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Haitian Book Club: The Scorpion’s Claw by Myriam J.A. Chancy

Aside from the serpent and the tarantula, no animal exudes more fear than the scorpion. It’s the creature whose infamous claws prolongs and—puts a dead stop—to life. The claw is the primary instrument used by the animal to gather food necessary for survival. With it, the scorpion kills, sometimes its very own.

Dr. Myriam J.A. Chancy’s literary outing, the fittingly-titled The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press), is a poetic prose-rich novel, recounting nearly four generations of valiant Haitian women and men from the early years of the U.S. Occupation to post-Duvalier days.

Within the novel’s sanguine and restless pages, one becomes acquainted—and subsequently fully engrossed—in the life of the long-suffering matriarch Carmel, whose determination to make sense of the 75 years she’s lived, is the catalyst for such-like, indisposed self-examination of offspring to come. In Carmel’s world and that of her daughters Jacqueline and Maude, self-denial and hypocritically shutting the eye to the unpleasant is the norm. Reads the text: “The girls like me, lived their lives behind their husbands, denying that anything was wrong when their men did not come home for whole weeks at a time, denying any resemblance between their children and those who they saw playing in the streets in the next town or village. Perhaps they thought they were the lucky ones since they had rings on their fingers and their men presented themselves at their sides in church every Sunday.”

One such child ‘in the next town or village’ is Alphonse, the spawn of the coupling of the middle class Monsieur Leo and a poor peasant. Alphonse’s lowly birth is such that he is the servant in his own father’s house, the invisible child, whose existence will not be swiftly forgiven by a society who’s not so particularly merciful when it comes to trespassing unwritten class laws. Alphonse’s persistent need for vengeance realized through the shutting out his half-brother Delphi leads to a lifetime of emotional haunting and another wrong in the vicious cycle of man-orchestrated retribution.

In The Scorpion’s Claw, one also sorts through the emotional baggage of Josèphe, whose remedy for the trauma suffered through the rape at the hands of a family acquaintance, is total absorption—or rather obsession—with her academic studies. Her cousin Désirée, does not necessarily have a better lot. Through a conscience awakening, she abandons the elite lifestyle to join the lowly masses. But there is no burning bush or miraculous, glorious deliverance after her Moses-like abandoning of Egyptian riches in return for the disfranchised life of the people.

Chancy, a past nominee of Canada’s prestigious Commonwealth Literary Prize and whose more accustomed to analyzing other writers’ works (e.g. 1997’s Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women and Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women in Exile) than crafting her own—has written quite a novel. With its contemplative text, The Scorpion’s Claw attempts to pull the veil shielding the ugly and spiteful past and open the passage way to redress newly open scabs. It succeeds considerably in tackling both areas.

Have you read this selection of the Haitian Book Club? If not, be sure to let us know your thoughts after you’ve read it.

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K St. Fort
K St. Fort
ABOUT K. St Fort K. St. Fort is the Editor and Founder of, well, Kreyolicious.com and wishes to give you a heartfelt welcome to her site. She loves to read, write, and listen to music and is fascinated by her Haitian roots, and all aspects of her culture. Speaking of music, she likes it loud, really, really loud. Like bicuspid valve raising-loud. Her other love are the movies. She was once a Top 50 finalist for a student screenwriting competition, encouraging her to continue pounding the pavement. She has completed several screenplays, with Haiti as the backdrop, one of which tackles sexual abuse in an upper middle class Haitian family, while another has child slavery as its subject. She is currently completing another script, this time a thriller, about two sisters who reunite after nearly 10 years of separation. A strong believer in using films to further educational purposes, and to raise awareness about important subjects, she has made it a point to write about social issues facing Haiti, and making them an integral part of her projects. She has interviewed such Haitian-American celebrities as Roxane Gay, Garcelle Beauvais, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Briana Roy, Karen Civil, and many, many more. And that’s her writing this whole biographical sketch. She actually thinks writing about herself in the third person is cute. MY WEBSITE Kreyolicious ™: kree-ohl-lish-uh s: Surely an adjective…the state of being young, gorgeous, fine and utterly Haitian. Kreyolicious.com™, the hub for young, upwardly mobile Haitian-Americans, is akin to a 18th Century cultural salon but with a Millennium sensibility–an inviting lair, where we can discuss literature, music, problems facing the community, and everything on the side and in-between. Kreyolicious is the premier lifestyle, culture and entertainment blog and brand of the hip, young, trend-oriented, forward thinking Haitian-American. It’s the definite hot spot to learn more about Haiti our emerging identity as a people, and explore our pride and passion about our unique and vibrant culture. Within the site’s pages, Kreyolicious.com is going to engage you, empower you, and deepen your connection to everything Haitian: the issues, the culture, our cinema, the history, our cuisine, the style, the music, the worldwide community. Make yourself at home in my cultural salon. If you’re looking to learn more about Haiti, Kreyolicious.com invites you to board this trolley on a journey–on our journey. For me too, it is a process, a non-ending cultural odyssey. If you’re already acculturated, I can certainly learn something from you. We can learn from one other, for certain. With my site, Kreyolicious.com I look forward to inspiring you, to enriching you, and to participating alongside of you, in the cultural celebration. And being utterly kreyolicious. How do you wear your kreyoliciousness? On your sleeves, like I do? Kreyoliciously Yours, Your girl K. St. Fort, Ahem, follow me elsewhere!

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