller, Nadine Gordimer, Mary Karr, Maxine Hong Kingston, Colum McCann, Michael Ondaatje, Zadie Smith. And to the music that carried me: Neko Case, Laura Gibson, Isan, Lhasa, Leyla McCalla, Emeline Michel, Ozomatli, Thao.
To Ayiti Cheri: Fòk mwen te manke w pou mwen te kapab apresye w.
To friends from Haiti and beyond who shared stories. I only wish that I could have included them all. Your trust is a tremendous gift, and if I have portrayed a scene differently from how you remember it, I ask your forbearance. I have spent long years trying to tell one story in many voices, but my voice is the filter through which all other perspectives are revealed, so I alone can claim responsibility for whatever flaws you may find. My goal was empathy, and if I have fallen short in this, I ask your forgiveness. Thank you for trusting me with your stories.
To all who shared food and lodging on research trips over the years: Olynda Durinvil Hodges-McLymont, Joanna Hodges, HBS, Clark and Pat Moore, Steve and Nancy James, Laurie and Jules Casséus, UNCH, David and Emily Hodges, John and Susan Vendeland, Suzette and Willys Geffrard, Drew Kutschenreuter, Jennifer McCormack, the Mercy Corps office in Saint-Marc, Zo Alexandre, Mesha Williams, Ken and Debbie Heneise, Reuben Smith, Lorraine Taggart.
To Tamara and Tony: We will always remember you.
To the inimitable Suzette, guardian of my first published work, sold for twenty-five cents to my favorite teacher. Your magic words have kept me humming since I was seven years old.
To my father and mother, without whose breathtaking courage and vulnerability this book would not have been possible. Thank you for your blessing. And to my sisters: I will be forever grateful that no matter where we touched down, we always had each other, and that the hard memories are interspersed with so much good.
To my two boys, who make me laugh (often), who ask delightful questions and remind me to stop and play. Thank you for your splendid
creativity and for trying to convince me that you love me more than I love you (not that it’s actually possible).
And to David. Beloved adversary, companion in this life, most loyal of friends. Thank you for holding on to me.
About the Author
Apricot Irving is currently based in the woods outside Portland, Oregon, but has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom. Her missionary parents moved to Haiti when she was six years old; she left at the age of fifteen. She returned to Haiti in the spring of 2010 to cover the earthquake for the radio program This American Life. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and an Oregon Literary Fellowship. Her renowned oral history project, BoiseVoices.com, is a collaboration between youth and elders to record the stories of a neighborhood in the midst of gentrification. She still talks to trees, and on rare occasions she can be persuaded to belt out Irish folk songs in bars. The Gospel of Trees is her first book.
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2018
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Interior design by Carly Loman
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4516-9045-3
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The Gospel of Trees Page 38