Abstract
“To speak of Haiti and its literature in a new light is to ask, through the words of its writers—both men and women—what insights the Haitian experience can offer today to the Francophone Worlds, if not to the world at large. How, starting from a historical event of the unimaginable—namely, a victorious revolution led as early as the late 18th century by men and women brought from Africa to the Americas and enslaved—did a civilization take shape, one in which literature would play a major role? “How, in the impasse that followed this revolution, did these dispossessed, displaced, and linguistically destabilized men and women never cease to speak or write of a dream of belonging, thereby demonstrating that literature often begins where speech becomes impossible.”
Yanick Lahens
