Haitian Literature

The twenty-three years (1934-1957) between the end of the US Occupation and the start of the Duvalier era were a dynamic period of introspection and change in Haitian society. The relatively high degree of freedom of expression, the proliferation of ideologies like Marxism and Noirisme, and the "Revolution of 1946" were all linked to a transformation of Haitian politics and culture unprecedented since 1804. One clear indication of the spirit of this chapter of the country's history, which I have labeled the Haitian Sixties, was the progress made by the Kreyòl movement. After the setbacks under the US Occupation, the call for a legitimation of the popular language entered a phase of renewed vigor: it was bolstered by groundbreaking philological studies, concerted attempts to create a standard orthography, experiments in the use of the Kreyòl language as a medium of instruction, and a renaissance in Kreyòl-language literature. Yet as the movement progressed, it was hampered by new internal divisions and longstanding prejudices at different levels of Haitian society.

Pawòl Lakay is a complete first and second year set of Kreyòl materials designed for beginners and intermediate learners at the college level. It is the most comprehensive resource for the teaching and learning of Kreyòl available on the market. This textbook adopts a pragmatic approach to the teaching of language; emphasizing the value of communicative competence, functional language use, and conversational effectiveness. Pawòl Lakay takes into consideration the most recent research findings, new theories and methods in foreign language teaching. It is designed in accordance with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the ACTFL National Standards for Foreign Language Education.

The English translation of Frankétienne's great Kreyòl novel, Dézafi, is slated for release by the University of Virginia Press in July 2018. As the translator of this challenging work, I am pleased that the first long work of fiction in the Haitian vernacular is finally available in English for scholars and the larger reading public.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s first book, Ti difé boulé sou istoua Ayiti [Stirring the Pot of Haitian History] (1977), exposes the foundational role of Haitian Vodou and the Kreyòl language in Haiti’s Revolution (1791-1804). This essay analyzes selected passages from Ti difé boulé that explicitly incorporate Vodou songs, prayers, and terminology to show how Trouillot provocatively deploys oral sources of historical narrative and memory. The young activist, writing in Haitian Kreyòl from New York City during the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, powerfully contests official versions of Haitian history by emphasizing the Haitian people’s agency. Vodou and Kreyòl, born out of struggle within a repressive colonial framework, are the forces underlying Haitian resistance. Ti difé boulé examines neocolonial patterns of oppression emerging during the nineteenth century and critiques revolutionary icon Toussaint Louverture, revealing how Haiti’s predatory State harnessed Vodou to continue systematically subjugating the Haitian people.  Trouillot’s innovative yet understudied masterpiece offers contemporary readers “new narratives” (Ulysse, 2015) of Haiti. As twin pillars of Haitian resistance and cultural identity, Vodou and Kreyòl remain a vital and vibrant part of the American heritage. They merit more nuanced understandings within a cultural and political context where they have increasingly come under siege, inside and outside of Haiti.

L’article se propose de définir les articulations entre les rites et la construction de l’identité dans l’œuvre de Joujou Turenne, conteuse, comédienne, danseuse et scénariste haïtienne, contrainte à l’exil au Québec dans les années 1970. Il s’agit d’observer comment les contes de Joujou Turenne se laissent interpréter comme textes ouverts où l’exil en diaspora québécoise peut être perçu comme un rite de passage vers une identité (post)moderne dont les repères sont sans cesse à réinventer. Dans la première partie, on interroge le parcours artistique de Joujou Turenne avec l’appui des théories de Arnold Van Gennep sur les rites de passage et des concepts de Victor Turner relatifs à l’anthropologie de la performance. La deuxième partie est consacrée à l’analyse de certains contes de Joujou Turenne afin d’y repérer des techniques nouvelles qu’elle développe au Québec pour adapter le conte haïtien traditionnel au contexte diasporique postmoderne.

Premier volume de nouvelles d'Ignace Nau, le premier auteur de récits fictionnels francophones des pays du Sud, présenté et annoté par Frenand Léger. Les nouvelles de ce volume ont  été publiées à l'origine dans L'Union, Le Républicain, journaux haïtiens de Port-au-Prince, entre 1834 et 1839.

Traducido del inglés por Nélida Devesa-Gómez

La Primera Guerra Mundial figura sólo tangencialmente en la historiografía haitiana, ya que fue eclipsada por los análisis de la ocupación de Estados Unidos (1915-1934). Este silencio entre los especialistas oscurece el impacto cultural e intelectual que tuvo la Primera Guerra Mundial en Haití. Este ensayo considera un ejemplo primordial como es el indigénisme, un movimiento cultural nacionalista que emergió de los años 1920 y que buscaba identificar los elementos de la cultura haitiana pura. Si este movimiento fue catalizado como una pérdida de soberanía política bajo la Ocupación de Estados Unidos, es erróneo caracterizar la Ocupación como la única fuente de esta búsqueda de una identidad nacional. La finalidad de este estudio es reincorporar la Primera Guerra Mundial en la historiografía del periodo para poder evaluar su contribución al nacionalismo cultural haitiano.

English:
The First World War figures only parenthetically in Haitian historiography, eclipsed by analyses of the US Occupation (1915–1934). This silence in scholarship obscures the cultural and intellectual impact of the First World War in Haiti. This paper considers one such example in indigénisme, a cultural nationalist movement that emerged in the 1920s and which sought to identify elements of a purely Haitian culture.  If this movement was catalyzed by a loss of political sovereignty under the US Occupation, it is wrong to characterize the Occupation as the sole source of this quest for a national identity. This study aims to reinsert the First World War into the historiography of the period so that we might evaluate its contribution to the articulation of Haitian cultural nationalism. 

French:
La Première Guerre mondiale ne figure que très peu dans l’historiographie haïtienne, éclipsée par des analyses de l’Occupation Américaine (1915–1934). Ce silence historiographique cache cependant de vrais impacts intellectuels et culturels de la Grande Guerre en Haïti. A titre d’exemple, nous examinerons l’indigénisme, un mouvement de nationalisme culturel qui apparaît dans les années 1920 et qui cherche à identifier les éléments d’une culture proprement haïtienne. Si ce mouvement est catalysé par la perte de souveraineté sous le joug de l’occupant, on a tort de caractériser l’Occupation comme source unique de cette nouvelle quête d’identité nationale. Cette étude vise à réinsérer la Première Guerre mondiale dans l’historiographie de la période afin d’évaluer sa contribution à l’articulation du nationalisme culturel haïtien.

Ainsi parla l'Oncle, Jean Price-Mars’ ethnological disquisition on Haiti’s folk traditions, remains a most instrumental text in the construction of the Haitian ideology. In a way that is yet to be fully appreciated, in mapping the contours of the Haitian psychoscape and identifying its thematic axes—history, the land, the gods, the language, popular traditions--, Ainsi parla l’Oncle has lastingly shaped the way Haitians define themselves and understand their place in the world, and provided much of the lexicon of the national discourse of identity and collective agency. Placing Price-Mars's work in the historical context of the evolution of the Haitian ideology since the founding of the nation, this essay brings into relief the transcending and enduring significance of Ainsi parla l’Oncle as a paradigm-shifting and consciousness-molding text.

Hallucinant roman de la quête de la victime expiatoire par les hérauts du malheur, explorant entre catholicisme et vaudou les insondables croyances et les ténébreuses angoisses des paysans, et devant au créole son rythme, son phrasé et sa puissance apocalyptique, La Montagne ensorcelée est sans doute le texte le plus vertigineux écrit par Jacques Roumain. Happé dans un tourbillon d'images par une prose d'une stupéfiante puissance d'évocation, le lecteur plonge dans un univers dont il parvient à s'extirper.
Mais de cette plongée, il ne ressort pas indemne ; lorsque ses yeux se détachent de la dernière ligne, il halète, suffoque. Frappé de mutité, il étouffe un cri, comme ensorcelé et en proie à une indéfinissable torpeur.

The Chains of Pitit Pierr’: Colonial Legacies and Character Linkage in Oswald Durand’s Rires et Pleurs

Oswald Durand, Haiti’s national poet in the nineteenth century, is best known for his poem “Choucoune,” written in Haitian Creole. The poem has been read in terms of failure, since the Creole-speaking narrator loses his lover Choucoune to a French-speaking foreigner. I argue that the baby born of the love affair, pitit Pierr’, is the forerunner to the recurrent character Pierre in Durand’s 1896 collection Rires et Pleurs. Citing two of the collection’s French-language poems, I trace Pierre’s evolution into the black poet in postrevolutionary Haiti. Far from conveying failure, this character’s understated subjectivity employs irony to subvert neocolonial hegemony.

La littérature est hégémonique, dans sa propension à englober dans son orbe des savoirs que d'autres discours ou disciplines - la philosophie, l'histoire, les diverses sciences humaines - aimeraient à distinguer clairement d'elle. Elle est aussi démonique, dans l'emprise qu'elle exerce sur nos esprits.
Les travaux de Laurent Dubreuil ont montré comment l'écriture et la lecture avaient, dans la modernité occidentale, constitué un des ultimes refuges pour l'expérience de la possession. Ils ont aussi exposé comment la domination coloniale s'était elle-même déployée à travers une " phrase de possession " dont les échos continuent de résonner fortement dans les productions langagières et littéraires contemporaines.
"L'empire de la littérature " dit ainsi trois phénomènes imbriqués : un domaine, une puissance, et la capacité qu'ont l'un et l'autre de renaître de leurs propres faillites. Comment s'est littérairement édicté l'empire, comment peut-on s'en sortir, la littérature peut-elle échapper à la politique et la parole esquiver ainsi la parlure ?
Conçu dans un constant dialogue avec Laurent Dubreuil, qui signe ici plusieurs essais et entretiens inédits, cet ouvrage collectif aborde la question de l'indiscipline littéraire face aux différents régimes de savoir, face à la possession coloniale, et dans son rapport à l'histoire. Centré sur les littératures francophones, en particulier africaines et antillaises, il offre une contribution originale aux réflexions contemporaines sur l'apport des théories postcoloniales, et sur les relations entre littérature et pensée.

This chapter examines Haitian Vodou epistemologies and African-centered ways of knowing in Edwidge Danticat’s work, focusing on her collection of short stories Krik? Krak! (1995) and her travelogue narrative, After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (2002). Using Jacob K. Olúpọ̀nà’s (2011) theoretical lens of indigenous hermeneutics, I analyze her work as Africana religious texts drawing from the fields of Black Atlantic religion, visual art, and material culture.

The Haitian expression andaki or pale daki (“to speak andaki”) signals a secret code to discuss difficult or taboo subjects. I assert that Danticat’s representations of Vodou serve as pale daki, coded messages for readers to interpret Haitian mythic archetypes. Danticat thus emerges as what Nadège T. Clitandre (2018) calls the “daughter of a [divine] voice,” invoking powerful female ancestors who represent a quilted matriarchy of voices. Additionally, the presence of nature features prominently in Danticat’s work, as she unearths how environmental degradation is both a secular and sacred matter of grave concern. Her characters embody the presence of the lwa (spirits), zansèt yo (the ancestors), rasin yo (their roots), and anviwònman sakre (the sacred environment). I examine sacred space as hallowed ground and ritual objects as divine entities in six sites, including natural phenomena (forest, sea, sky, river) and human crafted sites/entities (stone, cemetery). Each sacred space is associated with a divine energy, and their respective lwa serve as our narrative guides. Ultimately, these sacred sites and mythic archetypes of spirit further illuminate the vibrant religious portraits of Danticat’s works.

(En): The aim of this paper is to analyse the permeable boundaries between the author and the narrator in the rewritings of Haitian traditional oral tales, in the context of the present-day Diaspora. We will focus in particular on two storytellers, Joujou Turenne (Québec) and Mimi Barthélémy (France), to investigate the passage from the oral to the written form of a tale, a passage that disrupts the tale's narration as far as the traditional forms of opening and closing, the ultimate site of the narrator's simulation, are concerned. Our analysis will be based on a comparative study of the two storytellers' texts, by way of the specific case of the Haitian storyteller Paula Clermont Péan.

Cet article examine  la nouvelle francophone haïtienne, vieille de deux siècles environ, à travers l’œuvre narrative d’Ignace Nau, le premier écrivain haïtien à avoir produit et publié des nouvelles littéraires d’expression française, afin de rendre compte de ce phénomène littéraire et pour démontrer sa place capitale dans les littératures francophones.

A century after the slaves of Saint-Domingue won their liberty, their descendants, the free peasantry of the Republic of Haiti, remained impoverished and without access to channels of recourse. Their isolation was exacerbated by the linguistic divide in Haiti, where French was the exclusive language of official and written contexts while the majority of the popula- tion spoke only Haitian Creole. At the start of the twentieth century, a movement began to dismantle this linguistic hier- archy. Haitian poets and novelists started using Creole in their works of literature in order to contest the notion that Creole was an inferior language. They believed that a linguistic revo- lution would allow Haiti’s monolingual masses to participate in public life for the first time in Haiti’s history. Georges Sylvain, Frédéric Marcelin, and their colleagues effectively opened the debate around the status of Creole, and founded a national literature in the process.

Apresenta-se aqui a tradução coletiva da peça O azul da ilha(Le bleu de  l’île),  escrita  originalmente  em  francês  pela  haitiana  Évelyne  Trouilot  em 2005.  Em  uma  breve  introdução,  o  público  leitor  será apresentado  à  autora,  a seu  contexto  e  ao  ponto  de  partida  do  trabalho  da  tradução,  realizado no âmbito  da  disciplina  “Iniciação  à  prática  da  tradução  francês-português” ministrada  no  curso  de  Letras  da  Universidade  Federal  de  São  Paulo  em  2017.A  própria  Trouillot,  em  uma  apresentação  que  também  traduzimos,  explica  o contexto de escrita da peça.

This essay explores the genealogy of historian and anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s writings as related to broader trends in historical scholarship. The author suggests that it was through Silencing the Past’s acceptance and ascendance within the very North Atlantic “guild” that Trouillot deconstructs in his historical writings that the ideas of nineteenth-century Haitian historians such as Baron de Vastey, Hérard Dumesle, Beaubrun Ardouin, and Thomas Madiou produced an immeasurable influence on the direction of historical scholarship across the world. The author argues that the influence of these nineteenth-century Haitian authors can be seen everywhere in social history, especially in the concept of history from below, even though most historians in Europe and the United States have never even heard the names of these other Haitian authors.

In 1940 the ethnologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain
published Le Roman de Bouqui, that is considered the first anthology totally devoted to the Haitian tale but, at the same time, a rewriting. The fifty tales composing the anthology are translated and tweaked by the author, whose approach is dual-purposed: on one hand there's the ethnologist's scientific soul, on the other a literary one. The essay analyses the characters’ descriptions and the comments of the storyteller of the Roman de Bouqui, in order to portray the double essence of the author, the collaboration of the ethnologist with the writer, the collaboration between tradition and innovation.

The notion of ‘disaster’ pervades the Caribbean thought. The common origin of the Caribbean region, the European colonization, caused two disasters: the extermination of Native Americans and the deportation of African slaves. The union between nature and the oppressed people against the oppressor resulted in the creation of an environmental conscience that the Caribbean literature has often expressed. This essay will investigate the common points shared by some Haitian, Martinican and Guadeloupean authors in the writing of natural hazards. It will show that, despite the diversity that marks the Caribbean, there is a repetition of common features that proves its geopoetic unity.

Résumé de l'article
L'article examine les trois premiers romans de Gary Victor en focalisant particulièrement sur les passages écrits en langue kreyòl afin de déterminer leur mode d'intégration et leur statut dans ces textes littéraires d'expression française. Pour bien apprécier la qualité, la pertinence et le degré de créolisation linguistique à l'oeuvre dans les romans de G. Victor, ces derniers ont été confrontés à d'autres productions littéraires de même nature provenant d'un corpus de textes francophones haïtiens et antillais.

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the first antislavery and anticolonial uprising led by New World Africans to result in the creation of an independent and slavery-free nation state. The momentousness of this thirteen-year-long war generated thousands of pages of writing. This anthology brings together for the first time a transnational and multilingual selection of literature about the revolution, from the beginnings of the conflicts that resulted in it to the end of the nineteenth century.

With over two hundred excerpts from novels, poetry, and plays published between 1787 and 1900, and depicting a wide array of characters including, Anacaona, Makandal, Boukman, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe, this anthology provides the perfect classroom text for exploring this fascinating revolution, its principal actors, and the literature it inspired, while also providing a vital resource for specialists in the field. This landmark volume includes many celebrated authors—such as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Heinrich von Kleist, Alphonse de Lamartine, William Wordsworth, Harriet Martineau, and William Edgar Easton—but the editors also present here for the first time many less-well-known fictions by writers from across western Europe and both North and South America, as well as by nineteenth-century Haitian authors, refuting a widely accepted perception that Haitian representations of their revolution primarily emerged in the twentieth century. Each excerpt is introduced by contextualizing commentary designed to spark discussion about the ongoing legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Americas. Ultimately, the publication of this capacious body of literature that spans three continents offers students, scholars, and the curious reader alike a unique glimpse into the tremendous global impact the Haitian Revolution had on the print culture of the Atlantic world.

The early history of Haitian Kreyòl remains subject to intense debate among linguists, though there is no doubt it was the principal medium through which slave revolts were organized and the foundations of Haitian culture set. By the end of the nineteenth century there were already significant literary texts, in particular Oswald Durand’s “Choucoune” and Georges Sylvian’s Cric? Crac! During the thirties and forties, proponents of Kreyòl struggled to have it recognized as the national language and standardized. This process did not bear fruit until the IPN (Institut de pédagogie national) orthography became official in the eighties. Beginning in the fifties, there had already been a renais- sance of poetry in Kreyòl, the leading figure of which was Feliks Moriso-Lewa. At least two generations of writers have followed in his footsteps. In the person of Franketyèn, Kreyòl has one of the most fascinating contemporary writers in world literature.

Contemporary actors and, later, historians and critics have long compared the Haitian Revolution to a tragic play. But the model of tragedy they invoke has changed over time. Today the best-known example comes from The Black Jacobins (1963), in which C. L. R. James narrates the events of the Revolution through the lens of a Hegelian definition of tragedy. David Scott has championed James’s “tragic mode of history” for political reasons, arguing that it is better suited to address the challenges of the postcolonial present. But a tragic mode of history can be of use for the postcolonial present only if it is firmly grounded in the world-changing events that it is supposed to illuminate. It should build on what tragedy was in the milieu of Toussaint Louverture and the slave rebels. To lay the groundwork for this critical shift, this essay traces how tragic performances and history intersected during the Revolution and shows how radicalized versions of Voltaire’s Roman-themed tragedies and Afro-Caribbean mythology and rituals played a prominent part in the fight for equality.

This essay explores what I have termed the ‘myth of the Haitian republic’: the disconnect between the idea of a liberal democratic republic and its practical instantiation in Haiti but also the stories of the Haitian Revolution and civil war that partisans of the republic told to narrate its inevitability after the unification of the Haitian republic in 1820. After the fall of the northern monarchy and the end of nearly 15 years of civil war, historians, intellectuals and statesmen wrote the foundational national myths of the republic in poems, literary and political journals, travel narratives, geographies and histories. These texts narrated the inevitability of the republic by casting Dessalines’s empire and Christophe’s kingdom as perversions or aberrations of the inexorable march towards civilization and liberal republicanism. A first section considers the forging of the national republican myth in the work of Beaubrun Ardouin, considered at the time the foremost historian of the post-1820 republic. A second section considers Louis Joseph Janvier’s later revisionist history of Ardouin’s work. By illuminating the early republican mythologizing of Haiti’s revolutionary past, Janvier reveals how the post-independence republic failed to live up to the republican ideals of freedom and democracy that it proclaimed, particularly as it concerned Haiti’s majority group: the peasantry.

At the start of the twentieth century a movement began to dismantle Haiti’s linguistic hierarchy. Haitian writers started using Creole in their works of literature in order to contest the notion that Creole was unfit for written and formal contexts. Such a linguistic revolution would allow Haiti’s monolingual masses to participate in public life. The emergent Creole movement, however, came to an abrupt end with the onset of the US Occupation in 1915. Haitian intellectuals opted to cling to their French cultural heritage as a way of contesting the validity of the Americans’ ‘civilizing mission.’ The Creole project was shelved. Curiously, the Americans had their own reasons for expanding the use of Creole, and contributed greatly to the infrastructure of the language. The Americans, however, provoked widespread opposition and undermined their own work on the Creole question. The cause of language legitimation, much like Haitian democracy itself, ultimately regressed under the Occupation.

(The pdf offered here differs only in its pagination from the paper published in the CLAJ 59.2.) The paper deals with Haitian Diaspora literature since Jacques Roumain's 1944 novel Masters of the Dew, and attempts to trace the subtle echoes that a character name like “Claire” may produce when included in a recent book title like Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light (2013). This first name is certainly meant to recall the female protagonist in J.S. Alexis's Compère Général Soleil, a novel published in Paris in 1955 but only as late as 1999 in English translation under the title General Sun, My Brother. Alexis is also the author of a famous manifesto for a “Réalisme merveilleux des Haïtiens” (Paris 1956), much influenced by a commitment to socialist realism. His concept is often mixed up in criticism with Alejo Carpentier's competing notion of “the marvelous real”. Thus this paper's comparative approach also explores the particular conditions of reception in the North American champ littéraire, much dependent on translations from the French or the Spanish, where Haitian (and other Caribbean) works are concerned. While Alexis's political engagement may explain a certain reluctance to contend with his personal take on “marvelous realism,” the label has also been redefined as a purely narrative mode. The study concludes with an exploration of how such theoretical elements may still be of relevance in a recent novel in English by a female Haitian-American writer who knows her classics very well but who lives in a very different world from the Paris of the 1950s.

The aim of this essay is to present three recently published works that deal with different aspects of contemporary Haitian literature: Yves Chemla's "Littérature haïtienne 1980-2015" (2015), "Anthologie de poésie haïtienne contemporaine" (2015) edited by James Noël, and Stéphane Martelly's "Les Jeux du dissemblable. Folie, marge et féminin en littérature haïtienne contemporaine" (2016). We will focus our analysis on the ways in which these works discuss some distinguishing features of Haitian contemporary fiction and poetry, such as the relationship between femininity and madness and the status of Haitian literature after the 2010 earthquake. In particular, we will show how these three publications provide innovative perspectives and interpretations of a dynamic and varied literary universe as the Haitian one.

Nombreux sont ceux qui seraient tentés d’éviter des thèmes tels la solitude, l’amour et, dans le contexte de la littérature «francophone», l’exil, mais nous avons décidé de leur accorder toute l’attention qu’elles méritent en nous basant sur la place qu’elles occupent dans les recueils à l’étude et la richesse qu’elles recèlent. C’est donc dans cette perspective – la leur - que seront présentés les trois recueils qui sont À vol d’ombre (1966) de Jacqueline Beaugé, Transparence en bleu d’oubli (1979) de Renée Marie-Ange Jolicœur, et La Fidélité non plus... (1986) de Yanick Jean. Afin de mieux situer ces trois poètes, qui publient leurs recueils à environ dix ans d’intervalle, nous esquissons tout d’abord un historique de la poésie haïtienne en portant une attention particulière à la contribution des femmes à ce corpus. Cette esquisse illustrera comment Jean, Jolicœur et Beaugé s’inscrivent dans des thématiques très généralisées, celle de l’amour et de la solitude, mais aussi comment elles réussissent à s’en démarquer.

En effet, ces œuvres sont sans pareilles dans la littérature haïtienne car elles déjouent sans cesse les conventions de la poésie amoureuse et redéfinissent constamment la notion d’absence. Notre analyse s’appuie entre autres sur les travaux de Derrida dans le but d’illustrer comment chez elles, l’absence est empreinte de la trace de la présence. Nous examinons également comment, dans chacun des recueils à l’étude, quoique pour des raisons différentes, l’absence étouffe toute possibilité de contact avec l’autre. Afin de comprendre cette question et de souligner son importance, nous faisons appel à la conception du rapport à l’autre de Hegel. C’est ainsi que nous verrons finalement que l’exil est un espace peuplé à la fois de présence et d’absence, et que la mise en scène de l’écriture, dans ces trois œuvres, rend poésie et absence tout à fait indissociables.

Yon premye koze pou koumanse Mwen ap koumanse atik sila a avèk yon avètisman pou tout kreyolis konsekan, ki ap travay pou bay lang kreyòl la jarèt nan domèn ekri a. Pou nou fè yon travay objektif, metodik, ki chita sou bon jan rechèch teyorik ak istorik, nou pa kapab twò ideyalis. Fòk nou gen yon atitid reyalis pou travay anrichisman kòd ekri lang kreyòl la ka objektif. Mwen ta renmen nou konprann reyalite sa a nou pral debat sou li la a, se pa yon reyalite kreyòl li ye. Kategori literè yo rele « woman » an poko rantre nan tradisyon kreyòl la kòmsadwa, paske nou kapab konte sou dwèt nou kantite woman kreyòl ki egziste jounen jodi a. Anfèt, menm sa kritik yo rele « woman ayisyen » an, se nan lang franse li ekri. Kidonk, pifò sa mwen pral di sou sa yo rele woman an, yo souche nan lang ak kilti peyi Lewòp yo. Dayè, depi se sou woman yon moùn ap koze, li oblije rantre byen fon nan lang ak kilti peyi ki pale lang womàn yo, paske mo « woman » an limenm, se anndan vant lang womàn yo li soti dirèk-dirèk. Premye fwa yo te itilize mo « woman » an nan zòn Ewòp la se te pou idantifye yon lang popilè, yo te rele « lingua romana rustica » ki te pran orijin li nan lang laten an. Lang sa a te rele « woman » paske aristokrat enperiyalis women yo, ki soti Lawòm, se te laten yo te pale. Nan epòk XII yèm syèk yo konsa, yo te koumanse tradui tèks laten yo an woman, e se konsa, lang woman an te vin kouche sou papye pou lapremyè fwa nan listwa. Nan epòk sa a, yo te vin ap sèvi ak lang woman an pou rakonte istwa sou papye e se konsa premye istwa ki parèt nan chan literè yo te vin pote menm non avèk lang yo te itilize pou ekri yo a. Se nan lane 1150 yo konsa, yo te koumanse rele, istwa long ki ekri nan lang sa a, « woman ». Pifò nan istwa sa yo se te tradiksyon ak adaptasyon istwa ki te deja ekri an laten. Pou fini ak premye ti koze sa a, fòk nou di se nan « lingua romana rustica » a anpil lang ewopeyen soti. Pami lang sa yo, gen italyen, espayòl, pòtigè epi franse. Tout sa se pou mwen mete yon ti pinga. Mwen pa ta renmen pou kreyolis aktivis, ekstremis yo, ta etone oswa estomake, si majorite egzanp ak referans mwen pral itilize nan atik sa a se nan dokiman ki ekri nan lang franse yo soti, paske pa prèske gen anyen ki ekri sou sijè sila a nan lang kreyòl ayisyen an. Ni tou kritik literè ayisyen yo pa vrèman abòde sijè woman an nan lang manman yo. Evolisyon sans mo « woman » an Lè yon moùn ap chache konprann epi defini yon reyalite, youn nan pi bon fason pou li fè sa, se chache enfòmasyon sou orijin mo ki sèvi pou idantifye reyalite a epitou sou reyalite a limenm. Lè li konbine de apwòch sa yo, li gen plis chans pou jwenn yon rezilta valab. Nan lespri tout moùn ki renmen literati epi ki abitye fè lekti nan domèn nan, yon woman se yon dokiman ekri an pwoz ki gen ladan li yon istwa long yon ekriven imajinen. Sa vle di yon istwa ekri sou papye ki tabli kò li nan « lafiksyon » alòske aksyon ak evènman yo ta sanble souche nan « lareyalite ». Sa se yon definisyon lajman laj, ki sanble ak sa nou jwenn nan pifò diksyonè ak ansiklopedi franse, soti nan tan lontan rive nan moman prezan an. Paregzanp, nan diksyonè Furetière la, ki te soti nan lane 1690, woman vle di: « livres fabuleux qui contiennent des histoires d'amour et de chevaleries, inventés pour divertir et occuper des fainéants – liv fiksyon ki gen istwa damou ak istwa chevalye, ekriven envante pou amize epi distrè aryennafè ». Definisyon sa a pwoblematik paske gen yon jijman pèsonèl ladan li, ki pa objektif epitou li pa ase laj. Dapre yon lòt ekriven yo rele Louis Jaucourt nan Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts

This study attempts to situate, historically and theoretically, a long tradition of dialogue and collaboration between African American and Caribbean peoples for the purposes of liberation.  The basic premise is that within and against the circuits of political, economic, and cultural domination that have structured hemispheric relations in the Americas since 1492, African American and Caribbean solidarity represents a highly developed force for creating decolonizing social change.  By analyzing travel narratives, histories, creative collaborations, and political exchanges, I trace the development of African American/Caribbean dialogue through the lives and works of four key individuals: lay historian Arthur Schomburg, writer/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, jazz poet Jayne Cortez, and theologican/politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Le présent article propose l’analyse du livre L’Énigme du retour, de l’écrivain haïtien Dany Laferrière, à partir de la représentation de l’expérience de l’exil. On mettra en évidence l’expérimentation du
temps hors de la terre natale du narrateur Dany. Ce temps, instable et brisé, s’accorde souvent à une conscience fragmentée de l’espace, celui-ci dans un mouvement qui oscille entre Montréal et Port-au-Prince. Pour ce faire, on utilisera surtout la description de l’exil faite par Edward Said
ainsi que la notion d’une perception en contrepoint chez l’exilé, et aussi les réflexions de cette expérience dans le livre La double scène de la représentation de Maximilien Laroche.