Dear reader,
The work here is ongoing and constant. If I am not writing to you all the time — and I am not — know that I’m thinking of you, and of writing to you, all the time. I joked that it takes so long to get each newsletter out because I have to read an entire book just to write one letter, and that’s sort of true. I like to do my research and ensure that everything is solid and well-founded before I share any of it.
But I also chose to do this exploration publicly and in a serialized manner for a reason, and I’m connecting today to that reason. A lot of people struggle to do important work (or any work) because they want to be perfect before they start. When we look at it in terms of a hobby it sounds ridiculous: I don’t want to start learning my piano scales until I can play a concerto. Imperfection is part of the journey when it comes to nearly every aspect of life, and for the purposes of this project, of what Colonial Girl is (and is supposed to be), that imperfection needs to be able to show.
For example, I’m sitting right now with a quote from David Ragland, who was interviewed by Reparations 4 Slavery.
Well, if you hear that your family has participated in slavery, the initial response is all sorts of guilt, right? Well, a political act might be to acknowledge that white people’s feelings have always been acknowledged first. An act of political solidarity with those who've been harmed would be to lift up their stories, rather than your own.
Obviously my reaction was to start a newsletter about my guilt, my journey, and my family. But I need to remain connected to the purpose of this, of sharing as I go along: it’s to suggest that others can do it too, to show how I’m looking at this history from all sides, examining it from a variety of lenses, and how I’m working through it. That can’t be forgotten.
So in the spirit of sharing the ‘how,’ here’s what I’m reading right now:
Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, who is simply an incredible writer and guide for all; the book is a memoir tracing her exploration of her own lineage as she spends a year in Ghana on a Fulbright researching and following the slave trade
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, which is an emotional and embodied book that asks much of its reader, some of which I feel unprepared for; after my first evening reading it, I had an awful dream, one of the most realistic of my life; so I plod forward
If you’re interested in this work as well, I highly encourage you to follow Maud Newton, whose book Ancestor Trouble is really great, and who continues to do work in this space and to be very generous with her time and resources. She teaches classes regularly and I’ll be attending one this weekend.
Anyway, I am thinking of my ancestors all the time but rarely is that specific thinking reflected in the world around me. That was why my initial reaction to seeing the headline “The Spanker of Shelter Island” was excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever clicked faster in my life. A genuine spotting of this place, in the wild — an island that, as described in the Grub Street article, sees itself as a “sleepy inverse of the Hamptons.” If you’re new to Colonial Girl, you can read about Shelter Island here, in my letter on Grizzell:
In short, the Sylvesters settled on Long Island and created a provisioning plantation to support Constance Sylvester’s sugar plantations in Barbados. The Sylvesters took the land from the Manhansett people (at first without paying, though ultimately they did come to an ‘agreement’) and enslaved people on the island to do the work that would support the plantations in the West Indies.
That’s the Shelter Island of the 17th century though. The Shelter Island of today? Sleepy, perhaps. Expensive too. I’ve been considering a trip to the island so that I can visit Sylvester Manor, but the steep prices of hotel rooms and Airbnbs have dissuaded me. A 3-bedroom apartment in Shelter Island Heights, which a neighborhood guide refers to as “the closest thing Shelter Island has to a bustling downtown,” is $500 a night in the off-season. A 10-bedroom “High End Shelter Island Complex”? $2500 a night.
It isn’t just the vacation homes that are expensive, though. A 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom cape on six acres of land situated by the harbor is listed at $4.85 million. A 1.6 acre lot is selling for $850,000. (The lister suggests that one should build one’s home, tennis court, pool, garage, and guest house on this land, but I’m not sure that would leave room for my duck pond.) Just last month, a beach house sold for $12.95 million, setting a record for the area’s highest-ever price for a single-family home.
Back to the article, though. The “Spanker” is Marie Eiffel, a Frenchwoman who owns a market on the island. Marie Eiffel Market is, in its own words, “your local destination for fresh baked goods, organic produce, sandwiches, salads, prepared meals and catering.” The website reassures: “This is your house, too.” It may be worth noting that apparently, locals find the prices at the market steep.
The Shelter Island Reporter wrote in early September that Marie Eiffel “is the subject of a federal human trafficking lawsuit brought by eight former employees.” In the suit, sexual assault, discrimination, and wage theft are all charges brought against Eiffel. The eight employees had all been hired under the J-1 visa program, which allows students from outside the US to participate in “educational and cultural exchange programs” while working. According to the Reporter, many Shelter Island businesses hire foreign nationals on a J-1 visa during the summer months, when vacationers come to stay in those $2500-per-night vacation homes.
According to the filing in federal court, Ms. Eiffel presided over “egregious working conditions” and “routinely spanked Plaintiffs on the buttocks, groped female employees’ breasts, choked employees, and made sexually harassing, demeaning, and discriminatory comments about their race and looks. In addition, Defendants engaged in wage theft by illegally failing to pay portions of Plaintiffs’ hard-earned wages and withholding Plaintiffs’ tips in violation of the N.Y. Labor Law.” — The Shelter Island Reporter
The plaintiffs were all from Malaysia, Thailand, Columbia, or Ecuador, and the events alleged occurred recently — in 2021-2022. When the Reporter spoke with Eiffel for comment, she denied the allegations and shared with the writer emails from this summer’s workers, all of which were filled with gratitude and warmth.
It’s common for businesses at summer retreats like Shelter Island to use the J-1 visa program to hire seasonal employees. On its face, it seems like a fair enough exchange; students from other countries can spend a summer in the US working and traveling. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the program is not without its issues — in 2019, the Economic Policy Institute ran a report that showed the J-1 program had serious systemic inadequacies and a lack of oversight, which can lead to bad situations for vulnerable employees.
“International exchange programs like those for Fulbright Scholars are vital to fostering understanding across borders and cultures. But the J-1 Summer Work Travel is a temporary work program with few rules, little oversight, and disguised as a cultural exchange—a pseudo-diplomacy via guestworkers where young college students from abroad are labeled ‘participants’ instead of employees—while working full-time jobs without the basic labor protections afforded to other migrant workers.” — Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute
This suit is far from the first suggestion of human trafficking in relation to the J-1 visa; from 2015-2017, 67 J-1 visa holders reported to the national human trafficking hotline that they were victims of human trafficking.
According to the Grub Street article, Marie came to the island in 2005 and has had a few businesses since then. A few years prior, she had been in a car accident that had left her hospitalized for 20 months. She considered this experience an opportunity for reincarnation, and when she came out, she changed her name and reinvented her life. Residents of the island consider her to be larger-than-life, “a rare attention-seeker in a place that valued privacy.” In 2018, she received a knighthood — a chevalier — in France after the French Ambassador visited her restaurant and was impressed by her life story. He said that she represented “the American dream with a French accent.”
She rubbed elbows with the rich and famous who visited the restaurant, including Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Uma Thurman, Jessica Chastain, and plenty others. During Covid, she raised $179,000 on GoFundMe to keep the Market running. Among the donors was Louis C.K., who owns a house on Shelter Island. The GoFundMe received criticism from the community: “She’s the perfect symbol of an extractive out-of-towner, catering only to the ultrawealthy,” according to a former captain of one of the island’s ferries, Jodi Bentivegna.
Some of the former employees whom the Grub Street reporter spoke with wondered how Eiffel was allowed to continue operating such an abusive environment in plain sight for so long. They spoke of her being handsy, grabbing them, flirting with them, spanking them with a wooden pizza spatula, and berating them — all in front of customers. Employees shared disturbing stories about her touching them inappropriately and flirting while they were underage, one being as young as 13 (too young to work legally in New York).
One former employee said, “You can laugh about any of it. But I don’t know. I’m also a rich white kid.” Another said, “She’d grope us in front of the customers. Who were mostly rich city people. I really believe they didn’t really give a shit about us.”
The suit also makes claims of racism. According to the court documents, Eiffel told an employee, “Asians are not welcomed by white people, just like the blacks.” Another claim alleges that she told the employees that she’d once asked a Black customer, “How does it feel to be on a white rich people’s island?”
Marie denies all of the claims.
White rich people’s island.
The American dream with a French accent.
This is your house too.
One of the things that is so disturbing about this story is how it shows quite starkly that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
I do not mean to draw direct parallels between the victims of one situation and the victims of another, but rather to suggest that the conditions that have existed on Shelter Island for four centuries have allowed for this type of racism, trafficking, and exploitation. It hasn’t changed — it’s simply camouflaged itself.
The people of the island knew and witnessed Eiffel’s behavior, if the employees are to be believed (and I always choose to believe in these situations, when those without power take the powerful to court, risking so much in the hopes of finding justice in a system that isn’t set up for them). And why shouldn’t we believe? We’ve seen it, we all have. The cruel plays that are allowed to be carried out by those in power.
When Grizzell Brinley brought Hannah, Jacquero, and Hope to the island in the 17th century, she did so in plain sight. When Nathaniel Sylvester came to the island, he came via Africa’s Gold Coast where he saw the great slave castles built by Europeans, and then Barbados, where enslaved people endured some of the greatest brutality of all the colonies. This too was done in the light of day. The castles weren’t constructed in alleyways and dens so that people could trade in the dark, in shame. They were a testament to the pride of the powerful.
Another thing that strikes me about the case of Marie Eiffel is her own status as an immigrant. The American dream with a French accent. Europeans from different countries have come to the US since its founding and some have been persecuted to different extents, but within a few generations, most have adapted, an obvious example being the Irish. But this is all because like protects like, and the same thing that happened on Shelter Island in the 17th centuries happens today, with people closing ranks alongside their own against the ‘others.’ Grizzell and Nathaniel pushed the Manhansett people off of the island, and ever since, it has been a place for wealth, prosperity, persecution, and cruelty.
While David Ragland says that these explorations must not center white people, it’s my firm belief that we need to be drawing these explicit and clear parallels. We (white people) have to recognize our power, and we also have to look around at where we’re replicating the past, where we’re repeating patterns or allowing them to be repeated without our intervention. What are we looking away from? What are we refusing to see, and what are we failing to do about it?