Rec Request: Haiti, Hispaniola

[sanguinity]

I am seeing much commentary on the ahistoricity of the news coverage of Haiti, especially with respect to U.S. imperialism, Haiti's legacies to the rest of the Americas, and the interlinked histories of Haiti and the Dominican Republic (no link; that's mostly me yelling at Robertson on the TV).

Through all this discussion of what isn't being talked about, most of the book-recs I've seen have been for white U.S. academics. I am very much feeling the lack of recs for POC authors. After several hours search this morning, I've been able to come up with:

• Edwidge Danticat, novels and memoirs (in-comm posts here)
  
• The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (edited by Danticat)
  
• Jean-Bertrand Aristide
  • Aristide: An Autobiography (1993)
    
  • Dignity (1996; memoir of his three years in exile after the 1991 coup)
    
  • Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization (2000)
• Jean-Robert Cadet, Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle Class American
  

Can anyone chip in and make some more recs? I myself am preferentially looking for English-language histories, but please recommend fic or nonfic, in French or English, especially if the book is by Haitians themselves.

Comments

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

Mostly for fiction and poetry, there's René Depestre (info in French at http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/depestre.html as well as a whole lot of Haitian authors, including nonfiction writers, listed at http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/haiti/paroles.html). I haven't read any nonfiction by Haitian authors but I'll poke around.

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

I forgot Michel-Rolph Trouillot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel-Rolph_Trouillot), who wrote Haiti: State against Nation. The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. I haven't read it but I keep meaning to read his more general work on history, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.

Also, Google Books tossed up limited previews of Revolutionary freedoms : a history of survival, strength and imagination in Haiti (http://books.google.com/books?id=O-p7qRKl_G0C&lpg=PP1&ots=5e02xhWv0P&dq=Revolutionary%20freedoms%20%3A%20a%20history%20of%20survival%2C%20strength%20and%20imagination%20in%20Haiti&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false) and The History of Haiti,/a>, whose authors may be Haitian. Amazon reviews on the latter indicated sketchy editing.

And there's the Haitian Book Centre (http://www.haitianbookcentre.com/en/index.php), which has history books (and much more) by Haitian authors in multiple languages. Plus they are donating $2 of every sale to earthquake relief. (http://books.google.com/books?id=QUw_Pmcvyw8C&lpg=PP1&dq=haiti%20history&lr=&client=firefox-a&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

'Scuse my HTML-I can't edit. Never type onehanded while eating pizza. The links should work though.

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

An Unbroken Agony by Randall Robinson is good. I read part of it last summer: http://www.randallrobinson.com/

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Yup, that was going to be my first recommendation. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith's books (such as Haiti: The Breached Citadel) are also worth considering.

I'd also recommend In the Parish of the Poor by Aristide, and The Haitian Revolution which features collected writings of Toussaint Louverture (annoyingly spelled with an apostrophe on the cover), with an introduction by Aristide. Eyes of the Heart, which was mentioned by the original poster, is probably my favourite Aristide book.

[sophinisba]

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution is a classic (1938) history and essay by the black Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James. That Ill Doctrine video shows the cover.

El reino de este mundo/The Kingdom of This World is a novel about the Haitian Revolution by the (white) Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. It's from 1949 and one of the founding texts or precursors of magical realism, for people who are into that kind of thing.

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

Anna Julia Cooper wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Haitian revolution - it was written in French, but I'm only finding English-language translations online so far: [Slavery and the French and Haitian Revolutionists] (http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-French-Haitian-Revolutionists-lesclavage/dp/0742544745/).

Rene Depestre is a Haitian writer whose novel [The Festival of the Greasy Pole] (http://www.amazon.com/Festival-Greasy-Pole-Books/dp/0813912814/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263606541&sr=1-1) is a thinly veiled tale of the end of the Duvalier presidency.

[mllesays.livejournal.com]

Edwidge Danticat herself made a small list for the WSJ (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/01/14/earthquake-in-haiti-a-reading-and-listening-list-by-edwidge-danticat/).

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

The New York Times has a sampling of literature about Haiti in today's Sunday edition. Not all the writers are Haitian, but among those who are: Yanick Lahens, Jacques Roumain, Lyonel Trouillot, Félix Morisseau-Leroy, and Mimerose Beaubrun. The list is available online [here]. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/weekinreview/17bell.html?hp) ()

[seabookmonger.livejournal.com]

Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance, edited by Beverly Bell with a forward by Edwidge Danticat also comes to mind.