"Confessions d'une séancière" by Ketty Steward or rethinking our humanity

I’d say 90% of the fictions I read are in English. They allow me to put down the shield I must wear to survive in the real world that labels me as a Black woman. I do find French Caribbean literature entertaining, but it’s rarely as thought-provoking as mainstream media claim it is when a few Black authors get the spotlight for a season. Or let’s say it just doesn’t force me to redefine the thoughts and beliefs I have about my culture. However, once in a while, I do come across books that makes me pause and reflect on my Karukerament approach. That’s what happened three years ago with “Confessions d’une séancière” [t/n: Confessions of a Manbo*] by Ketty Steward. It’s a short story anthology exploring the darkness of our humanity released in 2018. An updated version was released in 2023 and I got a copy. I don’t want to spoil you the reading experience… So let’s say it made me go “well, damn” more than once. And keep in mind that I had already read it and yet it still managed to catch me off guard. That’s what I’d like to unpack here.

After I finished reading, I felt overwhelmed as if the high blue wave against the orange sky on the cover would take over me. I must say that what I enjoy the most in reading women in Caribbean literature is how they manage to extract beauty out of the scariest things. And when I say beauty, I mean the writing makes you question if you understand correctly the situation as monsters emerge from the pages. It’s not just about sharing our folklore, our legends. Each story is about asking who we are as human beings now. Xenophobia, homophobia, motherhood, marriage, Carnival - each story questions an aspect of our culture and shows the contradictions in which we live. We, sometimes, just accept these contradictions as the norm even when such contradictions kill us. Metaphorically and literally. 

As I’m getting older and moving forward into my healing journey, some stories that I disregarded three years ago resonated in a different way this time around. Especially the ones set in a contemporary setting and questioning gender norms and dynamics. The Dorlis is definitely the figure that scared me the most growing up. This creature who rapes women in their home, in their bed. I don’t think there’s nothing less terrifying than to think that even your home isn’t a safe space. If home can’t protect you then where can you go? It always made me feel uneasy that people would laugh about Dorlis while laughing. And I don’t mean the kind of embarrassed, awkward laugh. They did seem to find the idea quite amusing. And it always felt like people (men and women) sided with the Dorlis like “oh, he does it because he can’t help it. Too bad!”... The most insulting reasoning in this context is that men are basically given permission to do whatever the fuck they want to women. And in Dorlis stories I heard growing up, it was always about how women were victims, and no matter how hard they tried to protect themselves, the Dorlis always won. Well, sorry for the spoiler, NOT THIS TIME!

With that said, this anthology also challenged my concept of La Diablesse’s sexualization. In the most popular version of this legend nowadays, her goal is the same as the Dorlis: imposing sexual intercourse to her victim. She just goes through the struggle of seducing her victim first because… I guess, women can’t just be cruel and ruthless people or men are just too strong that they need to be tricked before being assaulted? My point is this anthology makes you think about our common system of representation…

Who is truly powerful and who is truly powerless? How that power dynamics can change?  What does it mean to be a man or a woman in Martinique? What does it mean to be perceived as a woman or a man in a Martinique? How do we define our masculinity, femininity and above all our humanity? What does it mean to go against society and live your truth no matter what? What does it mean for us to be happy? These are the questions I had on heavy rotation during summer. I mean, I already had them, but reading “Confessions d’une séancière” gave me a new perspective to the answer I’d give today. And not just as a French Afrocaribbean woman. It gave me a new perspective to the answer I’d give as Maëlla. This might sound simplistic to you, but it took me years to give myself permission to be me. To feel that I was actually me. However, as described in this book, we all have the choice to either hide or to embrace who we are. In the end, like every character in these tales and legends, integrity and loyalty to ourselves always save us.

t/n: a manbo is a priestess in the Haitian Vodou religion… A “séancière” is no priestess. It’s someone who is connected to the invisible world and is supposed to help people who pay her to tell them how to fix what’s wrong in their life. But when translating a cultural aspect, I try to go with a reference that seems the closest to what I meant. Feel free to correct me if you know how to translate “séancière” for English speakers. That’s why I chose to keep the French word, but at least you know what it means.