Celebrating Haiti: Books by Haitian & Haitian American Authors

Novels

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  Breath, Eyes, Memory

  by Edwidge Danticat

  At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from the impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York to be reunited with her mother, where she gains a legacy of shame that can only be healed when she returns to Haiti, to the woman who first reared her.

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  Mouths Don't Speak

  by Katia D. Ulysse 
  
  No one was prepared for the massive earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, taking over a quarter-million lives, and leaving millions of others homeless. Three thousand miles away, Jacqueline Florestant mourns the presumed death of her parents, while her husband, a former US Marine and combat veteran, cares for their three-year-old daughter as he fights his own battles with acute PTSD. Horrified and guilt-ridden, Jacqueline returns to Haiti in search of the proverbial "closure." Unfortunately, the Haiti she left as a child twenty-five years earlier has disappeared. Her quest turns into a tornado of deception, desperation, and more death. So Jacqueline holds tightly to her daughter—the only one who must not die.

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  God Loves Haiti 

  by Dimitry Elias Léger

  Haiti's first lady Natasha Robert, living in Port-au-Prince, adjusts to life after the earthquake of 2010 hits the city, and wonders if she will ever again see her true love, Alain Destinâe, who was injured during the disaster.

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  My Mother's House 

  by Francesca Momplaisir

  Moving his family to an immigrant enclave in New York in the hopes of starting over, an emotionally damaged Haitian man succumbs to dark impulses that have dangerous ripple effects for the others living in his home. A literary thriller about the complex underbelly of the immigrant American dream—the triumphs and failure, mundane and aberrant—all told by an unexpected narrator: a house that has held unspeakable horrors.

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  Dancing in the Baron's Shadow

  by Fabienne Josaphat

  Haiti, 1965. Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, is the impoverished island nation's brutal dictator. Relentless curfews, and Papa Doc's terrifying Tonton Macoutes militia, have made life in Port-au-Prince increasingly difficult for struggling taxi driver Raymond L'Eveill. But it is Raymond's brother, Nicolas, a wealthy professor at the local university, who is stirring up trouble. A secret manifesto penned by Nicolas is rallying opposition to Papa Doc. After a tip-off from a disgruntled student, Nicolas' home is raided and the manifesto discovered, landing him in Fort Dimanche, a notorious, disease-ridden prison many enter but few ever leave. Meanwhile, Raymond's wife leaves him, taking their children and escaping the island. With his family gone, Raymond gets himself arrested as part of a death-defying plan to break his brother out of jail.

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  Sweet Undoings

  by Yanick Lahens; translated by Kaiama L. Glover

  In Port-au-Prince, violence never consumes. It finds its counterpart in a "high-pitched sweetness," a sweetness that overwhelms Francis, a French journalist, one evening at the Korosòl Resto-Bar, when the broken and deep voice of lounge singer Brune rises from the microphone. Brune's father, Judge Berthier, was assassinated, guilty of maintaining integrity in a city where everything is bought. Six months after this disappearance, Brune wholly refuses to come to terms with what has happened. Her uncle Pierre, a gay man who spent his youth abroad to avoid persecution, refuses to give up on solving this still unpunished crime as well. Alongside Brune and Pierre, Francis becomes acquainted with myriad other voices of Port-au-Prince: Ezekiel, the poet desperate to escape his miserable neighborhood; Nerline, women's rights activist; Waner, diligent pacifist; and Ronny the American, at home in Haiti as in a second homeland.

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  Hadriana In All My Dreams

  by Rene Depestre; translated by Kaiama L. Glover

  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, and then disappears into popular legend.

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  Dézafi

  by Frankétienne; translated by Asseline Charles

  Dézafi is no ordinary zombie novel. In the hands of the great Haitian author known simply as Frankétienne, zombification takes on a symbolic dimension that stands as a potent commentary on a country haunted by a history of slavery. Now this dynamic new translation brings this touchstone in Haitian literature to English-language readers for the first time.

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  The Garden of Broken Things

  by Francesca Momplaisir

  Taking her teenage son from New York to Port-au-Prince where she hopes for them to connect with family, single mother Genevieve finds their visit turning into a nightmare of survival when the country is rocked by a massive earthquake.

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  Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Triptych

  by Marie Vieux-Chauvet; a new translation by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokur

  Love, Anger, Madness is a scathing response to the struggles of race, class, and sex that have ruled Haiti. Suppressed upon its initial publication in 1968, this major work became an underground classic and was finally released in an authorized edition in France in 2005. Here, Marie Vieux-Chauvet offers three slices of life under an oppressive regime. Gradually building in emotional intensity, the novellas paint a shocking portrait of families and artists struggling to survive under Haiti's terrifying government restrictions that have turned its society upside down, transforming neighbors into victims, spies, and enemies.

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  Heading South

  by Dany Laferrière; translated by Wayne Grady

  On the sun-drenched island of Haiti in the 1970s, under the shadow of "Baby Doc” Duvalier’s notorious regime, locals eke out an existence as servants, bartenders and panderers to the white elite. Fanfan, Charlie, and Legba, aware of the draw of their adolescent, black bodies, seduce rich, middle-aged white tourists looking for respite from their colourless jobs and marriages. These "relationships” mirror the power struggle inherent in all transactions in Port-au-Prince’s seedy back streets. Heading South takes us into the world of artists, rappers, Voodoo priests, hotel owners, uptight Parisian journalists and partner-swapping Haitian lovers, all desperately trying to balance happiness with survival. It explores the lines between sexual liberation and exploitation, artistic freedom and appropriation, independence and colonialism.

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  The Roving Tree

  by Elsie Augustave

  Set between the two worlds of contemporary suburban America and Haiti under Papa Doc's rule, Iris Odys, adopted by a white American couple at age five, struggles as an adult to recapture her Haitian heritage and personal history.

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  Memory at Bay

  by Évelyne Trouillot; translated by Paul Curtis Daw

  Memory at Bay is a novel structured in monologues that alternate between the bedridden widow of a notorious dictator (in effect, a portrait of Papa Doc Duvalier) and the young émigré who attends to her needs and whose mother was a victim of the dictator's atrocities. Neither one can read the other's thoughts, but their flashbacks and reminiscences provide radically contrasting accounts of the Duvalier regime. 

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  Savage Seasons

  by Kettly Mars

  Recounts a woman's efforts to free her husband, a journalist arrested by the brutal regime of the Haitian government in the 1960s.

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  Dance on the Volcano

  by Marie Chauvet; translated by Kaiama L. Glover

  The story of two sisters growing up during the Haitian Revolution in a culture that swings heavily between decadence and poverty, sensuality and depravity. One sister, because of her singing ability, is able to enter into the white colonial society otherwise generally off-limits to people of color.  It is a story about hatred and fear, love and loss, and the complex tensions between colonizer and colonized.

Young Adult Novels

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  American Street 

  by Ibi Zoboi

  Separated from her detained mother after moving from Haiti to America, Fabiola struggles to navigate the home of her loud cousins and a new school on Detroit's gritty west side, where a surprising romance and a dangerous proposition challenge her ideas about freedom.

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  Dear Haiti, Love Elaine

  by Maika and Maritza Moulite

  Alaine Beauparlant has heard about Haiti all her life…But the stories were always passed down from her dad—and her mom, when she wasn’t too busy with her high-profile newscaster gig. But when Alaine’s life goes a bit sideways, it’s time to finally visit Haiti herself. What she learns about Haiti’s proud history as the world’s first black republic (with its even prouder people) is one thing, but what she learns about her own family is another. Suddenly, the secrets Alaine’s mom has been keeping, including a family curse that has spanned generations, can no longer be avoided.

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  One of the Good Ones

  by Maika and Maritza Moulite

  When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered.

Stories

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  Ayiti

  by Roxane Gay

  Clever and haunting by turns, Ayiti explores the Haitian diaspora experience. A married couple seeking boat passage to America prepares to leave their homeland. A mother takes a foreign soldier into her home as a boarder, and into her bed. And a woman conceives a daughter on the bank of a river while fleeing a horrific massacre, a daughter who later moves to America for a new life but is perpetually haunted by the mysterious scent of blood. Wise, fanciful, and daring, Ayiti is the book that put Roxane Gay on the map and now, with two previously uncollected stories, confirms her singular vision.

Poetry

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  Haiti Glass

  by Lenelle Moise

  In her debut collection of verse and prose, Moise moves deftly between memories of growing up as a Haitian immigrant in the suburbs of Boston, to bearing witness to brutality and catastrophe, to intellectual, playful explorations of pop culture enigmas like Michael Jackson and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Be it the presence of a skinhead on the subway, a newspaper account of unthinkable atrocity, or the 'noose loosened to necklace' of desire, the cut of Haiti Glass lays bare a world of resistance and survival, mourning and lust, need and process, triumph and prayer.

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  When the Pipirite Sings: Selected Poems

  by Jean Métellus translated from the French by Haun Saussy

  When the Pipirite Sings expresses an acute historical consciousness and engages recurrent Haitian themes—the wrenching impact of colonialism and underdevelopment, the purposes of education, and the merging of spiritual and temporal power. And, as always with Métellus's poetry, the range of voices and points of view evokes other genres, including fiction and cinema.

Anthologies

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  Haiti Noir

  edited by Edwidge Danticat

  The island nation of Haiti has a very tragic history and continues to be one of the most destitute places on the planet. Here, however, Edwidge Danticat reveals that even while the subject matter remains dark, the caliber of writing coming out of Haiti is of the highest order. This volume includes new stories by: Edwidge Danticat, Gary Victor, Madison Smartt Bell, M.J. Fievre, Evelyne Trouillot, Marilene Phipps, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel, Katia Ulysse, Yanick Lahens, Kettly Mars, Marvin Victor, and others.

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  Haiti Noir 2: The Classics

  edited by edited by Edwidge Danticat

  The original bestselling Haiti Noir comprised all-new stories by today's best Haitian authors. This new volume collects the true classics of Haitian literature—both short stories and excerpts from longer works—and will be an integral piece of understanding how Haitian culture has evolved over the past fifty years.