Toward Literary Freedom: A Study of Contemporary Haitian Literature

1956 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 250
Author(s):  
Herman F. Bostick
Keyword(s):  
2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaël Lucas
Keyword(s):  

1985 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 477
Author(s):  
Hal Wylie ◽  
Leon-François Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
John Patrick Walsh

This book argues that contemporary Haitian literature historicizes the political and environmental problems brought to the surface by the 2010 earthquake by building on texts of earlier generations, notably at the end of the Duvalier era and its aftermath. Haitian writers have made profound contributions to debates about the converging paths of political crises and natural catastrophes, yet their writings on the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism are often neglected in heated debates about environmental futures. The earthquake only exacerbated this contradiction. Despite the fact that Haitian authors have long treated the connections between political violence, social and economic precariousness, and ecological degradation, in media coverage around the world, the earthquake would have suddenly exposed scandalous conditions on the ground in Haiti. Informed by Haitian studies and models of postcolonial ecocriticism, the book conceives of literature as an “eco-archive,” or a body of texts that depicts ecological change over time and its impact on social and environmental justice. Focusing equally on established and less well-known authors, this study contends that the eco-archive challenges future-oriented, universalizing narratives of the Anthropocene and the global refugee crisis with portrayals of different forms and paths of migration and refuge within Haiti and around the Americas.


Author(s):  
Jason Herbeck

Whereas, on the heels of a devastating hurricane’s passing, the final pages of Maximin’s L’Île et une nuit (Chapter 4) hint at both architectural and architextual (re)building in the wake of catastrophe, Chapter 5 examines two works by Haitian Yanick Lahens that directly address the task of (re)construction in the aftermath of large-scale destruction. The chapter begins with a discussion of so-called writings of disaster (Jenson) that have, from the early days of colonization to the present, cast Haiti in a negative, counter-productive light. To the contrary, as a creative counter-discourse to discourses of disaster, literary works from Haiti can be understood as literature of reconstruction. As a phenomenon that is by no means new to Haiti, literature of reconstruction is conceptualized not only as a blueprint or framework for reassessment and rebuilding in/of Haiti, but is demonstrated to constitute, in and of itself, an example of the very reconstruction of which it speaks. In this light, close readings of Lahens’s post-earthquake texts Failles (2010) and Guillaume et Nathalie (2013) illustrate the architextuality of Haitian literature and how, precisely, this vibrant body of works embodies both the path and potential for identity-building in the French Caribbean.


Author(s):  
John Patrick Walsh

This chapter continues to build the conceptual and historical frame of the eco-archive. It argues that contemporary Haitian literature records the transformation of the environment and accumulates and inscribes overlapping temporalities of past and present, like an archive. The first part reviews a range of Caribbean and Haitian thought on the environment, broadly understood, and considers key moments of Haitian literary history of the twentieth century. Earlier forms and paths of migration and refuge, from the sugar migration up to the journeys of “boat people,” inform and historicize literary representations of the earthquake and its aftermath. The chapter then carries out close readings of a selection of René Philoctète’s poetry and his novel, Le peuple des terres mêlées, a text that depicts the “Parsley Massacre” of 1937. It draws out Philoctète’s eco-archival writing and contends that the novel foregrounds the environmental ethos of the border in opposition to Trujillo’s genocidal nationalism.


1987 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-114
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV

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