In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on January 12, 2010, the representative victim-survivor in multiple media sites appeared to the world in the face of the Haitian child-cum-orphan. This poignant image of loss and suffering lent urgency to a range of altruistic responses—or rather, paternalistic interventions—by white families in the U.S. I argue that in both narrative and practice, dominant constructions of normative (white) motherhood were exaggerated and made hypervisible, which propelled the actual lived experience of Haitian mothers further into oblivion.

This article examines both the national context and the development of Haitian women’s organizations and struggles in the diaspora over the last forty years. It looks at their interconnectedness and their relations to structures of power at the level of the state and civil society. Three main sources of data inform the argument: secondary ethnographic and sociohistorical analyses, participant observation in Haiti and Haitian communities in North America, as well as informal group and individual interviews with Haitian women.

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake in Haiti sent shockwaves across the world, triggering an unprecedented international response. In the months that followed, international news, legal, development, human rights, and solidarity agencies highlighted the issue of gender-based violence, which has by all accounts increased since the earthquake. Despite activists' nuanced understanding and efforts, official responses have been inadequate while reproducing troubling, albeit familiar, discourses that tend to trigger either denial or demonization.