Reflections of Loko Miwa

Reflections of Loko Miwa is the first novel by Lilas Desquiron, one of few Haitian women writers to gain international recognition. The country's complex social and political situation is the setting for the story of two women ordained by the spirits of Vodou to be marasa (twins) in spite of their birth into unrelated families of different classes. Desquiron's intricate narrative shifts among characters, bringing diverse perspectives to bear on the dramas of class prejudice. The main narrator is Cocotte, born to a black peasant woman in the mountains. After being baptized with her "sister," Violaine, Cocotte is brought as a child to be a restavek, a servant in Violaine's upper-class home. Tragedy results from Violaine's love affair with Alexandre, a young, black revolutionary who has returned from abroad to assist in an attempt to overthrow President-for-Life Francois Duvalier. A family council decrees that Violaine will be zombified in order to prevent her from further disgracing her family and class. The Duvalier regime suppresses the attempted revolution with decisive force, killing or imprisoning the participants. The fate of these young people symbolizes the immobilization of the Haitian people by a minority of politicians who continue to hold the society prisoner, subject to their own fears and prejudices, two hundred years after the slaves defeated Napoleon's army and declared the independence of the Republic of Haiti. Desquiron was born into a prominent mulatto family in Jeremie. For reasons of safety as well as education, her family sent her as an adolescent to study in Belgium and France. The novel is a very personal account of a young woman's adherence to folk beliefs and resistance to the prejudices of her class.