Noah Rabinowitz / Staff Photographer / nr285905@ohiou.edu

Visiting professor Suzanne Dracius, who hails from the small island of Martinique, is at Ohio University this quarter teaching a course to graduates and undergraduates about French Western Caribbean literature by women. “Suzanne is first in terms of feminist writers from her country,” said Yolande Helm, a French professor at OU who runs a study abroad program in Martinique every Winter Intersession.

Editor’s Note: Interviews with Suzanne Dracius were conducted in French and translated into English by the writer.

The rocky history, diverse geography and bustling culture of Martinique — a tiny Caribbean island half the size of Rhode Island — are difficult to sum up, but Suzanne Dracius, a visiting professor, embodies them all.

A native of the island and professor there, Dracius is at Ohio University this quarter teaching a course to graduates and undergraduates about French Western Caribbean literature by women. But when she dissects literature with her students, she is teaching her own work, a milestone in her country and revered internationally.

“Suzanne is first in terms of feminist writers from her country,” said Yolande Helm, a French professor at OU who runs a study abroad program in Martinique every Winter Intersession. “The feminist literary movement in Martinique started socially with a group of dedicated women and with Suzanne Dracius as their first feminist writer.”

Dracius, who published her first novel, “L’autre qui danse,” in 1989, emerged as an author in a society with a restless history. After France colonized the island in 1635, slavery was the norm for more than two centuries, and women did not gain the right to vote until 1946. Until very recently, women did not have a presence in the country’s literary landscape, Dracius said.

“A French-rooted misogyny has stayed around, and it is even worse in Martinique,” she said. “In literature, there is a masculine predominance. I come from a volcanic island, and I have a volcanic temperament, like my mother said. I am one of the few among the only women writers in Martinique who are active, like one says a volcano is active.”

Since Dracius erupted into Martiniquais literature in 1989, she has written poetry, novellas, a novel and a play called “Lumina Sophie dite Surprise,” which dramatizes an 1870 insurrection in Martinique led by a “Creole Joan of Arc.”

Such a character is predominant in all Dracius writes, Helm said.

“All of her protagonists are women, and they are able to liberate themselves and transgress a taboo, various types of taboos, according to the time period,” she said.

While Dracius has a dominant theme running through her work, she is all but classifiable. Like her own country, she has “béké” (descendents of white colonists), African, Caribbean Indian, Indian and Chinese heritage. A native French speaker, she also knows German, Latin and Greek and is starting to learn English.

Dracius said she likes writing poetry, plays, novellas and novels for very different reasons, but she feels the novella is especially representative of Martinique.

“I discovered this force that one is obligated to put into reduction,” she said. “It resembles Martinique a little, which is also in a very small microcosm, but is very rich, very dense.”

Dracius is in Athens through a Robert and Rene Glidden Professor’s Grant that provided her with $20,000 for her salary, her stay in Bryan Hall and airfare, along with additional funding from OU’s African-American studies and modern languages departments. This is not her first stay in the United States — she previously has taught at universities in Indiana, California, New York and Georgia — but it is the first time Dracius has been to Ohio.

Students were initially intimidated by Dracius, Helm said, but they are now “mesmerized by her knowledge.”

Genevieve Boucher, a second-year graduate French major in Dracius’ class, said Dracius has taught her that literature is actually as layered and complex as some students initially think.

“We think we’re going further than what the author thought when she wrote it, but now we realize ... that every word is thought of,” she said.

Suzanna Gaynor, a first-year graduate French major, said she has realized Dracius’ writing reflects her as a person as well, adding that her work is complex and full of plays on words and references related to her experience in life.

By rendering these life experiences through her writing, Dracius said she hopes her presence in Martiniquais literature makes it easier for other women to express themselves.

“I have a great hope to open up the possibilities,” she said. “I think women have things to say.”