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There is a large Haitian community in Miami, and one of my favourite days in the city was spent with various musicians and writers that make up part of it. I will be posting three videos from Little Haiti this month, but will start with this reading by Edwidge at the Libreri Mapou bookstore. Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-born fiction writer who moved to the US when she was12 years-old. She is the winner of an American Book Award and is a National Book Award finalist. Her first book, Breath, Eyes, Memory—which she published at just 25, was an Oprah Book Club selection and was hailed as the first book to ever chronicle the Haitian-American experience. Edwidge is reading a poem by Madafi Pierre, a Brooklyn-based writer and musician originally from Miami. Of writing, Pierre says, “For me, writing is not just about a paper and pen. The words are what matter to me the most. My loyalty is only to them. They decide in what manner they will present themselves. It may be in a song, in a poem or in a play…” “Our Legs” can be found in The Meltdown of a Sweet Black Cat.

 

Edwidge is standing in the upstairs of Libreri Mapou, where hundreds of visitors have expressed their thanks to its owner, Jean Mapou, who also read for How Pedestrian.

Our Legs

 

Let me tell you about black legs
Let me tell you who they belong to

 

They belong to men and women and babies and girls
and boys, young and old who live in the suburbs and
in the ghettos
They live on islands across the street from America
They are used to march and step and run and jump
and squeeze and extend and bend
They are used to swim and float, watusi, jitterbug,
chicken-noodle soup, kid and play, tap and pirouette
They kick and they shake
Black legs glisten and are ashy and swollen and
skinny and fat and strong

 

They belong to my mother and my father
They belong to my pastor and my lover
They belong to Marlena Shaw and Martin Luther
King, Jr.
As well as James Byrd, Shaka Zulu and Gregory
Hines
Judith Jameson has legs too and so does Dr. Maya
Angelou
Oprah Winfrey’s legs are worth millions I hear
My grandmother’s legs held me up in church

 

My legs walk down subway station steps and
perform African dances
They salsa and meringue
They push the gas and pump the breaks
They are long distance walkers
They are paralyzed

 

We do not need a strong upper body
We do not need bulging pecks
We do not need a flat stomach
We need strong legs
Black legs
Legs that the ancestors stood on
Legs that God created
Those legs are distance runners

 

Those legs are choreographers

 

Those legs are farmers and DJs and dishwashers and
teachers and writers
Those legs are respect