Photo Geoff Forester/New Hampshire Humanities
Guest Post by author Terry Farish
With books provided by I’m Your Neighbor Books in English and Kreyòl (Haitian Creole), students from the Amiko Youth Program in Manchester, NH read Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings by Francie Latour. These Haitian-American sisters are drawing portraits, as Auntie Luce does in the story.
The Amiko Program is a good place for kids. They come after school from many parts of the city and gather with a lot of joy and laughing. It’s a vibrant place. There’s a gym, and coaches, one-on-one tutoring sessions, dinner, gardening, music, and reading.
The kids are multilingual learners joining in for a New Hampshire Humanities’ literacy program called Connections. Here’s a story of one afternoon when twelve children gather to read the book together and draw their own portraits as Auntie Luce does in the story.
The kids were drawn to Francie Latour’s hero, Ti Chou (meaning Sweetheart). Ti Chou is growing up in the U.S. with a mystery. Her mom was born in Haiti and the mystery is that she doesn’t understand for sure who she is. She knows her birth story has to do with poverty and violence in her mom’s home country.
Illustration by Ken Daley from Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings
Ken Daley’s pictures in the book honor the many colors of Haiti as seen through the eyes of Auntie Luce, who’s a painter. “To paint Haiti,” Auntie Luce tells Ti Chou “it takes the darkest colors and the brightest ones, and all the colors in between.” In this way, she depicts for children not only the bright beauty of the country but also the dark sorrows of its violence.
The Amikos, as the staff calls the kids, know the word revolution. They know the word war. Latour writes that the U.S. and Haiti were both born from a revolution. Ken Daley drew portraits of Haiti’s national heroes including Francois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, the general who “opened the way” for a free nation as he led Haiti’s revolution.
Three of the students, Josephine, AndreAnna, and Delephin, are from Haiti. They were excited to read a story about Haiti and see Daley’s illustrations of multicolored houses by sea. I’m Your Neighbor Books provided copies in Kreyòl (Haitian Creole) and that changed everything for the Haitian girls. All the children were given a copy of Koze Penti Ak Tati Luce (Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings).
The Haitian girls wanted the Kreyòl version to bring home to their families.
“I like this book because this is the language my mom speaks.”
—Delephin
All the children from many backgrounds were able to see the language of Kreyòl which is one goal of IYNB’s multilingual initiative.
Latour gave the children and their families an honest and affirming book created by a Haitian American writer who loves her home country and shares that love of a home even in the country’s harsh times.
“Students ran up to me to share that the book was about Haiti and that they’d gotten the book in their language.”
—Jaime Pendleton, Amiko Youth Program Assistant Director
Another IYNB-featured story is Back Home:Story Time with My Father by Arlène Elizabeth Casmir, also illustrated by Ken Daley. A child, Lune, from Haiti loves her father’s stories. All his stories begin with the word, “lakay” which means “back home” in Kreyòl. Back home is Haiti, a place Lune knows only from her father’s stories.
Both Lune and Ti Chou are hungry to know their home country as part of who they are. All children are, though they may not speak it. When Ti Chou goes to visit her Auntie Luce in Haiti, Auntie Luce tells her, “You hold this place in your skin, deep in your bones.”
“Knowing our birth story is so important to understanding the world, and each other.”
—Francie Latour, author of Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings
“Did you know you have a story inside you that’s waiting to be found?”
—Arlène Elizabeth Casimir, author of Back Home:Story Time with My Father
—————-
Terry Farish is the author of the Ken Daly-illustated books Joseph’s Big Ride and A Feast for Joseph with OD Bonny. She has just released the young adult novel Go Home with Lochan Sharma.
