Considering her MBA background (with a concentration in Business Management from Strayer University), it would seem that if Myrlande Sauveur ever made the decision to write a book, it would be related to entrepreneurship or leadership. But, no. Her first book Daily Spiritual Vitamins and Minerals for Your Soul is an affirmation-filled, inspirational book. Sauveur’s experiences as a health and wellness consultant, who teaches people how to live a healthy and well-balanced life, certainly served her well in that task.

Sauveur is also the co-Chair of the Dorcas Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on helping Haitian college students and women in Connecticut and the surrounding areas by providing them with charitable services such as scholarship application opportunities, and health fairs. She is also a volunteer youth counselor who works with troubled teens all over the U.S. and Canada through an online mentoring program. Sauveur was born in Haiti and came to the USA when she was 17, and has made the best of her journey.

What made you write this book?
For the past year, I noticed that the style of my writing started to change, from poetry, love stories to devotional meditations, and emotional struggles that I was going through on a daily basis. I was inspired to write my first book, Daily Spiritual Vitamins and Minerals for Your Soul.

Who has been the most inspirational person to your life?
When I really think about it, I can’t name the most inspirational person in my life, because there are too many. I have been blessed to be surrounded by so many inspirational people and they all contribute something to who I am today.

And growing up, who was the most business-minded person you knew?
The most business-minded person I knew would be my mother. She would travel to different parts of the country buying rice, and beans at a very low cost and selling them back home on the weekends to make a profit. I was always intrigued by her ability to turn nothing into something and teach others how to do the same. I wanted to be just like her.

You’re definitely a forward-thinking entrepreneur. What are some of the best lessons you’ve learned about business?
Being an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that if you want to succeed in business as well as in life, you must have a “why”—something to keep you going when you don’t feel like it. You must not be afraid of failure. You must be coachable, persistent and passionate about what you do.

We’re always hearing how important it is to not only take care of our bodies but also take care of our mental health. What suggestions do you have for our readers on this?
I am all about beauty from the inside out and living a well-balanced life. In order to do that, we must keep our minds clutter-free. A few tips I find very helpful are to disconnect yourself from all sorts of negativity, live in the present; and not worry about things you cannot change. Be thankful, and be happy and at peace with yourself. Give your time to a worthy cause—it can be an hour a week volunteering in a soup kitchen or with seniors at the nursing home. And remember no matter what is going on in your life, God is still in control.

Are you planning on writing on another book of inspiration?

Yes, I am. I am currently working on my second devotional book and my first poetry collection [set] to be released at the end of next year—God willing.

[Photos: Provided by subject]

You can check out Myrlande Sauveur’s book by clicking HERE.

Haiti-based photographer Samuel Dameus has a lot in common with Frederick Ives, the man who captured the images of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Like Ives, Sameus’ native country Haiti was hit by a disastrous earthquake, and like the 20th Century photographer, Dameus’ increased interest in photography started with the acclaim he received for his post-disaster photos. He was contacted by news agency EuroNews to be part of the team behind Silent Disaster: One Year Later, a documentary on the Haiti earthquake. This breakthrough provoked an interest in social photography. He recently made a stop in Miami to release a Haiti photo book and for a photo exhibit.

Kreyolicious: What’s the most memorable photo from your childhood?
During my childhood in Haiti, having ones picture taken was a luxury. You either had to go to a photographer’s studio or hire one to come to you. I have an positive experience that has remained engraved in my memory. At approximately five years old, as a reward, my mother took me to a photo studio to have my picture taken. I was poised with joy and was beyond excited to have my picture taken. The photographer (after a brief convo with my mother) felt compelled to extend my reward by taking me on the famous Boulevard of Cap-Haïtien for my very own impromptu photoshoot.

A few years later, at seven years old, I recall seeing the frail face of an starving child in Africa in the newspaper. Until this day, I vividly have the recollection of this image in my mind. It impacted me in ways I couldn’t fully comprehend then, but it was memorable enough where my mind kept going back to it over the years. In recent days, that same picture made it on Time magazine’s on of the top 100 photos of the century.

Kreyolicious: Have you ever taken a photo that turned out differently from what you intended…but in a good way?
In June 2015, American Airlines magazine “American Way” decided to do a spread about Haiti for the very first time. The magazine is very popular and is seen daily by passengers on all 6700 flights across the world. I was fortunate enough to have one of my images of Kokoye Beach in Petit Gôave, Haiti be featured in the prestigious publication. Never did I imagine when taking that picture it would be exposed to millions around the world. The article named “Hidden Glory” featured Haiti’s best attributes. Most recently, in December 2016, while visiting my hometown of Cap-Haïtien, I visited the local street market and took a picture of a group of vegetables vendors. I named the picture “Hidden Figures”. It is the most responsive photo I’ve ever shared on my platform. The beauty hidden in the reality of the picture resonate with the Faces Of Haiti.

Kreyolicious: How did the idea for the Faces of Haiti photo exhibit come about?
As a kid, and now as an adult, I have traveled throughout the country exploring different places. Just enjoying having Haiti as my backyard, not realizing that the views I was seeing I sometimes took for granted. Over the years, as I continue to share some simple pictures on my social media pages, people from all walks of life were in awe of the images, that’s when I knew I had to put Haiti on display, and voila Faces Of Haiti was born. The Faces Of Haiti Expo and Book Release will allow the guests in attendance to discover the many facets of Haiti and its multi-dimensional splendor.

Kreyolicious: Tell us about the process selection for the book itself.
The selection process was challenging due to the number of photos I have taken over the years. Nonetheless, the book is a collection of images that depict the daily life of Haitians and the beauty of the land. From my compilation of files it took me a few days to settle on the photos I selected to share in the book. The photos in the book will take you on a journey to rediscover the Faces Of Haiti.

Kreyolicious: Your first stop was in Miami. How did that go?
Being that Miami is the closest US city from home, it was the perfect location to launch my Faces Of Haiti series. The event was a complete success. I felt the warm welcome of my Miami supporters, and I’m highly motivated to continue sharing Haiti through my camera lenses.

Kreyolicious: You have many more cities to go. What’s next following your tour.
Yes indeed! with Faces Of Haiti I will take Haiti beyond its borders. On March 26th it will be in Washington D.C., May in Paris, June in Montreal and a final scheduled show in Port-au-Prince Haiti. I have to admit that I’ve received countless requests to host a Faces Of Haiti event in New York. I will study the possibilities with my team and will update the public in due time. Updates for all the event will be on SamuelDameus.eventbrite.com. I will continue to promote Haiti with Faces Of Haiti—the book—and canvas prints which are now available on my website.

CLICK HERE to visit the photographer’s website and to keep up with his work and his future exhibits.

This book should be read by all. The first time I read this book, I thought it was taking place in the 1980s or 1990s. And then midway through the book, the author hits us with the fact that the story is taking place in the 1950s. The more the years pass, the more they remain the same.

So many aspects of New World Slavery is presented in this book. Jean-Robert, or Bobby, as he is called, is a chore boy in the house of Florence Cadet, passed on to her by Phillipe Sebastien, her white Frenchman lover. Bobby is not acknowledged by his white father, who sees him as disgraceful nuisance, and that has a toll on him for much of his life.

There’s so many echelons of slavery in this autobiography. Florence is kept in sexual slavery by her many lovers, which includes a priest. Bobby is in child slavery because he is not the legitimate son of Phillipe, and because his mother was an illiterate, low-class Haitian. Bobby’s mother Henriette was kept in social slavery because she was born into the wrong class. And for a long time, Bobby kept himself in mental slavery, unable to exterminate all the years of mental and physical abuse he suffered at the hands of Florence and her entourage.

I think that there may be people who might argue that Bobby’s survival has a lot to do with his immigration to the United States, a move that may not have been possible, had it not been for his biological father, the very source of his miseries. That his transition, as the subtitled states, from Haitian slave child to middle-class has more to do with his father, than his own assertion. To me, that wouldn’t be too good of an argument.

Once in New York, Bobby didn’t have to succeed. He could have subjected himself to drug abuse. He could have prostituted himself when Denis, Florence’s son and Lise wanted him out of the Brooklyn apartment, and he had to fend for himself. But instead, he chose to make it through life through hard work and perseverance. He could have been one of those people who blame their dysfunctional upbringing on how dismally their lives turned out, but he chose to take responsibility for himself.

It’s true that his father gave him a big boost by using his connections to get him a visa to the USA, but without Bobby’s own determination to find himself, to make his past oppressors proud, that passage into the USA and all the opportunities that the Land of the Free provides could have gone by Bobby. Once in the USA, Bobby is able to assert himself, to rid himself of his programmed inferiority complex little by little. But he’s faced head to head with racism. And he did move to the United States, pre-Civil Rights era, and as someone who is black and an immigrant, the path wasn’t exactly smooth.

And, oh, if you’ve read the book, please share your thoughts on it. Restavek deserves a sequel truly. Since I’ve read the book, I’ve wondered how Bobby is doing. If his father is still alive. As a matter of fact, we’re going to try to track down Mr. Jean-Robert Cadet. Surely you have some questions for him too. We’ll assemble them all, and make it part of a Q&A.

Aside from the serpent and the tarantula, no animal exudes more fear than the scorpion. It’s the creature whose infamous claws prolongs and—puts a dead stop—to life. The claw is the primary instrument used by the animal to gather food necessary for survival. With it, the scorpion kills, sometimes its very own.

Dr. Myriam J.A. Chancy’s literary outing, the fittingly-titled The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press), is a poetic prose-rich novel, recounting nearly four generations of valiant Haitian women and men from the early years of the U.S. Occupation to post-Duvalier days.

Within the novel’s sanguine and restless pages, one becomes acquainted—and subsequently fully engrossed—in the life of the long-suffering matriarch Carmel, whose determination to make sense of the 75 years she’s lived, is the catalyst for such-like, indisposed self-examination of offspring to come. In Carmel’s world and that of her daughters Jacqueline and Maude, self-denial and hypocritically shutting the eye to the unpleasant is the norm. Reads the text: “The girls like me, lived their lives behind their husbands, denying that anything was wrong when their men did not come home for whole weeks at a time, denying any resemblance between their children and those who they saw playing in the streets in the next town or village. Perhaps they thought they were the lucky ones since they had rings on their fingers and their men presented themselves at their sides in church every Sunday.”

One such child ‘in the next town or village’ is Alphonse, the spawn of the coupling of the middle class Monsieur Leo and a poor peasant. Alphonse’s lowly birth is such that he is the servant in his own father’s house, the invisible child, whose existence will not be swiftly forgiven by a society who’s not so particularly merciful when it comes to trespassing unwritten class laws. Alphonse’s persistent need for vengeance realized through the shutting out his half-brother Delphi leads to a lifetime of emotional haunting and another wrong in the vicious cycle of man-orchestrated retribution.

In The Scorpion’s Claw, one also sorts through the emotional baggage of Josèphe, whose remedy for the trauma suffered through the rape at the hands of a family acquaintance, is total absorption—or rather obsession—with her academic studies. Her cousin Désirée, does not necessarily have a better lot. Through a conscience awakening, she abandons the elite lifestyle to join the lowly masses. But there is no burning bush or miraculous, glorious deliverance after her Moses-like abandoning of Egyptian riches in return for the disfranchised life of the people.

Chancy, a past nominee of Canada’s prestigious Commonwealth Literary Prize and whose more accustomed to analyzing other writers’ works (e.g. 1997’s Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women and Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women in Exile) than crafting her own—has written quite a novel. With its contemplative text, The Scorpion’s Claw attempts to pull the veil shielding the ugly and spiteful past and open the passage way to redress newly open scabs. It succeeds considerably in tackling both areas.

Have you read this selection of the Haitian Book Club? If not, be sure to let us know your thoughts after you’ve read it.

Author Photo via:

The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States is a special tome in more ways than one. It’s the first story anthology of Haitian and Haitian-American writers, for one, assembled and curated in the English language. Sectioned off in four little stages (Childhood, Migration, First Generation, and Return), the non-fiction narratives, essays and poems touch on everything from self-imposed exile, to identity, to colorism.

In “Exiled”, Sandy Alexandre writes of being sent to Haiti by her parents for rehabilitation, a parental practice among Haitian parents, who sent their unruly kids to Haiti to condition them to appreciate the luxuries and perks of privileged, “developed” world living. Gary Pierre-Pierre’s “The White Wife”, chronicles the story of a black man who feels no need to apologize for his choice. The indignant “Do Something for You Soul, Go to Haiti”, denounces patronizing and exploitation disguised as goodwill.

Some of the most color-filled stories about the ones where individuals like Francie Latour in “Made Outside” and Joanne Hyppolite straddle across two cultures. “At your communion and birthday parties,” Hyppolite writes, “all of Boston Haiti seems to gather in your house to eat griyo and sip kremas.” In Marc Christophe’s poem “Present Past Future” (no commas in the title, therefore signifying that all three are interconnected and inseparable, and perhaps part of an ongoing cycle, he declares: “I would love to recite for you/The history of my people/Their daily struggles for food and drink/Whose lives are a struggle with no end.”

This collection is so varied that it will bring out a plethora of emotions out in you, a tear, a chuckle, and in some cases, a nod of the head.

Today’s Haitian Book Club selection is Vale of Tears by Paulette Poujol-Oriol, a most gifted novelist. Vale of Tears is the English translation of her novel Le Passage (hats off to translator Dolores A. Schaefer for a job well-done…no clumsy, stilted English, just a smooth translation), and it’s understandable why Ibex Publishers, the publisher for the English edition didn’t title it The Passage, but chose the more descriptive Vale of Tears, for The Passage would have been an understatement, as the life of Coralie Santeuil is everything except a crystal stair. As one begins to read about her origins, and follow her into adolescence, it’s clear that it will take a miracle to salvage her from the horrendous deck of cards, she’s been dealt. Only there’s no miracle.

Born into a wealthy, upper-class mulatto family in Haiti in the year 1901, the red-headed, silver-eyed, and physically fragile Coralie is the victim of Aline, a self-serving, manipulative woman who marries her father. Aline’s cruelty makes Cinderella’s stepmother look like Mary Magdalene post-redemption. The thing about Coralie is that she never recovers from the emotional abuse inflicted by her during those pre-teen and post-adolescent years.

At this point in Haitian society, it was probably rather scandalous for an unmarried girl to get away from her wicked stepmother by going off to her own apartment, so Coralie is somewhat of a helpless victim. When she does leave home, though, at the start of Word War II, she uses her freedom to liberate her body, not her mind. She’s still the same frightened little Coralie that Aline used to lock up in dark closets, and deprive of her loving doll—the mother Aline can never be, who gives her the affection that her absentee, backbone-lacking father Félix has wholly surrendered to his second wife.

Vale of Tears is truly brilliantly written; the narrator goes from one stage to another of Coralie Santeuil’s life, with each chapter a back and forth of sort between her past and her present. It’s been said that dwelling on the past is destructive, but for a woman like Coralie, looking at the past is an absolute must. Flipping over the previous pages of her life, allows her to reflect, to see where she went wrong, even if her decisions and lack of self-will are irreversible.

Poujol-Oriol captures the essence of human nature so well, that the novel might as well have been a contemporary one. This passage from the novel for example describes a scene at a funeral:

“Well, it is not the dead that people give wreaths and sheaves of flowers at funerals. They could not care less. It is to those who stay behind, to the living, especially if they are rich, that the super floral arrangements are given. It is a way of saying to acquaintances, “See we are your friends. Do not forget us at your parties and in your business ventures.”

By the time I had read the last sentence of the book, I felt this immeasurable sadness, this melancholy for Coralie’s life, and this regret over the fact that I would never meet this agile novelist Paulette Poujol Oriol, who died in March 2011. Her novel has been one of the most engrossing, at times difficult to take, works I’ve ever read. Her heroine is so real, you can almost feel her pain when she gets cut, feel her mortification every time she’s humiliated. Coralie is, as Poujol-Oriol puts it, “engrossed in her private hurricane”, and judging from the direction her life took, it must have been a Category 6.

Author Photo: Eddy Aubourg/Le Nouvelliste

To read other selections of our Haitian Book Club, click here.

Creating dangerously—that’s what Edwidge Danticat’s writing ancestors did. One of the most acclaimed writers of this century and last, and arguably the most prominent Haitian-American writer in the United States, you’d think that Edwidge Danticat would put her pen away, and rest on her laurels which include a National Book Award nomination, and a win, The National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Flaiano Prize, and the Langston Hughes Medal. and others, if were to list them all we’d risk getting typist cramp.

Non, non. The lady scribe hasn’t put away her blood for ink, nor her parchment paper. Instead, she chose to release her latest literary opus Creating Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, to explore the creative journeys of immigrants. She opens her collection of introspective essays with a written remembrance of Louis Ardouin and Marcel Numa, two artist-students who in 1964 were mercilessly executed, as one of the 13 members of Jeune Haiti, a revolutionary group that attempted an invasion of the country during the presidency of François Duvalier. From there, she explores her journey and that of other artistic greats, who often had to create at the risk of their own lives, and that of their families. A decade and half after she made her literary debut with Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat tries approaches her craft with as much enthusiasm as when she was the young writer blushing over acclaim from critics. Get into the circle and listen to our conversation.

Q&A

Will there ever be a sequel to Breath, Eyes, Memory?
It’s probably wise to never say never, but I don’t think there will be a sequel to Breath, Eyes, Memory anytime soon. I have a lot of other stories I want to write. I’m not sure I’m ready to revisit those characters again in the very near future, but I am always extremely moved by the way that this book has touched some people. I would have never imagined what it would mean to a lot of young women, for example, which is why I am hesitant to touch it. Breath, Eyes, Memory is like a first child. You try everything on your first child and make all your mistakes and hope and pray it still turns out okay. Maybe at some point I might revisit Sophie, the main character, as a grandmother–maybe when I am a grandmother myself– see how she has done in America late in life. Who knows? But I’m not thinking of writing a sequel right now.

You came to the United States as a little girl of twelve. Did you, in your wildest dreams, think that you would become the writer of world renown that you are now?
Well, you know how they say that God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself. This is certainly the case. I would not have been able to dream any of this and by “this” I mean, having the great blessing of doing something I absolutely love, as my work, every single day of my life. That to me is the definition of success, doing something you love and are passionate about and having good health and most days having relative peace of mind.

Out of all the books you’ve written, which one do you think would lend itself the most to a film adaptation?
I used to work in film and I still try to work as much as possible in documentary for example, because it is a medium I love, but I am probably the worst person to make that determination. I think they would all make good films in the right hands. I have to tell you that in the last couple of years, I have had many promising conversations with so many wonderful young Haitian and Haitian-American filmmakers, some in film school, some out on their own, that I am very optimistic about our having some wonderful films made within this community over all. I want to take the opportunity to incidentally plug Jacmel’s Cine Institute, Haiti’s only film school. They are doing great things in film. Also this short film was made by Rachel Benjamin from one of the stories in Krik? Krak! called “The Missing Peace”.

Which of your books has been the hardest to write?
Hands down, it has to be Brother, I’m Dying, my memoir about the death of my uncle and father. In one way writing it was a way of visiting with both my father and uncle after they died, but in another way, with each page and each day, they were slipping away from me. It was the fastest book I had ever written, but also the hardest, emotionally, to write.

Do you imagine ever sitting in front of your computer or with your notebook in hand, and not having one word come out?
No because on that day, I would write, “Why I am sitting in front of my computer with my notebook in hand and no word is coming out? OH GOD WHHHHHHY?” And that would be something, right? Seriously, it has happened sometimes, but when it does, I read or do something else or try to go about living my life and not pressure myself too much until the words come back.

Is a room with a view an absolute necessity for a writer?
I don’t think so. Sometimes a great view can be distracting and make you want to go outside and play. I write at night mostly, exactly for that reason, to have as few distractions as possible.

Your father and uncle are unarguably two of your life’s biggest heroes. What is the best advice they’ve given to you?
Both my father and uncle were not the type to give me direct advice really, beyond the strong “recommendations” and suggestions, which are not really suggestions, that we all get when we are young. But I learned a lot of things by example from them. My uncle was a minister so his sermons were filled with konsèy to his congregation. One I remember clearly is about humility. Sèl pa bezwen di l sale, he used to say. Salt doesn’t have to say it’s salty. Beginning with the time I was a teenager, on my birthday, my dad always bought me flowers and chocolates. The first time he did that he said, “I want to be the first man to give you these things so that you don’t lose your head the first time someone gives them to you, so that it feels normal to you, so that you know you deserve them.” After that he always sent me flowers and chocolates on my birthday every year until he died. Wherever I was I would always get flowers and chocolates from my dad on my birthday. And it was always a great reminder to me that I was loved unconditionally, which is something I miss so much from him, which is one of the reasons, I still miss my daddy very very much. That and the fact that my girls and my brothers’ children won’t know either of these men are still heartbreaking to me.

Of all the accolades that you’ve gotten which one means the most to you?
Every award is a gift, something encouraging you to continue and go on. That’s really how I see them as encouragement to try harder and do more and do better and hang in there. The MacArthur Fellowship was a most tremendous gift, of course. The Hurston/Wright nominations as well as the Langston Hughes medal which was very kindly given to me last November 18th meant a great deal to me , because I have always loved the work of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, especially the work on Haiti, so it meant a lot to me to have this full circle connection between them and me and Haiti.

Recently though, I participated in an event for the two year commemoration of the January 12th earthquake organized by Dickson Guillaume and the Haitian Mass Choir in Brooklyn and three young Haitian-American women from the organization Beltifi presented me with a painting painted by the founder’s mother and right before giving it to me the young women read a few words and one of the young women said something like, “Thank you because after reading you, we have no fear”, and I was at a total mess after she said that. I was at a total loss for words.

I kept seeing myself at fifteen and imagining also feeling momentarily fearless because of some book I had just read and I knew exactly what she meant and this was such a full circle moment for me and I was so moved and was so choked up that I was not even able to give the speech I came to give. I looked at those young women and I kept thinking of our journey as immigrants in this country and I kept looking back and looking forward at what words, our parents’ dreams and courage, their love, fears, pride, prayers, support and these types of things can do and what reading and art can do and what these things might mean one day to my daughters and other young girls and women like them and I got really, really choked up.

You have two daughters. How has motherhood been for you?
Motherhood has been greatly sweetened by the fact that I have a most wonderful husband. My girls have been blessed with a great father who enjoys their company and carries a lot of the load. I often tell people that motherhood is a family project, from my mother and my mother in law to the great friends who love my daughters and sometimes care for them like their own, this all makes motherhood easier and my ability to do other things possible, so it bears saying, because we don’t say it enough, that at its best motherhood is a communal project. It takes a village, sometimes several villages, indeed.

With do-it-yourself book technology, do you think that one day, there will be no need for publishers and books, especially printed books?
I am not sure where it’s all going. I think we’re all a bit nervous, truthfully about what all the technology will mean to writers, readers, publishers, booksellers and books. Which part of the chain will be wiped out first, we wonder? Bookstores? Publishers? Writers? Who knows? All I know is that people have been telling stories since the dawn of time and they will continue to find some way to tell them and even if there is some day enough technology to tattoo a book behind my eyelids, I think I will always want to hold something in my hand and turn a page anyway.

Photo: The MacArthur Foundation

Haiti’s history is like a historical soap opera, a soap opera that historian and professor Laurent Dubois is more than happy to chronicle. First there was Avengers of the New World, his chronicle of the Haitian Revolution and its significance. Perhaps the dramatic aspects of the country’s history were more than titillating for Dubois who chose to revisit Haiti, this time for a full-pledged history, from the days of the racketeering buccaneers to the months following Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

German influence started out as really intense in early 19TH Century Haiti. And now it’s virtually gone?
It is largely gone, although there are many families that have some German background. The rise of U.S. economic power, and particularly the period of occupation, essentially brought about the end of the economic presence of Germans. The Germans were in many cases replaced by Syrian merchants, who developed close ties with the U.S. and received support from the country during the late 19th and early 20th century.

The U.S. Marines came to Haiti in 1915 and remained for nearly three decades? Why didn’t Haiti turn out to be an English-speaking country?
The occupation was 19 years in total, and there were some attempts to institute English-language education. But many Haitians resisted that, and indeed celebrated their links with France and the French language precisely was a way to resist U.S. cultural influence. There is now a two-century long intellectual and literary history of writing in French in Haiti: even though French speakers have always been a small minority in the country, they have been incredibly prolific as thinkers, producing novels and poetry as well as a wide range of work on literature, anthropology, psychology, and other fields.

For years, historians have had this back and forth about whether some of the Tainos and Arawaks escaped to the mountains and have descendants, whereas others have said that they were annihilated.
There is no doubt that there were some who survived, though largely by mixing in with the Spanish settlements. And there is some evidence that indigenous people did remain the mountains and may have connected with early maroon communities, thus influencing aspects of Haitian culture, notably in the Vodou religion. But Haiti really developed as a colony only starting in the late 17th century – centuries after the decimation of the indigenous people in the early 1500s. Reports from the late 18th century, though, do make clear that there were lots of traces of the indigenous culture everywhere in colonial Saint-Domingue: some churches has old artifacts incorporated into their construction, and there were many stone “zemis,” representations of the indigenous gods, often incorporated as sacred objects into Vodou temples.

In The Aftershocks, you discuss the Kreyòl language a great deal. How has the language changed over the years?
The M.I.T. linguist Michel Degraff argues that Kreyòl emerged relatively early in Saint-Domingue’s colonial history, probably in the early 18th century, and by the 1750s there were already plays being written and performed in the language. The orthography of the language has of course varied since them – there are still some differences in terms of spelling and accents, though there is increasing consensus about that – and there have always been regional variations to the language too. But it’s crucial to understand that it’s a rich language with deep roots, having thrived for more than two centuries, and that it has essentially always been the major language of the Haitian people.

You’ve written books about Haiti before. While doing research for The Aftershocks, did you come across anything new, or anything that surprised you?
I certainly learned a lot in writing the book. I deepened my understanding of Haiti’s nineteenth century, which is not discussed enough and I think is often misrepresented, and enjoyed learning about the complexities of that period. I also learned many new details about the U.S. Occupation of Haiti, and was struck by how much about that period still resonates today. But my favorite part about writing the book was spending time reading and learning about some of Haiti’s great intellectuals and writers – particularly figures like Anténor Firmin, Jacques Roumain, and Marie-Vieux Chauvet – who accompanied me as I struggled to understand the country’s complex past. I knew about these figures before and had read some of their work, but I discovered much more about them in the process of writing this book. I’m hoping to spend more time exploring and teaching their work in the coming years, and have thought about writing a book just focusing on Roumain at some point. I’m also working with four other scholars (Nadève Ménard of the Université d’Etat d’Haïti, Millery Polyné of NYU, Chantalle Verna of Florida International University, and Kaiama Glover of Barnard University) on a book called The Haiti Reader whose goal will be to offer translations of excerpts from Haitian writers and thinkers to an English-language public. In trying to answer questions about Haiti’s past, I definitely came upon many new questions that still need to be explored. My ultimate hope is that the book can help spur on more research and writing about the country’s complex and fascinating past.

This has been another interview from Kreyolicious! Today’s guest was Laurent Dubois, historian and scholar.

Lyonel Trouillot’s novel about two slum-dwelling children Marièla and Colin, two children who murder their abusive father is curiously titled Children of Heroes, and that is the least intriguing thing about the work.

Colin and Mariéla Pamphile are the precocious children and progeny of their grossly misnamed father Corazón, a failed boxer and his long-suffering wife Josephine.

Their mother Josephine, is as Trouillot puts it, and Linda Coverdale translates it: “…is a consenting adult. The only thing you can do for her is help her suffer, and that’s all the asks. If anyone told her to leave she’d simply say mind your own business.”

We all have one of those types of people in our lives. Those who are more than content to be someone else’s victim. Josephine may have resigned herself to being hard on her luck for the rest of her life. Not so her defiant daughter Mariéla who may tolerate her father pounding on the face of her mother, but will not allow him to pound nor stomp on her dreams.

Trouillot’s undestated prose, his way of putting a lush sentence together make Children of Heroes a novel worthy of examination and multiple reads.Take this colorful passage from the novel for example:

“I remember Soeur Lucienne, Fat Mayard’s great-aunt. She’d open her mouth, you’d see a big black hole, but no trace of a tooth. She didn’t do a thing for herself. You had to hold her spoon, and force her to bathe. As soon as she saw the bucket, the old woman started shrieking and would crawl naked as an earthworm all the way to the shortcut leading to the furniture factory. You had to run after her, wrestle her back, and wash her down long-distance by emptying the bucket at her.”

Now back to the title. Children of Heroes? Corazón…a hero? Mariéla, the pathetic victim a hero? But they are heroes, in the very way they lived.