The Book of Emma

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, was born out of a
slave uprising against the French colonial masters in the early 19th
century. Its tragic history has been exacerbated by a series of bloody
dictators in the 20th century, none more brutal than Papa Doc Duvalier
and his notorious son Baby Doc.

Marie-Célie Agnant was born in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, but
escaped the harsh life there to settle in the Haitian community of
Montreal, where she has lived since 1970, gaining a deserved reputation
as a poet and a novelist in both Quebec and France.

The Book of Emma is rooted in the life of the Haitian slaves imported
from Africa; kidnapped, raped, beaten, and mutilated by their landowning
masters and overseers; and condemned to a life of brutal savagery from
which the only escape was death. Agnant chooses to tell the story
through the contemporary character of Emma Bratte, a Haitian woman
condemned to a psychiatric prison hospital in modern-day Montreal for
allegedly murdering her baby. Emma’s story is presented to the reader
through the voice of another woman, the translator/interpreter Flore,
who has been brought in because the patient refuses to speak
conventional French, only her local patois, as a means of protesting
against her treatment. Through the medium of the increasingly engaged
interpreter, we learn the story not only of Emma’s own life, but of
all her female predecessors going back generations to the original black
slaves. As the story unwinds, the translator Flore becomes even more
involved in the life and history of this poor woman whose tragic ending
is easily foretold, as she follows her ancestors/sisters along “the
route of the big beats” to their inevitable demise.

The translation of the original French text by Zilpha Ellis is smooth,
seamless, and convincing, allowing the reader to forget that this is
indeed a translation.