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The president of the Center Pen Haiti, the writer Kettly Mars. © Dangelo Neard

Novelist, short story writer, Kettly Mars is the author of several novels, collections of short stories and books for young people. His last two titles Je suis vivant and Aux frontières de la soif were inspired by the disaster of January 12, 2010 in Haiti and by the desperate management of its humanitarian consequences. Interview.

RFI: Following the 2010 earthquake, we witnessed a real explosion of literary works revolving around the theme of the earthquake and the devastation that this cataclysm caused. Is there an “ earthquake generation ”, as we have been able to write it?

Kettly Mars: Inevitably, there is an “ earthquake generation ”. Haiti had not been affected by a disaster of this nature and of this magnitude for more than a century. This event will forever be a landmark in our history. And those who were witnesses and actors of the event cannot forget it either. Even today, ten years later, we learn of deaths and disappearances during the earthquake from people we knew, but who were still thought of at home or living abroad. Apart from known works, I tend to believe that there are many unpublished literary works inspired by the subject.

Where were you when the deadly earthquake struck your country on January 12, 2010?

I was in Pétion-Ville, 30 minutes from Port-au-Prince . I had just left my office and was getting ready to get into my car in the parking lot across the street. When the car started to jump, I thought it was a joke by kids who were perhaps counterbalancing the rear bumper. But I quickly realized that something huge was happening. The ground moved under my feet under the effect of a swell. I hurried to leave the place. The building where I worked is the only one with 8 floors in the city and I saw it swaying as cracks from the ground floor opened vertical breaches to the top, at a frightening speed and with a hellish noise.

You yourself have devoted two novels to this theme. Is it only out of need to testify?

In fact, I didn't want to write about what had happened. I thought there would surely be a lot of writers to do it and I don't like the idea of ​​obligation in writing. I didn't want to be in fashion, well, that's how I saw it. It was frustration that led me to write At the Frontiers of Thirst . Anger at the inadequate management of the post-earthquake, international and national predators who were enriched by the despair of the Haitian people. A feeling of helplessness that still lives in me. As for I am alive , the earthquake is an accidental trigger of the story, it is not its purpose.

To tell the story of the earthquake and its devastation, you have chosen fiction, rather than chronicle. Why fiction?

I think that's the best I can do.

The question of writing and books underpins a certain number of texts born from this experience of earthquake storytelling. I think of the evocation of shelves overturned at Frankétienne or at Yanick Lahens. The question of writing is also at the heart of your novel, Borders of Thirst . Do you believe that writing can reconstruct what the earthquake destroyed?

I don't know if writing can reconstruct what the earthquake destroyed, but it eventually allows us to reconstruct ourselves and those who read us. It makes us expose our smallness before the immensity of the drama that strikes us while giving us the possibility of being useful even in our limitations.

Can literature heal the wounds of a people, especially in a country where 50% of the population is illiterate?

I do not like this wording or this reminder which never fails when we talk about Haiti. Even in countries where 100% of the population is literate, I don't believe that 50% of people read seriously (literature). Either they are not interested in it or they cannot afford books. But writing will never be a free act. I do not believe that literature can heal the wounds of a people. But the people in Haiti are happy and proud that quality women and men devote themselves to this, to literature. This literature which testifies and will testify in the time of their passage, their struggles, their failures or their victories, their fight for a better life and their thirst for beauty.

Ten years after the deadly earthquake of 2010, does this event still fuel your imagination?

I think so. Maybe more with the same intensity. But it only takes a few photos, a few reminiscences between friends for everything to come back. And anger with it. Today, ten years later , we are as vulnerable as that day.

(Interview by Tirthankar Chanda)