Disaster Errantry in Maryse Condé’s 'Waiting for the Waters to Rise'

• In Event: Feminist eco-ethics

Description for Program

In Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2010), Maryse Condé explores how manmade and natural disasters can push individuals into a state of errant wandering in search of peace and stability. The novel opens with a torrential Caribbean storm and ends with the infamous 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Sandwiched between these calamities is a narrative driven by the main character Babakar Traoré. An obstetrician of Caribbean and Malian origins, Babakar has struggled to find a place to call home. After adopting the orphaned child of a Haitian refugee who died during childbirth, Babakar relocates his daughter Anaïs to her native Haiti. Throughout their journey, they encounter other unrooted roamers driven from their native lands by the violent tides of political conflict. In Haiti, these wanderers intertwine their lone errant roots into a rhizome that can fortify their family tree against man-made and natural disasters.

This paper supports Daniel Brant’s assertion that Waiting for the Waters to Rise is a “disasterscape” novel where global suffering/disasters force the opportunity to harness humanitarian ethics. I also suggest that this text is an interesting case study for how errant quests that involve the precarity of nature can elucidate the bonds formed in south-south migration. Rather than looking toward the global north to alleviate their suffering, the rising waters push the characters to build a home in the global south.

Author

• Sanyu Mulira