Landing Places

France Archange

Class of 2025

In communal engagement, I find an embodied and practical experience of narrative medicine. In poetry, I find room to create landscapes that touch, briefly, yet intimately, questions and reflections that I otherwise may not have language for.

Narrative Medicine Workshop

After a discussion on trauma-informed care in the Practicum course, I developed an intergenerational workshop series for my former church community, Haitian migrants with unspoken traumas and chronic health issues. High blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and anxiety are some. Along with medication and lifestyle modifications, the effects of migratory experiences, socioeconomic challenges, and more also contribute to health patterns. This workshop series attempts to address them. Below are examples of one imagined workshop per subgroup, with texts and prompts in Haitian Creole for more authentic responses, and based on conversations and observations within this community for the past 10+ years.

Adult men (ages 18+)

Themes: Dreams deferred and navigating uncertainty, Leadership and masculinity, ideas of wealth and success

Texts: The circular painting by J. Louissaint

Prompt: Mwen entoure avec… (I am encircled by…)

Adult women (ages 18+)

Themes: Family roles, Mind-body awareness, empowerment

Text: A mirror

Prompt: Refleksyon mwen di’m… (My reflection says to me…)

Teens (ages 12-18)

Themes: Identity formation within two cultures, connection to parents, embracing ambiguity

Text: “Sticks” by George Saunders

Prompts: Describe the sticks of your home, or Write about what you wish you could say

Children (ages 5-11)

Themes: Migratory trauma and social assimilation, finding joy in the uniqueness of self and connection with others

Text: Seasons of Change haiku by Demarcus T. (Poetry Center)

Prompt: Describe what happens inside…

The Intergenerational Collective (all)

Themes: Embracing diversity and meaningful stories across generations/ages, cultural resilience and joy, Living in hope

Text: Isaiah 55:8-13

Prompt: Ekri sou on touf pikan ki tounen on fleur, et Pataje yon refleksyon nan kolektif la (Write about thornbushes that turn into Junipers, and Share a reflection from your subgroup workshop)

Selected Poems

Workshop 2

I pace in my mind, practice my stance in the grainy camera alone

I try to recognize myself

Master the themes in the planning document

In the meeting

faces tilt, cringe,

 loosen, tighten,

Mouths curve up and down,

as we talk of Baldwin and his foaming baby

I say “thank you”

and other things that try to water that deafening silence into wordy bloom

They spill out of me in thin,

hazy lines

We share knowing glances, Shirley, Siva, and I

Grateful for the space

After the attempt, I slouch in the blue-covered chair

Chet Baker sings to me from the TV screen

The patter of rain outside joins him in this trance

I think of the things I long for that may always escape me

Love occurring

in the middle of uncertain air

Narrative Hues

Green for the lettuce that falls from Lara’s sandwich

Yellow for the color of Shreya’s laughter

Blue for the space between what we share in a dark bar late at night,

versus what we fail to say in pertinent moments in class

Pink for the surprise that arises when Pablo shares literary masterpieces he inks in a five-minute rush

Red for the stains bled onto pages that cut through past, present, future

marrying narrative humility

to embodied incoherency

in creative peculiarity’s chapel

Purple for the deep brilliance that surrounds us all

Black for the absorbance of all things

and reflection of none

in a waiting game of inner transformation

that may never be done