Content area
Full text
Gina Athena Ulysse
Wesleyan University
Paulette Poujol Oriol, who died March 1 1 at the age of 84, left her birth country, Haiti, a legacy that is immeasurable. She was one of Haiti's most ardent feminist leaders, as well as an unmatched cultural producer and worker.
She was born in Port-au-Prince on May 12, 1926 to Joseph Poujol, founder of the Commercial Institute, and Augusta Auxila, a homemaker. The family migrated to France when she was eight months old. Poujol Oriol spent six formative years in Paris, where her parents were engaged in the worlds of commerce, education and theater. She credited this time in Paris as being instrumental to her development as a renaissance woman.
Poujol Oriol began her studies at the École Normale in Port-auPrince, then went on to Jamaica where she attended the London Institute of Commerce and Business Administration. She started to teach at her father's institute at the age of 16.
With additional courses in education, she dedicated herself to teaching, and never stopped herself. In addition to being fluent in French, Kreyòl and Spanish, she eventually learned and mastered English, Italian and German.
But along with teaching, Poujol Oriol wrote. She published her first novel, Le Creuset (The Crucible) in 1980, winning the Prix Henri Deschamps - just the second woman to have ever received that prestigious Haitian literary award. Another work, La Fleur Rouge (The Red Flower) was awarded Radio France Internationale's Best Novel award in 1988. Her novel Le Passage (Vale of Tears) was translated into English with a forward by well-known Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat.
And aside from teaching and writing, Poujol Oriol was an actress and playwright, as well as the director and founder of Haiti's Piccolo Teatro, which introduced children to the theatre arts. Over the course of her life as a prolific writer, relentless artist and activist, she became one of Haiti's most highly acclaimed women, a recipient of acknowledgements and numerous awards.
As a staunch feminist activist, she fought for Haitian women's rights in her writing as well as in practice. At a very young age, she defied gender and class restrictions, possessing a hunger for knowledge - encouraged by her parents - that surpassed social expectations of young women with...