My dissertation titled "Mambos, Priestesses, and Goddesses: Spiritual Healing Through Vodou in Black Women's Narratives of Haiti and New Orleans" reclaims the practice of Vodou as an integral African spiritual tradition through fiction by black women writers. I discuss how the examination of Vodou necessitates the revision of colonial history, serves as an impetus for reevaluating the literary representation of the black female migrant subject, and gives voice to communities silenced by systemic oppression.

Although Haitian women have been systematically excluded from social and historical discourse even as they actively engage in the fight for change, EdwidgeDanticat proves through her characters that revolutionaries come in many forms. Breath, Eyes, Memory rewrites the myths embedded in the country’s historical narratives so that Haitian women are unsilenced.