WHEN A ZOMBIE TASTES SALT

In the countryside town of Guinaudée located in the Grand Anse department of Haiti, some girls played hide-and-seek, jumped rope, practiced walking in high heels, and learned how to apply lipstick as they dreamed of becoming adults. In 1935, one such girl had big dreams for her future. Eight-year-old Erèz wanted more than anything to learn to read and write and one day become an affluent Madan Sara –a female vendor– in the flea market. Erèz's dreams would have to wait. Unable to care for her, her parents gave her away as a restavèk –child servant– to a distant cousin in the City of Jérémie in the hope that she would have a better future. Erèz would have to learn quickly how to navigate life in this new world of high-class aristocratic mulattos. Among the political tensions left by the United States' occupation of Haiti, a highly classist society, forbidden love affairs, and scandals of unwed motherhood, life would not ever be easy for Erèz. Yet through all her hardships, she clung tightly to her dreams and revisited them often as she waited and longed for the day when she would finally be able to write her own story.

In the countryside town of Guinaudée located in the Grand Anse department of Haiti, some girls played hide-and-seek, jumped rope, practiced walking in high heels, and learned how to apply lipstick as they dreamed of becoming adults. In 1935, one such girl had big dreams for her future. Eight-year-old Erèz wanted more than anything to learn to read and write and one day become an affluent Madan Sara –a female vendor– in the flea market. Erèz's dreams would have to wait. Unable to care for her, her parents gave her away as a restavèk –child servant– to a distant cousin in the City of Jérémie in the hope that she would have a better future. Erèz would have to learn quickly how to navigate life in this new world of high-class aristocratic mulattos. Among the political tensions left by the United States' occupation of Haiti, a highly classist society, forbidden love affairs, and scandals of unwed motherhood, life would not ever be easy for Erèz. Yet through all her hardships, she clung tightly to her dreams and revisited them often as she waited and longed for the day when she would finally be able to write her own story.

Elsy Dinvil is a chef, writer, educator, culinary artist, and food entrepreneur, born and raised in Jérémie, Haiti. She is the author of two cookbooks, Cooking With My Mother and Spice Up Simple Dishes With A Haitian Twist. She now lives in Portland, Oregon where she has resided since 1999. When not developing and writing recipes or teaching cooking classes, Elsy is busy chopping veggies and mixing spices in the Creole Me Up Kitchen, a food company she founded in 2017 to bring allergen-free Haitian food products to the Pacific Northwest.