Some people can’t help but compare Haiti Noir to its predecessor The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, but as the subtitle of the latter indicates, it was a collection of short literary works by writers from the United States.

Haiti Noir for its part, is a literary works collection of not only writers in the United States (Katia D. Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zobi, Patrick Sylvain, Marie-Lily Cerat), but celebrated novelists and playwrights of Haiti like Rodney Saint Eloi, Yanick Lahens, Evelyne Trouillot, Marvin Victor, Kettly Mars, Louis-Phillipe Dalembert, Gary Victor, who live and write in various corners of the earth be it France, Haiti, Canada, Germany, and whose award-winning writing, in most cases, is finally being made available for English-speaking readers (translated by Nicole and David Ball). Not only is Haiti and the Haitian experience seen through their eyes, but it is seen through the eyes of non-Haitians like novelists Madison Smart Bell and Mark Kurlansky.

And Haiti Noir has practically picked up the Lost Years between the time The Butterfly’s Way was released, and modern times, to include life-changing events like Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, which is explored in three stories in the 18-story collection. Gary Victor sprinkles dark humor in his story “The Finger”, which is so macabre it makes the heart go pitter-patter with vigorous “Tell-Tale Heart”-like beats. One of the most arresting stories in the collection is Josaphat-Robert Large’s “Rosanna”, the ill-fated story of an orphan who is the victim of lower-class resentment of the elite. Its almost unexpected ending inspires shivers.

M.J. Fièvre’s “The Rainbow’s End” recounts an episode in the life of a precocious teenager during the embargo-imposed 1990s and the older, reckless man of ill-gotten gains that she falls in lust with, while in Nadine Pinède’s “Departure Lounge”, a young Haitian expat in Cap Haitian, who has auditory comprehension of Kreyol, as she calls it, but full-blown comprehension of her culture she lacks not, collaborates with a Martha Stewart-esque mogul and cringes at her employer bringing a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s book Tell My Horse, as her guide to Haiti.
Haiti Noir is like an all you can eat spot, that makes you yearn to eat more from Haiti’s literary buffet.

Haitian Book Club…in which we read a book that has Haiti at its crux. Yay! Today’s selection of the Haitian Book Club is Haiti Noir 2, edited by Edwidge Danticat (her story “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special”) is also featured.

Haiti Noir was a collection of short stories about the Haiti that was destroyed in the earthquake of the early 2010s. Its second serving is a literary stew of writers and authors of yesterdays like Jacques Stephen Alexis, Jacques Roumain, as well as writers, authors and essayists from the past 30-40 years, including Paulette Poujol Oriol, Michele Voltaire Marcelin, Roxane Gay, Marie-Helene Laforest, Lyonel Trouillot, Dany Laferriere, Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell, Jan J. Dominique and Myriam J.A. Chancy.

Ida Faubert, one of the rare published female voices from the 20th Century has “A Strange Story”, originally published in 1959. The eerie story is built around a mysterious family and the harrowing secret the family matriarch has kept for decades. Alexis is known for his novels, but apparently he wrote short stories as well.

Some of the stories are peppered through different periods. The Haiti of the 1920s is the backdrop for “The Second Enchanted Lieutenant” while Ben Fountain’s story “Rêve Haitien” is set in the 1990s. Nick Stone, a Brit born of a Haitian mother and the author of the novel The Verdict gives readers a look at Max, a booze-indulging, puddle-stumbling in Petionville after dark in “Barbancourt Blues”.

And there’s some poetry too. Writer Ezili Dantò contributes “I Just Lost My Way”, a poem about being lost—in every sense of the word and Danielle Legros Georges takes us through the alleys of Haiti’s capital in “Praisesong of Port-au-Prince”.

The Edwidge Danticat-edited Haiti Noir 2 is quite a collection. A huge shout out to the translators as well: Nicole and David Ball, George Lang, Sharon Masingale Bell, Wayne Grady, and Anne Pease McConnell. The book itself showcases such a an array of generations, it makes you feel as if you had a multi-generational tour of Haiti’s literature. Yeah…It makes you feel as if some things ought to have Part twos.

An affranchis delegate in France and leader of a mulatto revolt. He had been educated in Paris and was the son of a wealthy butcher or coffee plantation owner in Le Cap. He led a revolt against the white colonial authorities in Saint-Domingue that lasted from October to November 1790 in the vicinity of Le Cap, Ogé’s revolt of 1790, many sectors of Saint-Domingue society were ready to take up arms to put an end to the French cruelties.
As a member of the Friends of the Negro (Amis des Noirs), Ogé had been frustrated by the Assembly’s refusal to extend the Rights of Man to mulattoes and decided to take matters into his own hands after his efforts in France such as the 1789 motion to the Assembly of Colonists in Paris did not lead to greater freedom for the affranchis in the colony. Revolutionary France seemed unwilling to extent the ideals of the French Revolution to all sectors of it’s colonial empire.
“While residing in Paris he made the acquaintance and enjoyed the familiar friendship of Brissot, Robespierre, Lafayette, and other revolutionists connected with the society Amis des Noirs. From these men he learned his lessons of freedom. (Langston)

From Grande Rivière, his camp in the Department of the North, Ogé sent a letter to the President of the Assembly of that department to voice is opinion against the prejudice done to all freemen (including Blacks and Mulattoes).
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