Books
“With each step, Janine Harrison tackles feelings of loss, forges friendships, and sheds setbacks—all on a laughter-filled journey that’s also chock-full of practical tips.”
-Laura Kiniry, Award-winning journalist for Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, and BBC
About the Camino Experience: “Darn You, Shirley MacLaine: Comraderies on El Camino de Santiago,” Wild Camino
Weight of Silence is also on sale at the following physical locations:
Global Gifts, Bloomington, IN
The Venue, Bloomington, IN
Promise You Art House, Highland, IN
Miles Books, Highland, IN
Green Door, Hobart, IN
“[W]hether in / Port-au-Prince / or rural Jérémie / one constant was / the silent community,” writes Janine Harrison in her stunning debut, Weight of Silence. Chronicling her time in Haiti during Hurricane Sandy, Harrison moves beyond merely documenting the devastation, delving into history and cultural grief. The “weight of silence” permeates all aspects of island life, even manifesting in the bodies of animals: “Dogs in Haiti have / rusted corrugated metal ribcages, / uneven stairstep backbones, / [and] decaying palm frond ears.” Countering oppressive silence, Harrison courageously bears witness to contemporary Haiti and the roots of its challenges through both a series of dramatic monologues and her intimate first-person portrayals. This important book should be read and shared so that the “silence” oppressing Haiti can be witnessed, better understood, and transformed into a generative engagement that can only come by articulating that which continues to bind the colonized. Janine Harrison has written a powerful, poignant account of her journey and that of the Haitian people.”
George Kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014-2016)
“In The Weight of Silence, Janine Harrison, gives voice to silences. These poems are well researched and compassionate but hewed with rhythm and song. Swoop and snatch/swoop and snatch each poem bears witness. Although not Haitian, Harrison’s lyrical storytelling bridges her humanity with her subjects’. She is a teacher and a student studying a cat curled/in clay bowl mountains. Lovely and painful in one breath, The Weight of Silence is how we should view each other: with great care and kindness. Read this book. Hold it. Share.”
Kelly Norman Ellis, author, Tougaloo Blues and Offerings of Desire
The witness, James Baldwin tells us, is called upon to testify, to “inscribe the unspeakable,” as Janine Harrison writes of Haiti’s own Edwidge Danticat. Which is precisely the task of the poems of Weight of Silence: They offer history lessons, they lament violence and injustice, and, in language alternately lush and plainspoken, they pay tribute to the resilience and power of the people of Haiti and of the land itself, “beautiful, broken.”
Sarah Browning, co-founder of Split This Rock and author of Killing Summer
All poet and Wordpool Press proceeds are donated to the not-for-profit organization, Haitian Connection
Reviews:
Galatea Resurrects 2017 (A Poetry Engagement)
Chapbooks by Janine Harrison and Jared Schickling
$7.99 All proceeds go to organizations that directly help Dreamers to attain a roadway to citizenship
To purchase a copy, please contact me: janinerharrison@gmail.com
JANINE HARRISON 