Haiti and the distortion of its Vodou religion
I vividly remember walking out of a Boston movie theater at the age of 14 feeling that my Haitianness, my blackness, and my faith had been assaulted.
I laughed uncomfortably as we re-enacted scenes from "The Serpent and the Rainbow", Wes Craven's 1988 horror film set in Haiti, which reached cult status within the genre.
"I want to hear you scream", hollered my friend in a fake Haitian accent. "Don't let them bury me, I'm not dead" was my response, mimicking the macabre gestures of a zombie.
After sitting for 90 minutes enthralled yet embarrassed, confused but entertained, there I was, a young Haitian-American, who, as the intellectual Frantz Fanon once articulated, felt the "weight of his melanin".… Seguir leyendo »