Three leaders of the women’s rights movement in Haiti–Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan–died in last week’s earthquake. Read the story here. Merlet, who fled Haiti in the 70s and returned in teh 80s, described the challenges facing women in her homeland in an essay for the anthology Walking on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance
.
“While I was abroad I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I chose to be a Haitian woman,” she wrote. “We’re a country in which three-fourths of the people can’t read and don’t eat properly. I’m an integral part of the situation. I am not in Canada in a black ghetto, or an extraterrestrial from outer space. I am a Haitian woman. I don’t mean to say that I am responsible for the problems. But still, as a Haitian woman, I must make an effort so that all together we can extricate ourselves from them.”