Romaine-la-Prophétesse
| Date of birth | circa 1750 |
|---|---|
| Place of birth | Santo Domingo |
| Date of death | unknown, after March 1792 |
| Nationality | Haitian |
| Pronouns | reportedly masculine pronouns |
| Gender identity | possibly genderfluid, transgender, or bigender |
| Occupation | coffee planter |
| Known for | leading a slave uprising that controlled much of southern Haiti |
Romaine-la-Prophétesse ("Romaine the Prophetess") was born around 1750 in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo and assigned male at birth.[1][2] Romaine moved to the French colony of Saint-Domingue and became a free Black coffee plantation owner and an influential figure there.[3] In 1791, as the Haitian Revolution began, Romaine and wife Marie-Roze Adam[4] gathered supporters at their plantation (Trou Coffy) to defend it from armed whites who had massed nearby,[5] and led an uprising of thousands of slaves, who took weapons and supplies from and sometimes burned plantations and businesses across southern Haiti and freed other slaves there.[6]
At the same time, Romaine began to identify as a prophetess,[2][7] dressed like a woman,[8][9][10] and spoke of being possessed by a female spirit,[2][11] but also reportedly identified as a godson of the Virgin Mary,[12] intended (according to one critic) to become "king of Saint-Domingue",[13] and reportedly used masculine pronouns in self-references in dictated letters. Romaine has therefore been interpreted as perhaps genderfluid[14] or transgender,[14][8] or might have been bigender.
For a time, Romaine controlled much of the countryside of southern Haiti, and two of its main cities, Léogâne and Jacmel.[15][16][17][13] In 1792, however, a coalition of white and conservative free Black residents[18][11] and French forces defeated the Trou Coffy uprising and arrested Marie-Roze, although Romaine escaped capture and disappeared from history.[19] Romaine-la-Prophétesse appears in Victor Hugo's novel Bug-Jargal (as a man), and Mayra Montero's fiction In the Palm of Darkness (as a woman).[20][21]
Further reading[edit | edit source]
- Wikipedia article
- "Romaine-la-Prophétesse and Marie-Roze: the Black trans woman and her wife who led the early Haitian Revolution"
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Terry Rey, The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World (2017, ISBN 978-0190625849), pp. 27-28, 48 (discussing the lack of clarity over whether Romain(e) Rivière, given in French records, is Romaine's exact birth name or only a gallicization of Román Rivera; it is also unclear whether the feminine spelling Romaine or the masculine Romain is original), 50-51, 232
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Terry Rey, "Kongolese Catholic Influences on Haitian Popular Catholicism", in Linda M. Heywood (editor), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (2002), pp. 270-271
- ↑ Rey (2017), pp. 30, 137
- ↑ Robert D. Taber, The Mystery of Marie Rose: Family, Politics, and the Origins of the Haitian Revolution, January 6, 2016
- ↑ Rey (2017), pp. 27-31
- ↑ Rey (2017), pp. 32-35, 44, 48-49
- ↑ Terry Rey, Bourdieu on Religion: Imposing Faith and Legitimacy (2014, Routledge, ISBN 9781317490883), pp. 119-120
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Mary Grace Albanese, "Unraveling the Blood Line: Pauline Hopkins's Haitian Genealogies", in J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, volume 7, number 2, Fall 2019, p. 234
- ↑ Maria Cristina Fumagalli, On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (2015), p. 111
- ↑ Maria Cristina Fumagalli et al. (eds.), The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities (2014), p. 11
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Jeremy D. Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution (2011), p. 51
- ↑ Rey (2017), pp. 58-59
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (1990), p. 128
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Rey (2017), pp. 52-53
- ↑ Rey (2017), pp. 14, 30, 39-43, 52, 137, 152
- ↑ Colin A. Palmer, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (2006), p. 1972
- ↑ Matthias Middell, Megan Maruschke, The French Revolution as a Moment of Respatialization (2019), p. 71
- ↑ Rey (2017), p. 137
- ↑ Rey (2017), p. 137, 157-159
- ↑ Rey (2017), p. 219
- ↑ Persephone Braham, From Amazons to Zombies: Monsters in Latin America (2015), p. 160
