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A well-known stream of cultural exchange runs between Washington Heights, New York and the Dominican Republic. Families and communities transcend national borders, as do customs and cultural inspiration. However, a somewhat lesser-known tributary of exchange has developed between Washington Heights, New York and France.
Author and Washington Heights resident Patricia Eakins has played a significant role in creating this linkage, even if in the beginning, it was unintentional.
Eakins said that when her book, The Hungry Girls and Other Stories, first came out, she was very generous with giving away free copies. Unbeknownst to Eakins, someone from the United States sent a copy of the book to a friend in France. An American literature professor at the University of Paris III, Francoise Palleau-Papin, received a copy of the book and decided to use it in her student coursework.
“It created a kind of mini-market for my work in France,” said Eakins.
Since then, her book has received attention from numerous French scholars. Palleau-Papin created Reading Patricia Eakins, a collection of essays on and excerpts from Eakins’ work. A French translation of The Hungry Girls is expected to come out in November. According to Eakins, this book translation is unique in that it was not commissioned by a publisher. It was done by Palleau-Papin out of enthusiasm for the work. A publisher was found later.
Eakins recently received recognition for her many works as an honoree of the Uptown Arts Stroll. While known in France for The Hungry Girls, she is perhaps known as well in Northern Manhattan as the curator of the Sunday Best Reading series.
The Sunday Best got its start at Hudson View Gardens when Eakins noticed there was no reading series by “excellent writers” in Northern Manhattan. Eakins said she was affected by the vision of a friend, Bob Richards, who created the Catskill Reading Society with the idea of mixing local writers with writers of more prominence.
Eakins said she thinks the most important characteristic of writing in Washington Heights right now is the neighborhood’s multi-lingual nature, stating that the neighborhood is “beginning to be a fertile ground.”
Indeed, for this year’s Uptown Art Stroll, Eakins hosted and read her work during Uptown Voices: Writing Across Our Cultures, which fittingly included works read in French, Spanish and Armenian, and last year she hosted the area’s first ever Chapbook Festival which also featured multi-lingual readings.
For her work Eakins has earned some local plaudits as well, this year she was one of the Stroll’s three honorees.
Les affamés: et autres nouvelles (The Hungry Girls and Other Stories) will be available in November.
An excerpt from her book “Hoodoo Dreams: A Meditation on Landscape and Culture” can be found here:
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