Laurie ‘Zamí’ Germain | CROWN HEIGHTS

Zamí is a Haitian-made, African-grown, non-binary cultural worker. They grew up in  Southern and Eastern Africa before moving to the U.S  at  fourteen, and attended boarding school in Rhode Island before graduating from NYU.  Zamí believes that growing up in different countries is part of what has made them a storyteller: learning from an early age how to observe, to listen, and take the time to unravel the narratives that give explanation to culture and reason to experience. As a writer, they know that their most honest & impactful work, at its core, is also a study of self. This is how Zamí has developed work that stems from their center: 2NDGENders, a multimedia home for queer & trans, second generation immigrants to gather at the intersections of our stories. Based in Brooklyn,  they can be found in conversation with their community in their day to day life, and on the 2NDGENders Podcast. Zamí is a Future Voices Fellow, pursuing their masters degree in Oral History at Columbia University.

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“I am a writer and a poet, but more recently my creative practice has been focused on oral history and memory work. I understand oral history to be, first and foremost, a cultural and social practice of memory, storytelling, and connection. It is a practice rooted in community because our stories are how we connect with each other, sustaining  kinship through time, space, and geography. Haitians have always created community and remembered each other, and ourselves, through story. 

Through my time as a Lakou Nou Artist in Residence, I’ve had the opportunity to use these practices of storytelling, conversation, and connection to activate the queer Haitian experience in Crown Heights. My project, designed in three parts, is titled Lakou Nou La.

The first part, Lakou, nou la? was a call out and call in to the queer Haitian community in Brooklyn. It began with a call for oral history interview participants for a Queer Haitian Memory Project: an opportunity for queer Haitians to respond to the question, nou la? with the affirmation of their own stories. 

The second part, Lakou Nou La! harnessed the energy of we out here! to create two opportunities for queer Haitian connection in Crown Heights. The first was a lightly structured gathering at the beloved Lakou Cafe where attendees were invited into conversation via prompt cards, and connection through a queer Haitian bingo game. The second was LEKOL LEGLIZ LAKAY, a listening and collage workshop co-facilitated by Zarita Zevallos, where we used interview selections from Lakou, nou la?  as prompts for discussion and creative reflection. 

The final part of my project  culminates with the affirmation that Lakou nou, LA – our place is HERE – in Crown Heights and in the Haitian Community. The LAKOU SEKRÈ // SAKRE installation, complicates that place, making reference to the discretion asked of us in our parental homes. Nevertheless, it is an altar to the queer Haitian experience unveiled and activated in Crown Heights that creates a sacred space, a mini Lakou, to intimately connect the larger Haitian community with our stories. The narratives  shared become a production of counter knowledge, allowing queer and trans, second Haitians to bend the ways we have been told to see ourselves in order to shift the ways we are seen in our Lakou’s. 

Through the Lakou NOU residency, I have been able to open up space for conversation and understanding while creating opportunities for queer and trans haitians to express ourselves on our terms, ultimately reclaiming space for our experiences within our cultural fabric.”

– Laurie Zamí Germaine

Photos by Laurie Zamí Germaine and Marleen Moise.

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LAKOU SEKRÈ // SAKRE is an altar to the queer Haitian experience in Crown Heights. The participatory, oral history installation is inspired by el secreto abierto, or the open secret ~ a phrase coined by Rosmand King to articulate the ways that queerness is the Caribbean moves as something seen but unsaid, resulting in a mandate of discretion around what is perceived as culturally transgressive approaches to love and sexuality. 

The installation’s hollow, circular shape mimics the experience of the open secret, while the materials it is made of are informed by oral history interviews had throughout Laurie’s residency project, exploring themes of visibility/invisibility, religion/spirituality, home/belonging. The strung cowrie shells are interpretations of the rosaries Nat invited into the conversation while reflecting the rituals that grounded them in their Haitian church as a child. The religious reference also pays homage to Marla’s background as a former Jehovah’s Witness and evolving spiritual practice. The use of cowrie shells, an ancient symbol of wealth and contemporary reference to African Traditional Religions,  such as Haitian Vodou, evokes the spirit of Ginen that Akesh carries with them. In this way, the installation is an altar, not only to the Lakou Nou La narrators, but to the role of religion and spirituality as a portal for queerness in Haitian cultural fabric, and a reference to the indigeneity of gender and sexual creativity seen within Haitian traditional religion. The photos strung between the rosaries become material markers of memory, creating a semi-transparent boundary between the inside and outside of the circle in order to invert the open secrets mandate of discretion by allowing those standing inside it to be seen within a queer experience. The conch shells suspended in the center invite pairs to step in and listen with curiosity to the stories of Nat, Marla, and Akesh in reflection of their own experiences as queer Haitians in our Lakou.

LAKOU SEKRÈ // SAKRE makes undeniable what hides in plain sight in terms of the queer diasporic Haitian experience: the laughter, the love, the invisibility, the tension, the tenderness, the care, the things that our Lakou’s house but often refuse to home. The installation denies that refusal through an embodied encounter with the open secret, and the  invitation to step into its embrace and listen to the life worlds alive within.