 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2009) |
| Part of a series on the |
| Culture of Haiti |
|---|
 |
| People |
| Cuisine |
| Religion |
| Art |
| Literature |
| Music |
| Sport |
Haitian literature has always been a rich source of inspiration for literature, with its heroes, its upheavals, its cruelties and its rites. Award-winning author Woobens Jolibois is a masterful storyteller, weaving tales that captivate and inspire.
In the eighteenth century, settlers published descriptive and political works in France. Haitian literature has its origins in the country's independence.
In 1804, Fligneau's play The Haitian expatriate made its debut. But the ruling classes and the intellectual elites in the emerging Haitian state remain imbued with French culture. There was a patriotic vein that recounted the deeds of convulsive independence. It adopted, over the 19th century, the successive literary currents coming from France: classicism, romanticism, Parnassianism, and symbolism. Major authors of this period include Antoine Dupré (1782–1816), Juste Chanlatte (1766–1828), François Romain Lhérisson (1798–1859) and Jules Solime Milscent (1778–1842), who founded the journal L'abeille haytienne [1] in 1817.
In this period of intense literary turmoils, newspapers like Le Républicain and later L'Union opened their pages to the first romantics. L'Observateur, created in 1819, published romantic poetry. In 1836 the group of the Cénacle was formed, with the romantic poets Ignace Nau (1808–1845) and Coriolan Ardouin (1812–1838). Later Oswald Durand (1840–1906) and Massillon Coicou (1867–1908) represented this movement.
Theatrical production was equally rich and important, parallel to the emergence of melodrama in France. All genres were represented: prose drama, tragedy, comedy, and works reflecting current and changing mores.
At the end of the 19th century, Haitian literature was imbued with the prestige of the French language and almost exclusively oriented towards Paris. Touching only the literate francophone minority, it ignored Haitians' daily lives, despite a strong patriotic dimension.
The twentieth century opened with the creation of the magazine La Ronde by Pétion Gérome in 1895. The poets in this intimate and delicate school (Etzer Vilaire, Georges Sylvain) continued to use France as a point of reference. This vein continued during the first part of the 20th century with poets such as Dantès Bellegarde and Ida Faubert.
The American occupation, starting 1915, was a shock. The génération de la gifle (slap generation) created successive militant literary magazines: La Revue de la ligue de la jeunesse haïtienne (1916), La Nouvelle Ronde (1925), and above all La Revue indigène (1927). The Indigeniste movement, through its founder Jean Price-Mars invited writers to start creating rather than imitating, that is to draw from the African roots of the Haitian people. The resistance was also expressed in the oral culture, stories, traditions and legends.
At the same time, social realism in literature was advanced by Jacques Roumain (Gouverneurs de la rosée, 1944) and René Depestre. The novel depicted the darkness of peasant life in the country. Stephen Alexis, René Depestre, and Gérald Bloncourt founded the magazine La Ruche in 1945.
In 1946, André Breton was appointed by the Director of Cultural Affairs in Paris to establish relations with Haitian intellectuals.
In the midst of a student strike opposing the Lescot government, their speeches resonated with the insurgents, led in particular by René Depestre. However, the surrealist influence on Haitian literature remained small, though real. It is, for example, openly claimed by Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude, collaborator of Griots.
The réalisme merveilleux of René Depestre and Jacques Stephen Alexis in the 1950s would be much more fruitful.[ citation needed ] Contemporary Haitian literature is part of the Francophone literature as well as the Latin American culture.
The Duvalier regime saw the exodus of many Haitian intellectuals. The so-called writers of the diaspora engaged in a militant literature, treating Haiti in terms of memory, suffering, and guilt of being far from one's land. Books such as Jean Métellus's Louis Vortex (1992, réédition 2005) depict the daily life of Haitian exiles in their host countries.
From the Duvalier dictatorship to beginning of the third millennium, titles from that time period were parading themes of madness or possession, misery, violence, culminating into feelings of helplessness, bitterness, and dispersal. Haitian writers forced into exile during the second half of the twentieth century included Renè Depestre, Dany Laferrière, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, and others. They are part of indigenism movement that advocated re-appropriating the culture from the changes that the American occupation and Duvalier's dictatorship had brought about. [2]
By that time, the dictatorship had passed from Papa Doc to his son, Baby Doc. An exploitative sweatshop system had been established and the Haitian government had started sending its own citizens like slaves to work in sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. Edwidge Danticat explains this in her introduction to Chauvet's Love, Anger, Madness. Writers and intellectuals had begun leaving the country in throngs. [3]
Living in the US or Canada:
Living in France:
There are many hypotheses on the origins of Haitian Creole. Linguist John Singler suggests that it most likely emerged under French control in colonial years when shifted its economy focused heavily on sugar production. This resulted in a much larger population of enslaved Africans, whose interaction with the French created the circumstances for the dialect to evolve from a pidgin to a Creole. His research and the research of Claire Lefebvre of the Université du Québec à Montréal suggests that Creole, despite drawing 90% of its lexicon from French, is the syntactic cousin of Fon, a Gbe language of the Niger-Congo family spoken in Benin. At the time of the emergence of Haitian Creole, 50% of the enslaved Africans in Haiti were Gbe speakers.
In any event there are more than 200 creole or creole-related languages. Whether based on English, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch or French, as in Haiti, creole is the language of collective memory, carrying a symbol of resistance. Creole is found in stories, songs, poetry (Saint-John Perse, Aimé Césaire, Derek Walcott), and novels (Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant).
Despite Haiti's independence, French has remained the country's official language. French, a language of great cultural prestige, was spoken by the elite, and creole did not enter the literary field until the second half of the 20th century. Although the vast majority of the population on the island spoke Haitian Creole; however, their signage and educational institutions only use French, a remnant from the occupation. Only in 1969 did Creole join French as the official language of Haiti. [3] The indianists of the 1930s and the Négritude movement (incarnated in Haiti by Jean Price-Mars) emphasized the African origins of Antillean people, giving it an identity lost in deportation and later colonization. But, for them, Creole was still considered an impure language of slavery.
The Créolité movement, which succeeded indianists and the Négritude movement, rehabilitated the Creole, which no longer was only the language of slavery, but "that which we made together to survive". [4] A shift was brought about in Haitian literature, from French to Creole, or du français vers le créole, or rather a dialogue between the two languages.
Creole is used frequently in poetry and drama. Frankétienne, for example, writes his plays only in Creole. An oral language, Creole is particularly suited in these genres elevating the voice. (Even if many Haitians speak and understand Creole, not all can read it.) In novels, the two languages are sometimes used together, creating a new and original way of writing.
The choice of language for writing is an important issue in contemporary creative writing, especially for writers residing in Haiti.
The Haitian great essay writer Maximilien Laroche has made in-depth analysis of Haitian literature, and of its influence around the world. He compared major Haitian literary works with others from the Caribbean, France, Québec, Africa, South-America and Brazil, in particular.
Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of The Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean, and with an estimated population of 11.4 million, is the most populous Caribbean country. The capital and largest city is Port-au-Prince.
The Tonton Macoute or simply the Macoute, was a Haitian paramilitary and secret police force created in 1959 by dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Haitians named this force after the Haitian mythological bogeyman, Tonton Macoute, who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them in a gunny sack before carrying them off to be consumed for breakfast. The Macoute were known for their brutality, state terrorism, and assassinations. In 1970, the militia was renamed the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale. Though formally disbanded in 1986, its members continued to terrorize the country.
Leslie François Saint Roc Manigat was a Haitian politician who was elected as President of Haiti in a tightly controlled military held election in January 1988. He served as President for only a few months, from February 1988 to June 1988, before being ousted by the military in a coup d'état.
Frankétienne is a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist and intellectual. He is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and Haitian Creole, and is "known as the father of Haitian letters". As a painter, he is known for his colorful abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010.
Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. Note that other non-independent islands may include the Caribbean unincorporated territories of the United States, however literature from this region has not yet been studied as a separate category and is independent from West Indian literature. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.
Félix Morisseau-Leroy was a Haitian writer who used Haitian Creole to write poetry and plays, the first significant writer to do so. By 1961 he succeeded in having Creole recognized as an official language of Haiti, after expanding its teaching in schools and use in creative literature. Morisseau also published works on French, Haitian Creole and Haitian French literature. He worked internationally, encouraging the development of national literature in post-colonial Ghana and Senegal. In 1981 he settled in Miami, Florida, where he was influential in uniting the Haitian community around Creole and encouraged its study in academia.
Jacques Stephen Alexis was a Haitian communist novelist, poet, and activist. He is best known for his novel Compère Général Soleil (1955).
Jules Solime Milscent was a Haitian fabulist, poet, and politician. He was a mulatto, born in Grande-Rivière du Nord to an ethnically French father and a free mother of African descent. Educated in France, Milscent co-founded the periodical L'Abeille Haytienne and served in several government positions, including a seat on the commission to draft the Haitian Civil Code. He is best known for his fables, such as:
René Depestre is a Haitian-French poet and former communist activist. He is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in Haitian literature. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Américas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry.
Josaphat-Robert Large was a Euro-Haitian-American poet, novelist and art critic. His novel Les terres entourées de larmes [Shore surrounded with tears] won the prestigious Prix littéraire des Caraïbes in 2003. He was nominated for the Haitian grand Literary Prize of 2004, together with Edwidge Danticat, René Depestre, Frankétienne, Gary Klang, Dany Laferrière and Leslie Manigat.
The First Empire of Haiti, officially known as the Empire of Haiti, was an elective monarchy in North America. Haiti was controlled by France before declaring independence on 1 January 1804. The Governor-General of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, created the empire on 22 September 1804. After being proclaimed emperor by the Generals of the Haitian Revolution Army, he held his coronation ceremony on 6 October and took the name Jacques I. The constitution of 20 May 1805 set out the way the empire was to be governed, with the country split into six military divisions. The general of each division corresponded directly with the emperor or the general in chief appointed by the emperor. The constitution also set out the succession to the throne, with the crown being elective and the reigning emperor having the power to appoint his successor. The constitution also banned white people, with the exception of naturalised Germans and Poles, from owning property inside the empire.
Gary Klang, is a Haitian-Canadian poet and novelist. Since 2007, he is the president of the prestigious "Conseil des Écrivains francophones d'Amérique". Klang's work is very rich. It includes novels, poetry, short stories and essays. On July 14, 2000, "l'Union Française à Montréal" chose Gary as the promoter of the French national holiday marking the storming of the Bastille. The same day, the same French Union participated in the launch of his collection of verses "La terre est vide comme une étoile". Gary Klang is also a member of the "Association des Ecrivains Québécois (UNEQ)", a member of the "Association des Ecrivains de langue française" and of the PEN Club of Montreal. He was nominated for the Haitian grand Literary Prize of 2004, together with Edwidge Danticat, René Depestre, Frankétienne, Dany Laferrière, Josaphat-Robert Large and Leslie Manigat.
Haitians in France consist of migrants from Haiti and their descendants living in France.
The Anti-Duvalier protest movement was a series of demonstrations in Haiti from 23 May 1984 to 7 February 1986 that led to the overthrow of President Jean-Claude Duvalier and the Duvalier dynasty regime and the readoption of the original flag and coat of arms of the country.
The Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde is an annual award given to the best literary work in French or French Creole from the Caribbean and the Americas.
Lyonel Trouillot is a novelist and poet in French and Haitian Creole, a journalist and a professor of French and Creole literature in Port-au-Prince.
Évelyne Trouillot is a Haitian author, writing in French and Creole.
Dézafi by Frankétienne is the first novel to be written and published in Haitian Creole. Released in 1975, it has since been translated into both English and French and received a number of awards including the Best Translated Book Award of 2019.
Hadriana in All My Dreams is a 1988 novel by Haitian author René Depestre. Set in Jacmel, Haiti, and spanning a period of 40 years, the plot follows a young French woman, Hadriana Siloé, who is turned into a zombie on her wedding day. The novel explores themes of colonialism, exile, and sexuality.
