“It is now urgent to dare to know oneself, to dare to confess to oneself what one is, to dare to ask oneself what one wants to be.”
— Suzanne Césaire Tropiques no. 1, 1941
Gina Athena Ulysseis a feminist artist-anthropologist-activist and self-described Post-Zora Interventionist. She was born in Pétion-Ville, Haïti. Her various creative projects include spokenword, performance art, and installation pieces. Her poetry has appeared in several journals and collections.
An often inspired intermittent blogger, she is also the author of numerous articles and essays and the books, Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica (University of Chicago Press, 2008), Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle (Wesleyan University Press, 2015), and Because When God Is Too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD (Wesleyan University Press, 2017).
A dynamic performer and public speaker, she is described by artist Evan Bissell as “a powerhouse and a whirling storm.” Historian Robin D.G. Kelley calls her “a one-woman aftershock.” Gina Athena has delivered many a talks and performed variations of her works and conducted workshops at conferences, in colleges and universities throughout the United States and internationally. She is currently Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.