"A Feminist Perspective"

When I was reading another book about the power of women I realized a connection between what we, as women, should strive for in our own expression and what Edwidge Danticat has accomplished in her book Krik? Krak!. The book that I was reading was called Red Moon Passage: The Power and Wisdom of Menopause by Bonnie J. Horrigan. This book explores how many other cultures revere older women (and women in general) and that our own society needs to learn this lesson as well. This book speaks of the oral traditions of story telling in many Native American societies and how the elders provide life lessons to the younger generations. When speaking of women one contributor, Paula Gunn Allen, says "They were great sorceresses, divine shamans. They brought life to the planet, they became the planet. This is the power of feminine..." (128).

In Krik? Krak! Danticat explores the strength of women but not from an overtly feminist way. She is just telling stories in the Haitian tradition that so happen to make the strength of women shine.

A great deal of women's worth has been based on reproduction in societies far and near (and here). Some believe a woman's passion, creativity and connection to all of your own gifts comes from the womb. Jamie Sams, a contributor from Red Moon Passage, states " Women give birth to their dreams through their womb" (172). It is this ingrained and our own natural feelings, as women, that create such importance in the child birth experience. In "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" from Krik? Krak! Danticat explores the power of reproductive feelings in women. The narrator/ main character of the story finds a deceased baby lying on the curb. The woman takes the child home with her and imagines she is real. Her trauma has come from miscarriages. She says that the child "looked the way that I had imagined all my little girls would look" (92). And she says that her body couldn't hold them. She seems to feel guilt and believes that they suffocated inside her. From the first words of the story the reader hears a soft, barely audible voice telling this story. The character keeps this child, and bathes her, even as she begins rotting away. The character knows that the baby is dead but she says "I looked down at Rose. In my mind I what I had seen for all my other girls. I imagined her teething, crawling, crying, fussing, and just misbehaving herself." (100). This story, to me, illustrates the importance of women's reproductive health. At one point the woman says that her husband wondered if she had killed the babies she carried on purpose. I think there is that kind of pressure put on women from themselves and society in their roles as reproductive beings.

Another issue touched on in Red Moon Passage is women's intuition. Carl Jung called intuition "seeing around corners". Often times intuition is something that is not taken seriously but it is something that Horrigan calls "part of the human experience" and says that it has "been used, studied, talked about, and pursued since man first walked the earth."(167). Intuition seems especially prevelant in women and historically women have been shunned and even murdered (Salem witch trials) because of this gift.

Danticat explores this power of intuition in women in her story "Nineteen Thirty-Seven". The woman in prison in this story, Manman, has been sentenced to life because it is thought that she takes off her skin at night and puts it back on in the morning before sunrise. The woman is described as old, wrinkled, and beaten and yet everyone fears her. Her remains after her death are to be burnt so that her spirit doesn't get into any "young innocent bodies" (36). All of the women in the prison are feared. Before bed they are showered with cups of cold water so that their bodies cannot attain the heat to grow wing of fire and fly away. These women are all treated horribly and inhumanely in the story because of a fear of what they know. These women were all caretakers, by nature, who had been rumored to have caused death to a child. People believed these women rose in the night "like birds on fire" (38). In the story the women were arrested on belief of these rumors. Manman is deeply spiritual and waits for the Madonna that her daughter brings her to cry. Throughout the story I always felt that Manman knew something that everyones else was ignorant of and she accepted her fate there in the prison.

The point of this brief commentary about Krik? Krak! was to look a couple of the feminist aspects of this beautifully written book. I think the concentration, so far, on Danticat has been to call her a voice of the Haitian people. I wanted to show her female voice, not just her Haitian voice. This book seems to be a celebration of women's strength and wisdom and the fear that they cause, sometimes within society and sometimes within themselves.

Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak!. Soho Press Inc., 1995.

Horrigan, Bonnie J. Red Moon Passage: The Power and Wisdom of Menopause. Harmony Books, 1996.