Panel: Processes of Self-Translation and Multiple Texts
Copanelists: Kaitlin Briggs and Joanne Karpinski
Dany Laferrière, a Haitian exile living in Montreal and Miami, wrote ten books based on his life growing up in Haiti and his experience as an exile living in North America. But these works of autobiography have undergone a number of different incarnations: newspaper columns, short stories, novels, movies, re-written and revised novels, and even a children's book. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Laferrière adapts his life story for different audiences and purposes. It will focus on two of his novels which examine his childhood in Haiti: Les gouts des jeuenes filles, which was rewritten twice and adapted as a movie, and L'odeur du cafe, which Laferrière adapted into a children's story that won the prestigious Governor-General's Award in Canada.
What is gained and what is lost in all of these translations of the same story? And with multiple versions of the same story, all of which involve Laferrière's input and approval, how do we apply concepts such as “authenticity”? I will argue that the oral storytelling tradition that Laferrière comes from has influenced his own life story and how he tells it.
Lee Elaine Skallerup Bessette is an Adjunct Professor at California State University, San Bernardino. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, Canada. Her interests include Caribbean literature, issues of translation and transnationalism, as well as authors Anne Hébert, Dany Laferrière, and Nalo Hopkinson. She has published articles on the translation of novels by Dany Laferrère, Mordecai Richler, as well as on the fantastic fiction of Nalo Hopkinson.