Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories for Survival and Resistance

The theme for National Womens' History Month is Writing Women Back into History. This is one of the major themes running through Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories for Survival and Resistance.

This book is a compilation of stories told by Haitian women about their lives in the early '90s. There is pain and poverty. There is rape and fear and starvation. There is also strength and survival.

Read the story of Alerte Belance who was hacked to pieces -literally.

The Haiti earthquake took the life of Miryam Merlet, Chief of Staff of the Ministry for Gender and the Rights of Women. Her story in Walking on Fire is called "The More People Dream".

"While I was abroad I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I chose to be a Haitian woman," she wrote. "We're a country in which three-fourths of the people can't read and don't eat properly. I'm an integral part of the situation. I am not in Canada in a black ghetto, or an extraterrestrial from outer space. I am a Haitian woman. I don't mean to say that I am responsible for the problems. But still, as a Haitian woman, I must make an effort so that all together we can extricate ourselves from them."

The women of Haiti are strong. They've suffered much. They've fought to survive. Keep reading about women of Haiti after the earthquake. Read Walking on Fire. Read them back into history.

~Denise BlogHer Community Manager
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