Date of Award
9-8-2023
Publication Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing
Keywords
Afro-diasporic literature;afropresentism;fiction;poetry;scripts;Vodoun
Supervisor
Richard Douglass-Chin
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Born With Vomit Under Forked Tongues: For Ahidô Houêdo’s Orphan Daughters is a multi-genre creative script written in poetry and prose. This story of becoming centers around Aví, a Fon woman from Benin, who lives in Canada. The story follows her evolution as she struggles to makes sense of the multiple scripts and spells that shape her reality and lived experiences. The multi-genre nature of the work allows Aví to explore the imagined flesh memories within her lineage, as she travels through space and time to understand the multifaceted and multigenerational stories of her Fon ancestors. She also wrestles with the extra-temporal macro-meso-micro scripts that built and destroyed her community. She begins to decipher the orders of simulacra that imprison her in the 21st century thanks to her growing awareness of the dystopic, intersecting forces of Evangelical terrorism, patriarchal oppression, and colonial withcraft. She realizes that much of her existence has been shaped by poisonous and sorcerous scripts (vomit) ingested and normalized over generations (dating back to European and Judeo-Arabic invasions). Thankfully, she finds salvation and freedom in the origin stories of her people when she encounters her ancestral Cosmic Mother, Ahidô Huedô, the vodoun Rainbow Serpent. Through cosmic communion, she learns to embody her Divine Mother’s Feminine wisdom, represented in Ahidô Huedô’s sharp, forked tongue. She claims the forked tongue and its original venom to re-script her life on new foundations. She re-builds herself thanks to her ancestral mystic stories and sacred scientific cosmologies that continue to uphold and nourish Fon people’s lives to this day.
Recommended Citation
Zannou, Sarraounia, "Born With Vomit Under Forked Tongues: For Ahidô Houêdo’s Orphan Daughters" (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 9238.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/9238