At this point, Carrol F. Coates should be given some sort of medal for the deft translation of so many great works from literature originally written in French.
This said, let us discuss General Sun, My Brother (CARAF Books), a book translated by Coates, and written by Jacques Stephen Alexis, who in short, is one of Haiti’s biggest literary talents. He died in 1961, but his literary legacy has only grown with each decade after his death.
Alexis was a doctor, a highly esteemed profession but his protagonist Hilarion Hilarius, is the lowest of Haitian society, a serial petty thief who brings dishonor to his family and grief to his mother.
One of the biggest contrasts that is made in the novel is the relationship between Hilarion Hilarius with Pierre Roumel, a son of Haiti’s aristocracy. They are being held at the same prison—Fort Dimanche—Hilarion for stealing and Pierre for his part in organizing a strike against the U.S. Occupation of Haiti. But even behind bars, Roumel can change lives and wields power, and upon Hilarion’s release, he gives him an introduction letter that will help land Hilarion a job. A rather minor aspect of the plot of General Sun, My Brother? Or a slick message from Jacques Stephen Alexis about the power of collaboration among Haiti’s social classes? For this letter literally changes the life of Hilarion and makes him see new possibilities in himself.
As a result of Pierre Roumel’s gesture, Hilarion develops a sense of responsibility that will help him in making one of the first adult decisions of his life, and that is to enter in a relationship with Claire-Hereuse, not coincidentally named after Haitian founding father Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ wife Marie-Claire Hereuse. It’s the desire to make a more promising future for himself and their daughter Désiré (after a failed business—more like a cruelly burned down business venture) that partly leads Hilarion to go work the fields in the neighboring Dominican Republic cane fields.
General Sun, My Brother isn’t just Hilarion’s story. It’s the story of his sister Zuléma, who is raped by an important aristocrat in Port-au-Prince; and through the book we catch glimpses of the empty lives of Haiti’s high society ladies, caught “in the clutches of boredom” and “collecting adventure”—as Jacques Stephen Alexis puts it ever so eloquently.
General Sun, My Brother is a fine novel, and captures the courageous spirit of Haitians sugar cane workers, at the historical slaughter at the Massacre River, a pivotal time in Dominican-Haitian relations. But the biggest lesson that it teaches is that it is far better to nurse one’s problems at home, then seek greener grasses elsewhere.
