Professor Elizabeth McAlister is an Associate Professor of Religion, American Studies, and African-American Studies. Her past engagements have spanned the globe; her experience ranges from Vassar to Esquire, Haiti to Wesleyan. Even her family spans several continents. She (and her dog Ziggy) sat down with The Argus to discuss Vodou, mixed heritage in America, and the continuing turmoil in Haiti.
The Argus: So, what are you reading right now?
Professor Elizabeth McAlister: I’m reading a series of memoirs written by people of mixed race in contemporary America, like Mary Gordon’s “The Shadow Man” and Gregory Williams’ “Life on the Color Line.” I plan to reread Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” and a book I haven’t read before called “How Did You Get to be Mexican? A White/Brown Man’s Search for Identity” by Kevin Johnson. I’ll read Rebecca Walker’s book—“Black, White and Jewish”—and Jean Giovanetti’s “One Asian Eye.” These are all for the course I’m teaching on mixed identity through memoir.
With increasing globalization and the liberalization of personal politics, there are a lot more people with mixed heritage, and it’s only recently that these people could have flexibility in their identity. Historically in the United States, the so-called “one drop rule” has always been in effect—anyone who has any non-white ancestor is classified as non-white, which was a white supremacist policy to maintain Anglo-Saxon dominance. I’m interested in where there can be more choice in identity for people of mixed races and religions.
Also, my family is mixed. My husband is an Afro-Haitian man, and our kids are situated at three points in a transnational and racial continuum. Our first daughter was born and raised in Haiti; she still sort of thinks of herself as Haitian. Our second daughter and our son were raised in the U.S. So, reading all these books and teaching the course is partly my attempt to learn how to best raise my own family.
I’m also reading the Percy Jackson series with my son. Jackson is mixed human and Greek god; his father is Poseidon. So the writer of this very successful “tween” series is indexing this new reality for a lot of American kids—the idea that they’re half-something, half-something else. So I’m reading that theme even with my kid—it’s the theme of my life right now.
A: What are some of the fascinating things you’ve discovered from your reading so far?
EM: The first thing is this “mixed race bill of rights,” which says things like, “You have the right to identify however you want; you have the right to identify differently in different situations….” It’s liberating, the fluidity of identity.
The second interesting thing was that I didn’t know how little commonality being mixed has. If people are from [different sets] of families, the issues are different. There’s very little of a common denominator. That was a surprise. I was imagining, “Oh, there’s going to be one ‘mixed’ identity—period.” But in fact, different mixes, so to speak, have really different experiences.
A: Are you still doing a lot of work on religion and Vodou?
EM: I did my first book on a Vodou festival! Right after the Haiti earthquake, in 2010, Pat Robertson said it happened because Haitians had made a pact with the devil. That comment is the tip of the iceberg of my next book project. The question is: How has it come to be that both American and some Haitian evangelicals understand Haiti to have been demonized, and how did the creation of that mythology come about? I’m really examining the neo-evangelical movement as it’s creating itself on the ground at Haiti.
A: Do you still go to Haiti a lot?
EM: Last summer and the summer before, most recently. I’ve been privileged to get to know a congregation of Pentecostals that have a female pastor at their head who have been living in a refugee camp in Port-au-Prince. I have been watching how they create, as they would say, the body of Christ in the refugee camp in the face of this horrifying situation; how they use their religion to not only survive, but to thrive. One thing that blew my mind was learning that they themselves have missionaries too, who go to the countryside and do mission work in areas that aren’t even affected by the earthquake. That totally blew my mind. So I’m looking at the cycle of missionary activity.
A: How is the situation in Haiti now?
EM: The situation in Haiti now is abysmal, catastrophic, and just a daily struggle for the majority [of people].
A: It hasn’t come up in the media very much lately.
EM: People who do media studies could probably give us a way to think about this; but it seems to be true that multiple media outlets latch onto a story when the story is at its most extreme, sensational, and vivid. And then they leave the story, and rarely revisit it—so that’s what happened to Haiti. There was a little bit of revisiting on the first and second anniversary of the quake, but there seems to be a way in which the American public wants what’s new and what’s extreme.
A: Do you think you’ll be working on this project for a while?
EM: I’ll be working on it until I finish my book—several articles and hopefully a book.
A: Do you still show some of your articles to your students?
EM: I do. Almost every class. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to get student feedback. Students have given me everything from editing suggestions to overarching comments, to critiques about contradictions or problems in the work. Since my main audience is a college student audience, it’s incredibly helpful. It gives the Wesleyan student the realization that we faculty do value the students’ intellect and student feedback.
A: When did you decide to start doing that?
EM: Hmm, that’s actually a good question. Pretty recently—maybe about three years ago. I was really obsessed about an article I was writing and I thought, “Wow, it would be great if the students would read it and tell me if it made sense.” And students have always commented that they liked that reading because they like seeing what professors are actually working on, and how what I work on is related to the course material.
A: How did you find yourself interested in religion and Vodou?
EM: The short version is: I grew up forty miles north of New York City. In the 1970s, there was a huge influx of Haitian immigrants. My father had been a civil rights movement activist; he got involved with the Haitian community. I started taking drumming lessons from a Haitian who was a priest of the drum, and I was also an anthropology major at Vassar. I quickly realized that drumming was a very complicated tradition that was new to the United States, and I became interested in it even as a sophomore or junior at Vassar. The answer then seemed to be to study it and do research on it.
A: Did you immediately go to graduate school?
EM: I took two years after Vassar and then I went to Yale for graduate school, and I worked in publishing in New York City. I worked at Esquire Magazine.
A: How was that?
EM: It was very fun! I worked in the editorial pool, and it was a lot of fun because the editors would get invited to all kinds of literary events, but also all kinds of fashion events and product launches…and when they didn’t want to go, we—the understaff—could go. So I felt as if I was on the scene a lot. I was invited to a lot of fabulous events. But I had always, at the back of my mind, wanted to be an anthropologist, and I saw that publishing was very solitary. It’s a lot of sitting alone and reading manuscripts. I just decided that while I wouldn’t mind that, I wanted to do scholarship even more.