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WRITINGS
   
Open Letter To The Little Girl in The
Yellow Sunday Dress by Ezili Dantò


     
   
   
     


I saw you, on CNN
in your frilly hand-made yellow Sunday dress.

Four days at sea.
200 of you made it to Miami.
Someone, a loved one, holding your skinny, ashy arm.
Another below to catch you from falling.

I saw you little girl, on CNN
hanging in the air by one arm
over the side of an overloaded Haitian boat.

Four days at sea.
You looked dehydrated, dazed but delighted.
Delighted, because your loved ones,
who tried everything they knew how to get you to land,
were naively excited at reaching Miami.
Only to be corralled, moments later,
into INS detention centers pens.

I saw you little girl, on CNN,
a yellow butterfly, hanging by one arm
over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.
I saw you getting your precious yellow dress wet.
Trying not to touch the Atlantic.
Your indomitable spirit straining, scrambling upwards
to reach the blue skies across pitiless Miami highways and red lights to fly free.

I saw you little girl, on CNN.
Four days at sea. Your entire body looked ashen by the journey.
Are you still in your bright yellow Sunday dress?
After how many days of detention now?
Have you regained a bit of color yet?

Don't be afraid, little Haitian girl.
The INS white guys are just doing their jobs,
getting their piece of the American pie.
It's not personal.
These same guys used to hold little Haitian girls like you
in Guantanamo Bay, just a while ago.
They now put alleged al Queda terrorists and the Taliban there.
That's how much they're afraid of you.

But don't be afraid little Haitian girl.
Washington knows you're no terrorist -
will never openly acknowledge
that your spreading your wings is deadly
to their precarious biological fatalistic carved-out realities.
They will, in fact, say the opposite:
that you'll not get shelter in the U.S. because you were born in Haiti,
a country that's no threat to the U.S.
Cuba, they'll say, is a threat.
So the Cuban rafters your Haitian boat picked up
will get safe harbor and celebrated.
You, little girl, come from a people
who pose no threat to American security and democracy.
An example must be made out of you.
You've got to go to jail as a deterrence to terrify others like you.

I saw you little girl, on CNN.
I knew why U.S. might must clobber you,
shrink you back into Poverty's hues.
You're too young to understand your indefinite detention, I know.
There's no logic to the rationale
that keeps you forever yearning to fly free,
but always leaves you hanging in the air by one arm
over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.

You won't know this yet.
But it's important that other little Haitian girls
in bright-with-hope yellow Sunday dresses,
dreaming of expanding their identity, awareness and self-expression,
don't litter the Miami shores.
It's absolutely imperative, the State Department and INS pundits say,
that little Black girls from Haiti,
dreaming of pursuing a life of study, knowledge and travel;
of following life's basic impulse to reach outward to others,
it's important little Black girls
yearning to know what others, in different parts of the world, are doing,
it's important to white international domination,
that they be deterred and indefinitely detained.

I saw you little Haitian girl, on CNN,
yearning to expand outwards and identify with a greater reality.
You must not.
That is absolutely imperative to a certain US psyche.
You, little Haitian girls, must be made to understand, once and for all,
you have no inalienable, universal, nor self-evident human right
to know other cultures, other souls;
to live and touch God's bounty across the seven seas.

Your place is to grow up and be the underpaid, overworked lackey
of Disney, Nike and Microsoft.
You're not supposed to cross those boundaries.

I saw you little girl, on CNN,
yearning for what is forbidden by U.S. might.
Getting clobbered,
shrunk back into the periphery,
crushed in your Sunday best.

You won't understand, I know.
But listen again, carefully now, little girl:
You must not get safe harbor in the USA.
That would encourage others like you.
They would flood the Florida shores.
They might get an education here in America and return to rebuild Haiti.
They may even wish to exercise their basic rights at home in Haiti
to the detriment of American companies, international funding agencies,
NGO's, U.S. Aid organizations and other such profiteers.
How then could these international entities, now masturbating on your Black pain, sustained endlessly by U.S.-manufactured Haitian fratricide... persevere?

They cornered your birthright little girl, long ago.
And, God forbid, little Haitian girls like you should grow up
and refuse to be cowed and shrunken in a non-participatory democracy,
and reach to create a new world where you're not
forever underpaid or working as someone's maid.

Even when they come in peace
you might have to vie with the white settlers
to name yourself, represent yourself, the country of your birth, the world you see.

God forbid you get paid more than 40 cents a day
for making necessities folks in Florida and Washington
must have for their families.

God forbid they suddenly come across you in a boardroom,
educated in your own culture and history, articulate,
multi-tasking while rocking your baby on one hip
and sharing your many other God-given blessings globally‚
God forbid!

I saw you little girl, on CNN
hanging in the air by one arm
over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.
I know what you can grow up to be.
Why these white folks are so scared of we.
Fear of a Black Planet wasn't just a Public Enemy lyric.
You hit their shores seven days before the 2002 elections not by chance.
The U.S. public's fear must be kept alive.
There was no "intelligence failure" or security lapse.
You crashing shores, was just the catalyst needed
for the public to know what politicians protect them from.
Willie Horton wasn't free, so I saw you little Haitian girl,
on CNN crashing America's lily-white shores.
Are you seeing your uses yet, little girl?
Don't need "The Uses of Haiti" to learn about
your usefulness as pawn, easy target, cannon fodder.

See why
I saw you little girl, on CNN... when I did.
Do you see, little girl, that
"wet foot, dry foot" as long as you've got a Haitian foot,
you won't get safe harbor
in America, not even a hearing.
A new policy adopted shortly after the Bush administration came into office. Automatic detention, it said, of only Haitian asylum seekers.
All other seekers, except Haitians allowed to live freely in the United States
while they await their asylum court hearings.
Why only target Haitian asylum seekers for indefinite detention?
It says something to the American psyche.
It says something to the American people about the racial pre-disposition
of someone high in the Bush administration.
It's a clear demarcation from Clinton's old Haitian policy:
indefinite detentions, prolonged imprisonment for poor people,
Haiti's U.S.-led financial incarceration/embargo
a sustenance to some American psyche
proof of what their votes bought
under the Bush Presidential roof.

There's no logic to the newest color-specific policy.
Just deep white-American fear keeping you forever yearning to fly free,
always leaving you hanging in the air by one arm
over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.

Don't you know, little girl, you're the Westerners' boogey man.
Your people weren't supposed to get free, own land,
create a nation, a culture, a language, a Vodun psychology.
That was a catastrophe.

So, Washington and its international allies need to make policies
that take your pride, change your history,
deny you self-reliance, self-respect
and make you swallow their false generosity forever.
It's an intentional hell called slavery
'cause the Euros still want your labor for free.

I saw you little girl, on CNN.
I, the lawyer saw you. I, the Haitian woman saw you.
I, the American who could provide you with a new future
with my skills, my reach in society, my desire for justice and fairness.
I saw you little girl. On CNN.
But they won't let me get to you to plead your case, hold your hand,
clean your beautiful yellow Sunday dress for tomorrow -
help you stand and break the sea chains bounding you to an Island of pain
for over 200 years.
No, they'll steal your tomorrows, mouthing illogical rationales.
There's no logic to the rationale keeping you forever on CNN,
hanging by one arm over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat. Someone, a loved one, holding your skinny ashy arm.
While, I, on dry land, with all my American passports and so-called democracy, unable to catch you from falling.

I saw you little girl, on CNN.
I could write you an affidavit
telling of the price already paid for your freedom in the Americas.

I could tell of
the Cold War price paid by your Haitian grandmother and grandfather,
the Vietnam price paid by your great-Haitian-grandfather,
the World Wars prices paid by your great-great-Haitian-grandfather,
the Monroe Doctrine price paid, the Civil War price paid,
the American Revolutionary War price paid in Savannah, Georgia alone,
the U.S. occupancy price paid twice over, and on and on and on.

I could paint the Atlantic ocean blood-red
in the lost lives of Haitian women and men
fighting for American hemispheric co-existence and democracy,
the beginning with the Middle Passage.
I could write you a new future with my skills,
my reach in society, my desire for justice and fairness.
I could show why the first Haitian constitution makes your African ancestors
more American in their writings and intentions
than all the writings and intentions and visions
of human equality of all their revered U.S. Founding Fathers put together.
I could.

But they won't let me get to you to plead your case,
hold your hand, clean your beautiful yellow Sunday dress
for the tomorrow that will come -
help you stand and break the sea chains bounding you
to an Island of pain for over 200 years.
No, they won't let me show why you're special.
Deserve access to more than fearful, illogical white projections.
Why you, unlike the white boys who are responsible for the killing of
more than one hundred million people in their global wars
of the 20th century alone,
and don't even know how to spell the word "meritocracy"
because of the white skin privilege and domination,
why you, if you had an authentic education,
access to health care, proper housing and job opportunities
why you little Haitian girl could change the world.

Yes, I could show proof:
trace your ancestors' history and accomplishments in this hemisphere
and list a thousand and one reasons why you of all people are American already.

But there's no logic to the rationale that keeps you contained.
Only the iron will to make your containment-in-poverty last through eternity.

That will is tempered
by no law, no civility, no grace, no shame, no decency.
It's gluttonous.
It takes all liberties.
It operates by might.
It's on automatic pilot.
It's implacable.
It doesn't care the price paid, the justice denied,
the human rights violated, the equality deferred.
That will colors your chains.
Hung others by the neck, while leaving you hanging now by one arm
over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.
Your eyes beholding the "promised land"
with no one allowed to catch you from falling.
That will is the U.S. will I saw on CNN arguing against Cheryl Little.

I saw you little girl, on CNN.
I would free you from that TV box.
Get people to see your breath rise from your nostrils
and know red blood flows in your veins.
That you're flesh and blood and hurt.
That no white guy in Washington can make your dreams die.
That your journey to the Florida shores, on the high seas packed in
five centuries in those four interminable days
and you've come to here for a purpose.
I would yell you represent a million others who don't make it.
Not leave you stranded.
Speak for you in any language they would hear.
Write, say, cry anything to let the sleeping U.S. public know
the five-hundred-year-price already paid for your Miami passport.
And, why I, I need to catch you,
just this once.

But what I write cannot break that iron will.
So wrap the thin layers of your beautiful yellow Sunday dress,
tight around you, little girl.
You are about to face that will.
That will looms large against the dreams of little Haitian girls,
the same way it loomed large at Little Rock, Arkansas
against that little Black girl's dream, a while ago.

Hold on tight to your bright yellow dress, little Haitian girl
with one arm over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.
Don't worry about your wet yellow Sunday dress.
Hold on tight cheri,
Nou la - we're here.
Even when you don't see us, we're here - Nou la.
You've met the Atlantic will.
You now know what we know over here.
Paradise is not here for you to reach.
There's no promised land for Haitian feet,
wet, dry, fully clad with shoelaces, whatever.

For even we, your brethrens over here supposedly
with the Civil Right's bootstraps to pull you on dry land,
with all our American passports and so-called democracy,
we won't be allowed to catch you from falling in election-for-sale Florida.
Not when twisted brothers Jeb, George and their ilk,
still dream of you growing up merely to be their nanny.
What I write, what I write won't break their iron will.
It offers witness to your dreams to survive their unremitting despotism.

I saw you, little Haitian girl, on CNN,
ashen, hanging by one arm
over the side of an overloaded-with-hopes Haitian boat.
After four days at sea - yearning to be free.
Your bright yellow dress testifying to all
your hopes and dreams for finding some human compassion in Miami.
There's no doubt, you will be cast back into the periphery, back into poverty.
And I, this Haitian woman who could have mothered you and held you safe
can only offer you this:

You're not facing the Atlantic will alone.
Nou la.
When you're unconquerable within,
all the forces of hell cannot prevail against you from without.
We Haitians are there with you even if it's not allowed.
Our spirit can never be chained, contained or deterred.
Use your legacy little Haitian girl.
Your way out of the white settler's indefinite detentions
was made out of no way long ago.
Lwa yo cannot be chained, contained or deterred.
Zansèt yo e Ti Moun yo, yo la!

Who can stop you from taking off the INS locks when you become
Ezili Dantò, Ogou Feray, Simbi, Lasirèn, Papa Legba?
Zansèt yo e Ti Moun yo, yo la!
No one holds your soul.
The Ibos have kept your soul, your spirit, your divinity, dignity and integrity
safe in a Kanari since before their "New World" began.
Use your key. Keep your innocence little Haitian girl.
Be smarter than me. Don't let them see. Smile.
Be who you are without wanting to set them to the fires they lay you in, eternally. Don't hit your head against Satan's iron will little Haitian girl.
Let me.




(© Ezili Dantò, October 31, 2002. All rights reserved.)

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