Why Haiti Needs New Narratives

Author : Gina Athena Ulysse
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
ISBN 13 : 0819575461
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Why Haiti Needs New Narratives written by Gina Athena Ulysse and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Haitian Studies Association Excellence in Scholarship Award (2015) Mainstream news coverage of the catastrophic earthquake of January 12, 2010, reproduced longstanding narratives of Haiti and stereotypes of Haitians. Cognizant that this Haiti, as it exists in the public sphere, is a rhetorically and graphically incarcerated one, the feminist anthropologist and performance artist Gina Athena Ulysse embarked on a writing spree that lasted over two years. As an ethnographer and a member of the diaspora, Ulysse delivers critical cultural analysis of geopolitics and daily life in a series of dispatches, op-eds and articles on post-quake Haiti. Her complex yet singular aim is to make sense of how the nation and its subjects continue to negotiate sovereignty and being in a world where, according to a Haitian saying, tout moun se moun, men tout moun pa menm (All people are human, but all humans are not the same). This collection contains thirty pieces, most of which were previously published in and on Haitian Times, Huffington Post, Ms Magazine, Ms Blog, NACLA, and other print and online venues. The book is trilingual (English, Kreyòl, and French) and includes a foreword by award-winning author and historian Robin D.G. Kelley.

Author : Gina Athena Ulysse
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
ISBN 13 : 0819577367
Total Pages : 121 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Because When God Is Too Busy written by Gina Athena Ulysse and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gina Athena Ulysse's Because When God Is Too Busy: Haïti, me & THE WORLD is a lyrically vivid meditative journey that is unapologetic in its determination to name, embrace and reclaim a revolutionary Blackness that has been historically stigmatized and denied. Crafting experiments with "ethnographic collectibles" of word, performative sounds, and imagery to blur genres and the lines between the geopolitical and the personal, this collection is a testament to postcolonial inheritances. Ulysse's work remixes samples from a range of references as it beckons readers to bear witness to a coming of age as she shifts between time and place and plays with languages to stretch the margins of aesthetics in the academic. These poems, performance texts, and photographs gather fractured memories—longings laced with Vodou chants confronting a past that looms too largely in the present. Because When God Is Too Busy searches for humility while honoring sacred and ancestral imperatives to recognize and salute power beyond Western attachments to reason.

Author : Toni Pressley-Sanon
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813072204
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Istwa across the Water written by Toni Pressley-Sanon and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-01-03 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Association Haiti-Dominican Republic Section Isis Duarte Book Prize Gathering oral stories and visual art from Haiti and two of its "motherlands" in Africa, Istwa across the Water recovers the submerged histories of the island through methods drawn from its deep spiritual and cultural traditions. Toni Pressley-Sanon employs three theoretical anchors to bring together parts of the African diaspora that are profoundly fractured because of the slave trade. The first is the Vodou concept of marasa, or twinned entities, which she uses to identify parts of Dahomey (the present-day Benin Republic) and the Kongo region as Haiti's twinned sites of cultural production. Second, she draws on poet Kamau Brathwaite's idea of tidalectics—the back-and-forth movement of ocean waves—as a way to look at the cultural exchange set in motion by the transatlantic movement of captives. Finally, Pressley-Sanon searches out the places where history and memory intersect in story, expressed by the Kreyòl term istwa. Challenging the tendency to read history linearly, this volume offers a bold new approach for understanding Haitian histories and imagining Haitian futures.

Author : Marlene L. Daut
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1781388806
Total Pages : 706 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Tropics of Haiti written by Marlene L. Daut and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary history of the Haitian Revolution that explores how scientific ideas about ‘race’ affected 19th-century understandings of the Haitian Revolution and, conversely, how understandings of the Haitian Revolution affected 19th-century scientific ideas about race.

Author : Beverly Bell
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801468310
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Fault Lines written by Beverly Bell and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beverly Bell, an activist and award-winning writer, has dedicated her life to working for democracy, women’s rights, and economic justice in Haiti and elsewhere. Since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake of January 12, 2010, that struck the island nation, killing more than a quarter-million people and leaving another two million Haitians homeless, Bell has spent much of her time in Haiti. Her new book, Fault Lines, is a searing account of the first year after the earthquake. Bell explores how strong communities and an age-old gift culture have helped Haitians survive in the wake of an unimaginable disaster, one that only compounded the preexisting social and economic distress of their society. The book examines the history that caused such astronomical destruction. It also draws in theories of resistance and social movements to scrutinize grassroots organizing for a more just and equitable country. Fault Lines offers rich perspectives rarely seen outside Haiti. Readers accompany the author through displaced persons camps, shantytowns, and rural villages, where they get a view that defies the stereotype of Haiti as a lost nation of victims. Street journals impart the author’s intimate knowledge of the country, which spans thirty-five years. Fault Lines also combines excerpts of more than one hundred interviews with Haitians, historical and political analysis, and investigative journalism. Fault Lines includes twelve photos from the year following the 2010 earthquake. Bell also investigates and critiques U.S. foreign policy, emergency aid, standard development approaches, the role of nongovernmental organizations, and disaster capitalism. Woven through the text are comparisons to the crisis and cultural resistance in Bell’s home city of New Orleans, when the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately a tale of hope, Fault Lines will give readers a new understanding of daily life, structural challenges, and collective dreams in one of the world’s most complex countries.

Author : April J. Mayes
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 1683403169
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Transnational Hispaniola written by April J. Mayes and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In addition to sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a complicated and at times painful history. Yet Transnational Hispaniola shows that there is much more to the two nations’ relationship than their perceived antagonism. Rejecting dominant narratives that reinforce opposition between the two sides of the island, contributors to this volume highlight the connections and commonalities that extend across the border, mapping new directions in Haitianist and Dominicanist scholarship. Exploring a variety of topics including European colonialism, migration, citizenship, sex tourism, music, literature, political economy, and art, contributors demonstrate that alternate views of Haitian and Dominican history and identity have existed long before the present day. From a moving section on passport petitions that reveals the familial, friendship, and communal networks across Hispaniola in the nineteenth century to a discussion of the shared music traditions that unite the island today, this volume speaks of an island and people bound together in a myriad of ways. Complete with reflections and advice on teaching a transnational approach to Haitian and Dominican studies, this agenda-setting volume argues that the island of Hispaniola and its inhabitants should be studied in a way that contextualizes differences, historicizes borders, and recognizes cross-island links. Contributors: Paul Austerlitz | Nathalie Bragadir | Raj Chetty | Anne Eller | Kaiama L. Glover | Maja Horn | Regine Jean-Charles | Kiran C. Jayaram | Elizabeth Manley | April Mayes | Elizabeth Russ | Fidel J. Tavárez | Elena Valdez Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Author : René Depestre
Publisher : Akashic Books
ISBN 13 : 1617755559
Total Pages : 151 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Hadriana in All My Dreams written by René Depestre and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legendary Haitian author Depestre combines magic, fantasy, eroticism, and delirious humor to explore universal questions of race and sexuality. “One-of-a-kind . . . [A] ribald, free-wheeling magical-realist novel, first published in 1988 and newly, engagingly translated by Glover . . . An icon of Haitian literature serves up a hotblooded, rib-ticking, warmhearted mélange of ghost story, cultural inquiry, folk art, and véritable l’amour.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “An exceptional novel . . . Depestre’s masterpiece and one of the greatest examples of Haitian literature.” —New York Journal of Books Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, then disappears into popular legend. Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti’s Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre’s lusty claim that all beings—even the undead ones—have a right to happiness and true love.

Author : Vanessa K. Valdés
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438481055
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Racialized Visions written by Vanessa K. Valdés and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a Francophone nation, Haiti is seldom studied in conjunction with its Spanish-speaking Caribbean neighbors. Racialized Visions challenges the notion that linguistic difference has kept the populations of these countries apart, instead highlighting ongoing exchanges between their writers, artists, and thinkers. Centering Haiti in this conversation also makes explicit the role that race—and, more specifically, anti-blackness—has played both in the region and in academic studies of it. Following the Revolution and Independence in 1804, Haiti was conflated with blackness. Spanish colonial powers used racist representations of Haiti to threaten their holdings in the Atlantic Ocean. In the years since, white elites in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico upheld Haiti as a symbol of barbarism and savagery. Racialized Visions powerfully refutes this symbolism. Across twelve essays, contributors demonstrate how cultural producers in these countries have resignified Haiti to mean liberation. An introduction and conclusion by the editor, Vanessa K. Valdés, as well as foreword by Myriam J. A. Chancy, provide valuable historical context and an overview of Afro-Latinx studies and its futures.

Author : Paul Farmer
Publisher : Public Affairs
ISBN 13 : 1610390989
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Haiti After the Earthquake written by Paul Farmer and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The celebrated physician and anthropologist offers a vivid on-the-ground account of the relief effort in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake—and issues a powerful call to action. Reprint.

Author : Brandon R. Byrd
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812296540
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Black Republic written by Brandon R. Byrd and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-10-11 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Black Republic, Brandon R. Byrd explores the ambivalent attitudes that African American leaders in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti, the first and only black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Following emancipation, African American leaders of all kinds—politicians, journalists, ministers, writers, educators, artists, and diplomats—identified new and urgent connections with Haiti, a nation long understood as an example of black self-determination. They celebrated not only its diplomatic recognition by the United States but also the renewed relevance of the Haitian Revolution. While a number of African American leaders defended the sovereignty of a black republic whose fate they saw as intertwined with their own, others expressed concern over Haiti's fitness as a model black republic, scrutinizing whether the nation truly reflected the "civilized" progress of the black race. Influenced by the imperialist rhetoric of their day, many African Americans across the political spectrum espoused a politics of racial uplift, taking responsibility for the "improvement" of Haitian education, politics, culture, and society. They considered Haiti an uncertain experiment in black self-governance: it might succeed and vindicate the capabilities of African Americans demanding their own right to self-determination or it might fail and condemn the black diasporic population to second-class status for the foreseeable future. When the United States military occupied Haiti in 1915, it created a crisis for W. E. B. Du Bois and other black activists and intellectuals who had long grappled with the meaning of Haitian independence. The resulting demand for and idea of a liberated Haiti became a cornerstone of the anticapitalist, anticolonial, and antiracist radical black internationalism that flourished between World War I and World War II. Spanning the Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras, The Black Republic recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of African American internationalism and political thought.