From Dessalines to Duvalier

From Dessalines to Duvalier PDF Author: David Nicholls
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813522401
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
"Rich in subject matter and eminently readable, this book is also a fine work of scholarship. The more than 1,200 footnotes are models of clarity and relevance; the bibliography and index seem scrupulously accurate. . . While each generation must rewrite its own history, as Nicholls remarks, no book on Haiti for a long time to come will properly be able to ignore the analysis he here provides." --Ethnic and Racial Studies "Step by step, Nicholls] guides us through the various historical time periods of Haitian political and national development, illuminating each one of them by a cogent and learned discussion of the main ideas and ideologies that accompanied them." --The Political Quarterly "Probably the best book written about Haitian history after its independence . . . a thorough, thoughtful, extremely well-researched work." --Handbook of Latin American Studies In this lively, provocative, and well-documented history, David Nicholls discusses the impact of "color" on political and social alliances during almost two hundred years of Haitian history. While consciousness of racial identity has been a powerful factor which, from the earliest days, has united Haitians in a determination to preserve their national independence, color has been a divisive factor, leading to the erosion of the stability of that independence. Nicholls grounds this sophisticated analysis in great historical detail and engaging, witty prose. Students and general readers alike will gain much from this insightful and informative history of Haiti. A new preface to this edition covers the last ten years in Haitiain history. David Nicholls is a major authority on Haiti, and was in the country as a newspaper correspondent during the 1987 election disaster. His other books include Haiti in the Caribbean Context: Ethnicity; The Pluralist State: and Deity and Domination.

From Dessalines to Duvalier

From Dessalines to Duvalier PDF Author: David Nicholls
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813522401
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Rich in subject matter and eminently readable, this book is also a fine work of scholarship. The more than 1,200 footnotes are models of clarity and relevance; the bibliography and index seem scrupulously accurate. . . While each generation must rewrite its own history, as Nicholls remarks, no book on Haiti for a long time to come will properly be able to ignore the analysis he here provides." --Ethnic and Racial Studies "Step by step, Nicholls] guides us through the various historical time periods of Haitian political and national development, illuminating each one of them by a cogent and learned discussion of the main ideas and ideologies that accompanied them." --The Political Quarterly "Probably the best book written about Haitian history after its independence . . . a thorough, thoughtful, extremely well-researched work." --Handbook of Latin American Studies In this lively, provocative, and well-documented history, David Nicholls discusses the impact of "color" on political and social alliances during almost two hundred years of Haitian history. While consciousness of racial identity has been a powerful factor which, from the earliest days, has united Haitians in a determination to preserve their national independence, color has been a divisive factor, leading to the erosion of the stability of that independence. Nicholls grounds this sophisticated analysis in great historical detail and engaging, witty prose. Students and general readers alike will gain much from this insightful and informative history of Haiti. A new preface to this edition covers the last ten years in Haitiain history. David Nicholls is a major authority on Haiti, and was in the country as a newspaper correspondent during the 1987 election disaster. His other books include Haiti in the Caribbean Context: Ethnicity; The Pluralist State: and Deity and Domination.

The Dew Breaker

The Dew Breaker PDF Author: Edwidge Danticat
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307428397
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”--or torturer--s an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America’s most essential writers. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light.

Haiti's Paper War

Haiti's Paper War PDF Author: Chelsea Stieber
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479802174
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
2021 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine Turns to the written record to re-examine the building blocks of a nation Picking up where most historians conclude, Chelsea Stieber explores the critical internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civil war between monarchy and republic. What transpired was a war of swords and of pens, waged in newspapers and periodicals, in literature, broadsheets, and fliers. In her analysis of Haitian writing that followed independence, Stieber composes a new literary history of Haiti, that challenges our interpretations of both freedom struggles and the postcolonial. By examining internal dissent during the revolution, Stieber reveals that the very concept of freedom was itself hotly contested in the public sphere, and it was this inherent tension that became the central battleground for the guerre de plume—the paper war—that vied to shape public sentiment and the very idea of Haiti. Stieber’s reading of post-independence Haitian writing reveals key insights into the nature of literature, its relation to freedom and politics, and how fraught and politically loaded the concepts of “literature” and “civilization” really are. The competing ideas of liberté, writing, and civilization at work within postcolonial Haiti have consequences for the way we think about Haiti’s role—as an idea and a discursive interlocutor—in the elaboration of black radicalism and black Atlantic, anticolonial, and decolonial thought. In so doing, Stieber reorders our previously homogeneous view of Haiti, teasing out warring conceptions of the new nation that continued to play out deep into the twentieth century.

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History PDF Author: Laurent Dubois
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 0805095624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A passionate and insightful account by a leading historian of Haiti that traces the sources of the country's devastating present back to its turbulent and traumatic history Even before the 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the country, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption. Maligned and misunderstood, the nation has long been blamed by many for its own wretchedness. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois makes clear, Haiti's troubled present can only be understood by examining its complex past. The country's difficulties are inextricably rooted in its founding revolution—the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; the hostility that this rebellion generated among the colonial powers surrounding the island nation; and the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define its newfound freedom and realize its promise. Dubois vividly depicts the isolation and impoverishment that followed the 1804 uprising. He details how the crushing indemnity imposed by the former French rulers initiated a devastating cycle of debt, while frequent interventions by the United States—including a twenty-year military occupation—further undermined Haiti's independence. At the same time, Dubois shows, the internal debates about what Haiti should do with its hard-won liberty alienated the nation's leaders from the broader population, setting the stage for enduring political conflict. Yet as Dubois demonstrates, the Haitian people have never given up on their struggle for true democracy, creating a powerful culture insistent on autonomy and equality for all. Revealing what lies behind the familiar moniker of "the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere," this indispensable book illuminates the foundations on which a new Haiti might yet emerge.

The Early Haitian State and the Question of Political Legitimacy

The Early Haitian State and the Question of Political Legitimacy PDF Author: James Forde
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030526089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book explores the different ways in which the early Haitian state was represented in print culture in America and Britain in the early nineteenth century. This study demonstrates that American and British arguments about the most effective forms of governance and political leadership impacted how Haiti’s early leaders were presented to transatlantic audiences. From the end of the Haitian Revolution and the moment that Haitian independence was declared in 1804, conservatives and radical thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic used Haiti and its early leaders as central frames of references in discussions of political legitimacy. Against the backdrop of a vibrant and volatile age of revolutions, the different forms of governance adopted by Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe and Jean Pierre Boyer were used by writers, playwrights and caricaturists to either support or call into question the legitimacy of America’s and Britain’s own forms of government.

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory PDF Author: Edwidge Danticat
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1616955023
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The 20th anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat's groundbreaking debut, now an established classic--revised and with a new introduction by the author, and including extensive bonus materials At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti—to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence. In her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti—and the enduring strength of Haiti’s women—with vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people’s suffering and courage.

Haiti: State Against Nation

Haiti: State Against Nation PDF Author: Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0853457565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
In the euphoria that followed the departure of Haiti's hated dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, most Haitian and foreign analysts treated the regimes of the two Duvaliers, father and son, as a historical nightmare created by the malevolent minds of the leaders and their supporters. Yet the crisis, economic and political, that faces this small Caribbean nation did not begin with the dictatorship, and is far from being solved, despite its departure from the scene. In this fascinating study, Haitian-born Michel-Rolph Trouillot examines the mechanisms through which the Duvaliers ruthlessly won and then held onto power for twenty-nine years. Trouillot's theoretical discussion focuses on the contradictory nature of the peripheral state, analyzing its relative autonomy as a manifestation of the growing disjuncture between state and nation. He discusses in detail two key characteristics of such regimes: the need for a rhetoric of national unity coupled with unbridled violence. At the same time, he traces the current crisis from its roots in the nineteenth-century marginalization of the peasantry through the U.S. occupation from 1915 to 1934 and into the present. He ends with a discussion of the post-Duvalier period, which, far from seeing the restoration of civilian-led democracy, has been a period of increasing violence and economic decline.

The Haiti Reader

The Haiti Reader PDF Author: Laurent Dubois
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN: 9781478006770
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
While Haiti established the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and was the first black country to gain independence from European colonizers, its history is not well known in the Anglophone world. The Haiti Reader introduces readers to Haiti's dynamic history and culture from the viewpoint of Haitians from all walks of life. Its dozens of selections—most of which appear here in English for the first time—are representative of Haiti's scholarly, literary, religious, visual, musical, and political cultures, and range from poems, novels, and political tracts to essays, legislation, songs, and folk tales. Spanning the centuries between precontact indigenous Haiti and the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, the Reader covers widely known episodes in Haiti's history, such as the U.S. military occupation and the Duvalier dictatorship, as well as overlooked periods such as the decades immediately following Haiti's “second independence” in 1934. Whether examining issues of political upheaval, the environment, or modernization, The Haiti Reader provides an unparalleled look at Haiti's history, culture, and politics.

Vodou Nation

Vodou Nation PDF Author: Michael Largey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226468658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
While the Haitian musical tradition is probably best known for the Vodou-inspired roots music that helped topple the two-generation Duvalier dictatorship, the nation’s troubled history of civil unrest and its tangled relationship with the United States is more intensely experienced through its art music, which combines French and German elements of classical music with Haiti's indigenous folk music. Vodou Nation examines art music by Haitian and African American composers who were inspired by Haiti’s history as a nation created by slave revolt. Around the time of the United States’s occupation of Haiti in 1915, African American composers began to incorporate Vodou-inspired musical idioms to showcase black artistry and protest white oppression. Together with Haitian musicians, these composers helped create what Michael Largey calls the “Vodou Nation,” an ideal vision of Haiti that championed its African-based culture as a bulwark against America’s imperialism. Highlighting the contributions of many Haitian and African American composers who wrote music that brought rhythms and melodies of the Vodou ceremony to local and international audiences, Vodou Nation sheds light on a black cosmopolitan musical tradition that was deeply rooted in Haitian culture and politics.

Voodoo and Politics in Haiti

Voodoo and Politics in Haiti PDF Author: Michel S. Laguerre
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349199206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Not only does this book give a well-researched account of the politicization of Haitian Voodoo and the Voodooization of Haitian politics, it also lays the ground for the development of creative policies by the state vis-a-vis the cult. It is an indispensable research tool for the students of Afro-American, Caribbean and African societies in particular, and for religionists and political scientists in general.