DREAMLEAPERS® with Harriette Cole featuring Monique Clesca

She has ridden a camel in the Sahara Desert, been on a bird safari in Zimbabwe, survived driving into an electric pole while fighting off a kidnapping attempt in Haiti, seriously considered moving to the Andean mountains after her visit to the Inca Citadel Machu Picchu, and once ran a film foundation to bring cinema to underprivileged school children with Raoul Peck, the famed director of the popular film I Am Not Your Negro on James Baldwin. She is a Commander in the Niger National Order of Merit and a Magaram and Tambara, honorific titles, for she is the recipient of numerous recognitions for her advocacy work in child and women’s rights in Africa. Monique Clesca has led two incredibly fulfilling lives. First, as an activist, she worked in the field of international development, advocating for children’s and women’s rights, and participated in high-level policy around issues linked to Haiti and Africa. Since her retirement from full-time work at the United Nations in 2016, she has worked as an international consultant. Also a leading voice as a feminist, pro-democracy, and pro-social justice activist in Haiti, she has been a speaker at the Yale Law School Human Rights Clinic, the Parliament of Canada, and a guest on Democracy Now, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, and Black News. She has been a long-time volunteer of a women-led organization that provides holistic support to girls and women who have suffered domestic and sexual violence. The President of Niger awarded her the country’s highest honor, Commander in the Niger Order of Merit, in 2016 for having spearheaded a countrywide movement for the elimination of child marriage. She has also been rewarded with several Royal Honorific Titles from the most powerful Traditional Chiefs in Niger. Her second life is writing. She is the author of two self-published books in French: her novel La Confession, a portrait of a woman asserting herself after love, grief, and loss in a patriarchal society; and Mosaiques, a collection of essays about women affected by human rights issues. She has just finished writing her memoir Silence and Resistance: Memoir of a Girlhood in Haiti, and an excerpt of it was featured as a Story of the Week by Narrative Magazine and another by the literary magazine Black Renaissance Noire, and still another in La Prensa. Her nonfiction, which has been dominated by Haiti, displacement, family bonds, gender, and identity issues, has appeared in The New York Times, Narrative Magazine, The Miami Herald, Foreign Affairs, Americas Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Just Security, Le Nouvelliste, and NYU’s Black Renaissance Noire Magazine, among others. Monique honed her memoir-writing craft at the Skidmore Writer’s Workshop with Phillip Lopate; at Tom Yenks’ Narrative Magazine Advanced Writing Workshop; with Dinty W. Moore and Allison K. Williams; at the Iowa Writers Festival; and at the Atelier Gallimard in France. Monique earned her master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois and her B.A. in Philosophy from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She is the mother of two adult children—a daughter who lives in the United States and a son who lives in France—and the grandmother of two boys and a girl. A national of Haiti, she lives in Haiti and Miami. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices