At the turn of the nineteenth century, Haiti became the first and
only modern country born from a slave revolt. During the first
decades of Haitian independence, a wealth of original poetry was
created by the inhabitants of the former French Caribbean island
colony and published in Haitian newspapers. These deeply felt poems
celebrated the legitimacy of the new nation and the value of the
authors' African origins while revealing a common mission shared by
all Haitians in the young republic: freedom from oppressors and
equality for all.
This
powerfully moving collection of Haitian verse written between 1804
and the late 1840s sheds a much-needed light on an important and
often neglected period in Haiti's literary history. Editors Doris
Kadish and Deborah Jenson have gathered together poetry that has
remained largely unknown and difficult to access since its original
publication two centuries ago. Featuring superb translations from the
original French by Norman Shapiro and a foreword by the Haitian-born
novelist Edwidge Danticat, this essential volume stands as a monument
to a turning point in Haitian and world history and makes a
significant corpus of poetry accessible to a wide audience for the
first time.
