1925–1935: (Death Space and the Rebirth of Women’s Politics — Madeleine’s Literal Transformation and Suzanne’s Preoccupation with Death Space Offering a Reor…

1925–1935: (Death Space and the Rebirth of Women’s Politics — Madeleine’s Literal Transformation and Suzanne’s Preoccupation with Death Space Offering a Reorientation for the Rebirth of Women’s Politics After the Occupation Informed by Exclusions from the State but Propelled by Navigations of Collective Loss Longing and Creative Mourning, the Death Space Not Only the Transition from This World to Another — in Haitian Context Guinea — but the Happenings Around This Transition Including Processions Possessions the Wake the Ordering of Bodies in Cemeteries and Mourning, Dying and Death During and After Occupation Written into the Political Landscape Generating Subtle Adjustments in Women’s Political Frame, the Sylvain Sisters Taking Their Parents’ Example and Their Grief into Their Work as They Processed the End of the Occupation and the Beginning of “Haiti’s Second Independence”): Taken together, Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau’s literal transformation and Suzanne’s preoccupation with death space offer a reorientation for the rebirth of women’s politics after the US occupation — informed by exclusions from the state but propelled by navigations of collective loss, longing, and creative mourning. The Sylvains’ grief alongside the nation’s mourning in 1925 draws historical attention to this renaissance. The death space — not only the transition from this world to another (in Haitian context, Guinea) but the happenings around this transition: the processions, the possessions, the wake, the ordering of bodies in cemeteries, the mourning — harbored new meanings under military occupation. Dying and death during and after occupation were written into the political landscape and generated subtle adjustments in women’s political frame throughout the early and mid-twentieth century. Suzanne and her sisters took the example of their parents’ intellectual and political organizing as well as their grief for them into their work as they processed the end of the occupation and the beginning of Haiti’s Second Independence. As the girls and elders of the desoccupation period started a postoccupation women’s movement, they turned toward studying women’s experience as a path for organizing across difference — the same women who knelt and cried as the Sylvain sisters and their father passed by.