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Haitian Book Club, Alicia Maldonado: A Mother Lost by Ardain Isma




Haitian Book Club, Alicia Maldonado: A Mother Lost by Ardain Isma



Haitians and Cubans have been linked to one another throughout history. During the Haitian Revolution, French citizens fled with their slaves to Cuba. At the dawn of the 20th Century, Haitian peasants left Haiti to cut canes in the sugar fields during one of Cuba’s sugar cane harvest booms. Throughout Cuba’s revolutions, Haiti served as a hiding place for Cubans.

For his novel Alicia Maldonado: A Mother Lost by Ardain Isma chooses the 1940s as the setting. It is during the rule of Fulgencio Batista and the affluent Maldonados fleeing Havana arrive in Les Cayes, with young Alicia in tow. From there on expect all the flares and flames of a Harlequin romance. Grown up, Alicia marries into one of Haiti’s most prestigious mulatto families, but is considered a semi-disgrace to her mother, a blue-blood of Cuba’s landowning elite.

The rosey world that Alicia grew up on the windy coast of Les Cayes slowly starts to dissolve, as life takes turbulent turns, and the storm will only die down decades later at a laundry in the South of Miami, of all places.

Ardain tends to have some really overdramatic writing, but that is to be expected. This is a sweeping melodrama-romance, after all.



K St. Fort
K St. Fort
ABOUT K. St Fort K. St. Fort is the Editor and Founder of, well, Kreyolicious.com and wishes to give you a heartfelt welcome to her site. She loves to read, write, and listen to music and is fascinated by her Haitian roots, and all aspects of her culture. Speaking of music, she likes it loud, really, really loud. Like bicuspid valve raising-loud. Her other love are the movies. She was once a Top 50 finalist for a student screenwriting competition, encouraging her to continue pounding the pavement. She has completed several screenplays, with Haiti as the backdrop, one of which tackles sexual abuse in an upper middle class Haitian family, while another has child slavery as its subject. She is currently completing another script, this time a thriller, about two sisters who reunite after nearly 10 years of separation. A strong believer in using films to further educational purposes, and to raise awareness about important subjects, she has made it a point to write about social issues facing Haiti, and making them an integral part of her projects. She has interviewed such Haitian-American celebrities as Roxane Gay, Garcelle Beauvais, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Briana Roy, Karen Civil, and many, many more. And that’s her writing this whole biographical sketch. She actually thinks writing about herself in the third person is cute. MY WEBSITE Kreyolicious ™: kree-ohl-lish-uh s: Surely an adjective…the state of being young, gorgeous, fine and utterly Haitian. Kreyolicious.com™, the hub for young, upwardly mobile Haitian-Americans, is akin to a 18th Century cultural salon but with a Millennium sensibility–an inviting lair, where we can discuss literature, music, problems facing the community, and everything on the side and in-between. Kreyolicious is the premier lifestyle, culture and entertainment blog and brand of the hip, young, trend-oriented, forward thinking Haitian-American. It’s the definite hot spot to learn more about Haiti our emerging identity as a people, and explore our pride and passion about our unique and vibrant culture. Within the site’s pages, Kreyolicious.com is going to engage you, empower you, and deepen your connection to everything Haitian: the issues, the culture, our cinema, the history, our cuisine, the style, the music, the worldwide community. Make yourself at home in my cultural salon. If you’re looking to learn more about Haiti, Kreyolicious.com invites you to board this trolley on a journey–on our journey. For me too, it is a process, a non-ending cultural odyssey. If you’re already acculturated, I can certainly learn something from you. We can learn from one other, for certain. With my site, Kreyolicious.com I look forward to inspiring you, to enriching you, and to participating alongside of you, in the cultural celebration. And being utterly kreyolicious. How do you wear your kreyoliciousness? On your sleeves, like I do? Kreyoliciously Yours, Your girl K. St. Fort, Ahem, follow me elsewhere!

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