Recovering Haiti's lost literary legacy: newer books help readers understand a complex cultural and political heritage, and renew interest in the island nation's remarkable homegrown classics.

They appeared at nightfall. First there were hundreds; then thousands, then within days, hundreds of thousands. Masters, caught off guard, were unceremoniously killed, sugarcane fields set afire, and one plantation after another, destroyed. The slaves had risen, the revolution had begun. The year was 1791.

By 1804, the first free black nation in the Western Hemisphere stood tall, battle-tested but victorious. Two hundred years later, the story of Haiti's liberation from France, the first, largest and only successful slave revolt to take place in the Americas, continues to be an intriguing subject for writers. Haiti's unique place in history as the first black country to gain its independence from colonial rulers in Europe--and only the second country after the United States--has made it the subject of countless books attempting to explain how a colony of valiant slaves sent Napoleon's mighty army packing.

Indeed, the details of Haitian history seem made to order for imaginative storytellers: angry slaves start a bloody insurrection, destroy 184 plantations in eight days, kill off 50,000 French colonialists and leave other slaveholding countries throughout the Americas--including the United States--quaking with worry. Ironically, the island's role in laying the groundwork for democracy and antislavery movements throughout the Americas has been overlooked until recently.

Haiti, it seems, always had the uncanny ability to fascinate and repel simultaneously. The island's crippling poverty also made for good literary fodder, as did its larger-than-life dictatorial dynasty; its 32 mostly bloody military coups; and its revolving door engagement with the United States--two U.S. military interventions, not to mention an endless cycle of "Haitian boat people" seeking haven on U.S. shores. Little wonder then that it captured the imagination of numerous novelists, historians, journalists, anthropologists, academics and filmmakers, many of them well known.

In the past two decades, a spate of Haitian-themed, nonfiction books and novels have been published in the United States, several focusing on topics other than the revolution. Many of these books are insightful, well researched and balanced, and they lack the uninformed, patronizing tones that once passed for thoughtful analysis of a deeply complicated place with a long history of American and French involvement, some of it against Haiti's best interests.

Most notable, of course, is the fiction of the Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat. Danticat's Breath Eyes Memory (Soho Press, 1994) and her award-winning The Farming of Bones (Soho Press, 1998), among her other works, are firmly established in the literary canon and are taught extensively at American universities.

But white American authors who have no particular connection to Haiti have also crafted good work that has portrayed Haiti in a more accurate context. All Souls' Rising (Pantheon Books, 1995) and Master of the Crossroads (Pantheon Books, 2000), Madison Smart Bell's fictional accounts of the Haitian revolution, are critically acclaimed for their detailed attention to historical accuracy and for vividly bringing to life the revolution and its players--both real and imagined. Late last year, Bell's third volume, The Stone That the Builder Refused (Pantheon Books), completed the trilogy covering the entire revolution.

In nonfiction, Amy Wilentz's The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier (Simon & Schuster, 1989) is considered a must-read for foreign journalists planning to work in Haiti, as is Bernard Diedrich's Papa Doc: Haiti and Its Dictator (Penguin, 1972).

Setting a New Standard

Among the newest nonfiction works is Laurent Dubois's Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Belknap/Harvard University Press, March 2004). Madison Smartt Bell called it: "strikingly accessible and appealing ... likely to become the new standard work in English on one of the most underreported events in the Western Hemisphere," Dubois's book has also drawn comparisons to The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (Random House, Inc., 1963; reprint Vintage Books, 1989), a classic study of the Haitian slave revolt written by C.L.R. James some four decades ago. The Black Jacobins is considered a brilliant work and the definitive read about the Haitian revolution and the anticolonial movements of the 20th century.

Dubois, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University, said he wrote his book because he had long been interested in the revolution and was unsatisfied with its treatment in other works. "It has often been overlooked how important this event was and how central it was to the history of not just Haiti but all of the Americas and the modern world," he said. "You can't really understand the history of Democracy without understanding the Haitian revolution and how central it was to the idea of universal rights. The revolution was a victory of that ideal.

"The idea that all people had basic human rights was articulated in Europe and North America, but both intellectuals and political leaders generally found ways to exclude slaves nevertheless," he noted. "It was in the Caribbean that the idea of human rights became truly universal because the slaves demanded those rights and won them."

Haiti's Native Classics

Haitian scholars were writing about their country's revolutionary history when American and European scholars were purposely downplaying it. However, because the books by Haitian authors were mostly written in French and not translated into English for some time, they were not widely accessible to the outside world.

For example, Ainsi parla l'oncle (Thus Spoke the Uncle), a collection of essays by Jean Price-Mars (1876-1969), was published in French in 1928, but it wasn't translated into English until 1997. As an historian, Price-Mars chronicled Haiti's sociological and intellectual development and its contributions to the culture of the Americas. Unfortunately, the English edition is already out of print.

Gouverneurs de la rosee (Masters of the Dew) by Jacques Roumain (1907-1944), (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947) is one of Haiti's bestknown novels. The 1944 work is a political fable and was translated into English in 1978 by Mercer Cook and Langston Hughes, who befriended Roumain when he was living in exile in the U.S.

Marie Chauvet (1916-1975) was one of the few women writers to gain acclaim within Haiti's patriarchal society. Chauvet's 1953 novel, Fille d'Haiti (Woman of Haiti), tells the story about the biracial daughter of a Haitian prostitute who tries to flee herself from the hypocrisy of the Haitian elite. It was awarded the Prix de l'Alliance Francaise. Amour, colere, et folie (Love, Anger and Madness), Chauvefs most famous novel, was published in Paris in 1968 and earned her the wrath of Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier. The book was banned in Haiti, and Chauvet was forced into exile in the United States where she died in 1975. Amour, colere et folie received national honors in Haiti nearly two decades after its publication---once the Duvalier regime was no longer in power.

Other Noteworthy Titles of Haitian Literature

Compare General Soleil by Jacques Stephen Alexis (Gallimard, 1955); translated as General Sun, My Brother by Carrol F. Coates (University Press of Virginia, November 1999, ISBN 0-813-91890-1)

Hadriana dan tous mes reves, translated as Hadriana in All My Dreams (Schoenhof Foreign Books Inc., 1990), and The Festival of the Greasy Pole by Rene Depestre (University Press of Virginia, September 1990, ISBN 0-813-91281-4; English translation available; original French version out of print.)

Haiti: State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism by Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Monthly Review Press, April 1990, ISBN 0-853-45765-5)

Mere solitude by Emile Ollivier (Albin Michel, 1983); translated as Mother Solitude by David Lobdell (Oberon Press, April 1989, ISBN 0-887-50761-1)

Marjorie Valbrun is an editorial writer at The Baltimore Sun, where, among other issues, she writes about immigration, the Caribbean and Latin America.