Interview with Marilène Phipps

By Howard Lovy

Introduction

The Interview

LOVY: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about your book and your life. They both sound fascinating. In your memoir, you straddle many different worlds. Can you tell us about them?

PHIPPS: It starts with childhood. I speak about the social, cultural, political milieu in which I was born and grew up, including members of my family. A cousin of mine, who also was my godfather, gave his life to try to topple the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. He is a significant character in my story. So perhaps because of him I needed to set the milieu for myself, for the family, and for him. The memoir focuses on spiritual experiences and people I have met who have had an influence in my spiritual development. My cousin, who gave his life for an ideal and for others, set a strangely high example for me.

LOVY: You’re talking about Guslé Villedrouin, right? Let’s talk a little bit about him, his place in history, and your relationship with him as a family member.

PHIPPS: At first glance, Guslé’s story appears simple, even if tragic. When he was twenty-four, he was the head of a group of thirteen rebels who decided to overthrow “Papa Doc” Duvalier. They landed in the south of Haiti in Dame-Marie, near Jérémie. They were betrayed by someone close to the group, who gave Duvalier their names and copies of their alien cards. He, therefore, expected them. They fortunately understood this right away after landing and were able to take to the mountains of L’Asile, where they hid and fought the whole of the Duvalier army for two months.

My cousin’s gesture was a brave, political, and revolutionary one. The selflessness involved in giving one’s life to save others indicated an unusual spiritual dimension. It is only in adulthood that I came to see his example as a spiritual message, a gift of sorts, to the family at least. It took time for me, for us, to see it that way. His bravery was first seen as foolishness. Guslé’s death loomed over the family for many years. There was grief in us, and there was fear. He put the family in danger. Duvalier was known to retaliate on entire families if only one member became a threat. He tried to destroy the rebel movement, if not the rebels themselves, by killing their families.

In relation to this, there is a famous massacre in Haiti’s history called The Jeremie Vespers. Duvalier ordered the massacre of all the families of the thirteen freedom fighters, then in the mountains of L’Asile, from grandparents to babies. Guslé bore his father’s family name—Villedrouin—and not his mother’s, who was my father’s sister. The Phipps family probably escaped the massacre because of that. The thirteen young rebels in the mountains were eventually all killed. My cousin is said to have been the last to die. They ran out of munitions after two months of resistance against the whole of Duvalier’s army. The story goes that my cousin called out to his friends, “If we must die, let us die bravely! We are out of bullets, let us throw stones!” I’m not a historian. I am not inclined to the meticulous, fact-finding and ordering necessary for that. I wanted to write more about the upbringing and psychology of a man who was willing to give his life for others. When and how does it start manifesting itself? I approached my cousin’s spirit more as a poet. Feel him, more than study him. Does it make sense?”

LOVY: Did you know him well?

PHIPPS: No. I was six years old when I last saw him. He was sixteen. My aunt left Haiti with her children because of the dictatorship. He came back to die there at twenty-four. I was in France and thirteen years old when I last spoke with him. But all I did was cry. I must have felt that something ominous was happening. He called everyone in the family to say goodbye before embarking with his companions. I remember his voice repeating my name to coax me to speak. He had a warm, deep voice. When he sang, he must have been a tenor.

LOVY: It sounds like he had a major impact on your life.

PHIPPS: He did have an impact on all of us. Some years ago, I won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and had a short story collection published by the University of Iowa Press. It’s called The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti and one of the stories, “Dame-Marie,” is about him.

LOVY: Your memoir, Unseen Worlds, is not just your history. It’s also a spiritual memoir, right?

PHIPPS: It is indeed a spiritual memoir because the book focuses on the people and events that have had an impact on my spiritual development. My cousin was such a person in my life. As Christians, we grow up with the idea of Christ giving his life for us. Giving your life for another is the ultimate spiritual gesture of selflessness. So that has been on my mind.

In my twenties I went to Berkeley, where I studied anthropology. And I went back to Haiti wanting to understand those stories I had heard during childhood, the drums in the hills at night, the things you find on your doorstep in the morning, and all the stories about werewolves and zombies. So I tried to study Vodou and I found out that in order to get any answers you have to be initiated, you have to put yourself in situ.

LOVY: A lot of Americans have a Hollywood horror movie image of Vodou. Can you explain it a little more?

PHIPPS: Vodou is a religion. There is a pantheon of gods, a very rich one, but they do believe in Gran Mèt—Great Master—which is perhaps God. It’s a series of rituals, beliefs, and devotional systems. It came to Haiti through the slaves from different regions of Africa. Each region had its own God. It can be said that the gods made the crossing with their devotees. Colonial masters tried to prevent Africans and slaves having their own religious system, so they tried to impose Christianity on them. Slaves cleverly combined main features of their old gods with matching ones in Christian Saints. Very early on, the slaves were very adept at worshiping their gods under the guise of worshipping Christian saints. This combined worship has been coined “syncretism” by anthropologists, and this phenomenon continues to this day.

LOVY: Growing up, though, you were more immersed in the European part of your family and it’s not until you came back to Haiti that you studied Vodou.

PHIPPS: Because of political violence, my parents sent me to France. My mother is French, so I was sent to a French boarding school. Yes, I was very much Euro-centered. I have German and French background on my father’s side. But my generation became more America-centered.

LOVY: In your book, readers meet all kinds of interesting people: a charismatic Muslim astrologer, an exorcist. Tell us more about your spiritual discoveries.

PHIPPS: The Haitian people are a very spiritual people. As a child, I was really interested in God and the saints. I wanted to be a nun, and so very early on, the issue of divinity interested me and I read books about it in my childhood. There was a series of books for children about the lives of the saints, and I remember reveling in those stories. I was fascinated with these people who seemed larger than life and who were able to conquer their fear of pain and death for the love of God. I may have seen my cousin that way because he defied death, he seemed larger than life.

My book is divided into two sections. The first one is called “Innocence” and the second one is called “Choice.” “Innocence” is those parts of my life where I went from one thing to another, not really understanding what I was after, besides the fact that I wanted to find God. I asked the usual questions: “Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” And life somehow directs us.

It was only when I started writing my memoir and reflecting on the spiritual aspects of my life that I begun seeing how things are connected, and almost as if there had been an ordering higher mind at work all along. Then, lo and behold, I realized that there was a theme to my life so far. I mean, there are many themes, but there’s one that mattered most. I became a Muslim for a while, I met Catholic monks, and I met the pope. That was a significant meeting for me. So, all that was part of “Innocence” until I met American Mormons in Haiti. Then my story changes to one of “Choice.” We all become adults at some point—some early, some later on. I could say that I’m a late bloomer. I went from one survival mechanism to another and, yet, when I look back it seems that there is an intelligence that was ordering things.

LOVY: How did you decide to write a memoir?

PHIPPS: When I became a Mormon, my bishop, hearing that I was a writer, suggested that I keep a journal of my conversion experience. I followed his advice. I paid attention to spiritual changes and happenings in me and this scrutiny led me to also look back in my life. I began to meditate over my past and also about the Mormon people I had joined. I find that Mormons are more than a religious people. They are mystics. The Mormon faith gives you really more of a guide on how to develop your own relationship with God, with Jesus.

But this is not a book about Mormons or being a Mormon. This is my story. Meeting Mormons is part of the whole. I am not trying to convert anybody. I’m just telling my story.

LOVY: You went from Catholicism to exploring Vodou, briefly being a Muslim, and then Mormonism. It sounds like you have a spiritual consciousness that longs to come out.

PHIPPS: I could write a book about my relationships and it’d be different book. But I decided to write this book about my spiritual journey even though books about these kinds of topics are not often popular. Each one of us comes from a specific milieu. If you decided to write about the place where you grew up, you’d write it from your own eyes and how you developed from there and it would probably be a very rich book, too. Anything from Haiti seems exotic. But when I was a child, anything American seemed exotic.

LOVY: The last time you spoke with Guslé’ was when you were thirteen years old, so in what context does he come up later the book?

PHIPPS: He came in dreams to me, asking me to perform religious ordinances for him. I’ve always had significant dreams. That’s why I had to let my family know that I had become a member of the Mormon Church. My cousin’s sister was accepting of that and allowed me to perform the ordinances.

LOVY: You’re also a painter. Does that come from the same kind of creative well you draw on for your writing?

PHIPPS: They are separate in that one is not illustrative of the other. They are similar in that both creative forms stem from the same spirit—mine. They probably express the same character and concerns. One uses a visual vocabulary while the other uses words. My visual sense most probably informs the way I write and what I write.

LOVY: What do you hope people will come away with after they’ve read your book? What do you hope people will feel?

PHIPPS: Love. I feel love for the people that I write about, love for the country, love of God, and I want them to feel the love that they have in them and then perhaps be stimulated to investigate their own life and see where love was. I want them to be inspired.

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