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

[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.