Katia D. Ulysse

The short stories that make up Katia D. Ulysse’s Drifting are not an uplifting read, but part of their value lies in just that fact. These stories, set in Haiti and the Haitian immigrant community in New York, present difficult moments in the lives of people who have very little to begin with. The stories aren’t unrelentingly bleak, but they have their bleak stretches, and Ulysse doesn’t make things easy for the reader by providing happy endings. She gives us moments of friendship, show more moments of love, moments of hope, but keeps the setting in which these occur clearly within the readers’ sight.

Although this is a short story collection, it works much like a novel. Characters recur. We come to understand the network of genetics and chance that tie these characters together. The book opens in Haiti in 2010, the year of the devastating earthquake. It then moves back in time, ultimately covering a period of some forty years. It’s divided into five sections, each of which focuses on a different family, and in each we re-encounter characters from earlier chapters as minor players in subsequent stories.

Because the book ends (by beginning) in 2010, readers don’t see the impact of the earthquake that destroyed so much of the country. Nonetheless, readers can’t help but think about that earthquake and the way its aftermath must have affected every character in the book.

“Bereavement Pay,” the book’s second story, gives us a small taste of what the earthquake’s impact might have been like for Haitians living in the U.S. It also highlights the complex relationships among families and neighbors that are necessary for survival. No one in this book survives alone, but neither states nor businesses acknowledge many of ties that make life possible. In this story, a Haitian living in the U.S. is applying for bereavement pay and time off after the earthquake. The genial human resources worker she’s asked for information quickly rattles off company policy:

If you lose a mother or father that’s an automatic five days off. With pay. If you lose a sister or a brother, three days, also with pay. Grandparents: two days (but you only get paid for the first one). First cousins: one day, without pay. An uncle or an aunt—depending on how close you were to them, half a day [...]. [S]econd cousins. Let’s see. No… they’re not on the list. You would not be allowed time off per se, but there’s always your lunch hour. [...] Your mother-in-law’s brother on her father’s side… no, also not on the list… Your cousin’s sister on his mother’s side… nope, sorry… The lady who took care of you for ten years while your parents immigrated to another country to work and send money so you could eat and go to school… sorry, not on the list either… The lady’s children? Come on, are you kidding me?

Throughout the book we encounter tensions like these—the conflicts between one cultural viewpoint on its way to dominance and another growing weaker. The son who insists on tearing down the hut his mother lives in and replacing it with a cement one does so less out of concern for his mother than out of his own embarrassment about her unwillingness to abandon the old ways.

As I said, this is not an uplifting read, but I would argue that it’s an essential one, particularly given where we live and the times we live in. The earlier influx of Haitian “boat people” is not so different from today’s increase in undocumented children making their way into the U.S. to avoid gang and drug violence in their home countries. We can debate immigration as a political issue, but we need to see it in human terms as well, and that is just what fiction like Ulysse’s allows. show less

As the title suggests, Katia D. Ulysse's group of tales drift from Haiti to New York and back again. She gives voice to a rhythm that is Haitian in nature. Her story telling is gentle while her subject is harsh. The stories in this book are separate yet weave together. Ms. Ulysse gives the reader an insight to what it means to leave all that one has known and travel to the unknown. She also touches on the sense of loss and homesickness experienced by many immigrants. For the Hatian show more immigrants opportunities are so much better away from all one is familiar with, but how does one not feel a sense of loss of "home". The story includes characters who choose to stay in Haiti and the realization that when a family member leaves, they may never see them again. Loss on both sides.....yet opportunity for the future.
This is not a big book but it covers a lot of ground, I liked it....I liked it a lot, perhaps mostly because of the "voice" of the author. That voice never gives up hope while managing to tell of the struggles of a people, struggles most of us can not imagine. But, isn't that what story tellers do ? They open the mind and after their tale we see things differently, more clearly or perhaps we give it more thought. Katia D. Ulysse does it beautifully. Great debut by a new voice, a voice with a style of it's own. show less

Drifting, Katia D. Ulysse

I won this book for review from Librarything and the main thing I have to say about this arrangement is that it gives me the opportunity to read authors I’ve never heard of and discover voices that sing in my heart. This is another fine example.

Ulysse provides several interwoven stories that bring all the flavor, love and heartbreak of living in Haiti under the harshest of conditions and splashes them about in their new world haven, the U.S.A., where sometimes show more what you work so hard to achieve can often turn into a nightmare of broken dreams. She gives us insights into a world I’d never have the opportunity or ability to fully realize otherwise. I cannot step into her protagonists’ shoes but their thoughts, regrets, loss and best of all, their jumping off points teach of a beautiful people trapped in abject poverty without losing their self-respect and historical backgrounds. The characters are vivid, the scenery screams of paradise and the lives reflect every human’s desire to be more than a stereotype. Well done, Katia. Well done. show less

First, I have to note that the blurb on this book was incredibly misleading. I'd argue that, in some ways, it's simply false. And the truth is, if it had been more accurate, I likely wouldn't have picked up the book to begin with. Much as I respect Akashic Books and have loved their books in the past, I have to think the primary purpose of the blurb was selling books, vs. accuracy.

While some of Ulysse's prose is lovely, this is a somewhat plot-less and unevenly paced novel, and considering show more how sympathetic the characters Should be (based on what they go through), they're incredibly unsympathetic, to the point where I got more and more tired of reading about them, and could only care about the most minor characters in the book. There's also a real lack of plot, partly because the book spends a great deal of time building and building, and then speeds through what seems to count for a climax and ending. It would be insanely predictable also, if the blurb were accurate.

In general, this feels like a book that was rushed to publication, and perhaps pulled together from a number of short stories that were never destined to be a strong novel. In my opinion, it needed quite a bit more work, this only made worse by the fact that the powerful themes and events which are showcased on the back of the book as being primary to plot and conflict--the earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 and a vet's battles with PTSD--serve more as backstory and jumping-off points than getting any real depth or focus, to the extent that I can't help half-wondering if they're mentioned so prominently in order to sell books and make this seem more unique than it actually is, vs. being relevant.

So, all told, I would not recommend this book. I feel a bit cheated for having so looked forward to it and then spent time on it, honestly. show less