Books By Haitian Authors

The Vodou Element by Alix Perrault

The Vodou Element by Alix Perrault

Scientists in the United States have discovered a new
material that, when combined with titanium, develops into a
malleable compound that can be 'painted' on any surface.
Once dry, the material cannot be penetrated by any projectile,
not even a tank shell fired point blank. It is the ultimate armor
for a soldier or any war machine on land, in the air or under the
sea. The product also provides a shield from radiation,
temperature and even shock waves. A spaceship or a shuttle
painted with the compound will not be affected in any way by
meteors, radiation or the extreme temperatures of space.

The nation or terrorist organization that controls the material
will rule the world. Using a new technology, the U.S. finds a
mother lode of the material next to a waterfall under a natural
pool that is sacred to Vodou worshippers of a Caribbean
island. The U.S. wants to extract the material before word gets
out.

The CIA is charged with devising of a way to extract and get
the material back to the States without anyone knowing. The
plan depends on the use of an agent native to the island, an
approach that goes against the most basic rule of the agency.
As the son of a rich local industrialist, the agent is used as a
pawn in this race for world power. One point not factored into
this high stakes scheme is the existence of powerful and
emotional Vodou spirits, the Loas, whose sexual interests are
being compromised.

The story is a classic struggle between the world's most
powerful nation and the world's oldest religion.

The history of Vodou and its transplantation in the New World
along with the brutal practices of slavery are starkly presented.

The action takes place on an island paradise with the
background of political intrigue within a Caribbean culture that
pits different social classes, all with vivid religious ceremonies.
Vodou spirits inhabit the earth and the unsuspecting visitor
becomes possessed.

ISBN: 0-9749-464-0-0

More info about the book go to thevodouelement.com

Permalink | Comments

Let Cotes de Fer - Entre Reves et Realites

Let Cotes de Fer - Entre Reves et Realites

Let Cotes de Fer - Entre Reves et Realites is a book about the town of Cotes de Fer, Haiti.

Written by Haitian Authors Urbain Joseph and Idonique Jean Louis

The books talk about the social economic life in Cotes de Fer.

If you want to know about Cotes de fer, grab this book. It is written in French

ISBN 99935-55-01-0

Permalink | Comments

Facing Our Skeletons by Carmel S. Victor

Facing Our Skeletons by Carmel S. Victor

Facing Our Skeletons is a tale of Stella, a modern woman seeking fulfillment through her relationships with men. Author Carmel S. Victor chronicles her dealings with three men - Kevin, Michael, and Dev - and the troubles and heartaches she finds with them as she seeks the perfect match. During these trials, Stella comes into contact with other women who have their own struggles to find a man who is faithful, respectful, and considerate of them as independent women. As time goes on, Stella discovers that the peace she seeks cannot be found in the arms of another, but through healthy relationships with God, her family, and those around her. This is a tale of one woman's disappointments and how she turned them into triumphs.

Permalink | Comments

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat

From the universally acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a "dew breaker"--a torturer--a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality.We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter; his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims.In the book's powerful denouement, we return to the Haiti of the dew breaker's past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption--albeit imperfect--that will change him forever.The Dew Breaker is a book of interconnected lives--a book of love, remorse, and hope; of rebellions both personal and political; of the compromises we often make in order to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. Unforgettable, deeply resonant, The Dew Breaker proves once more that in Edwidge Danticat we have a major American writer

Permalink | Comments

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

At an astonishingly young age, Edwidge Danticat has become one of our most celebrated new novelists, a writer who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti--and the enduring strength of Haiti's women--with a vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage.

At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

Permalink | Comments

The Farming of Bones: A Novel by Edwidge Danticat

The Farming of Bones: A Novel by Edwidge Danticat

From the bestselling author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, a passionate and profound novel of two lovers struggling against political violence

The Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian-born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season. However, hostilities toward Haitian laborers find a vitriolic spokesman in the ultra-nationalist Generalissimo Trujillo who calls for an ethnic cleansing of his Spanish-speaking country. As rumors of Haitian persecution become fact, as anxiety turns to terror, Amabelle and Sebastien's dreams are leveled to the most basic human desire: to endure. Based on a little-known historical event, this extraordinarily moving novel memorializes the forgotten victims of nationalist madness and the deeply felt passion and grief of its survivors.

* New York Times Notable Book
* Named one of the Best Books of the Year by People, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, and the American Library Association
* The author was nominated for a National Book Award and named one of the 20 Best Young Novelists by Granta

A remarkable new novel . . . Danticat writes in wonderful, evocative prose, and she is especially adept at treading the path between oppression and grace. At times, it's a particularly painful path, but, always, a compelling one. --The Boston Sunday Globe

[With] hallucinatory vigor and a sense of mission . . . Danticat capably evokes the shock with which a small personal world is disrupted by military mayhem . . . The Farming of Bones offers ample confirmation of Edwidge Danticat's considerable talents. --The New York Times Book Review

It's a testament to her talent that the novel, while almost unbearably sad, is still a joy to read. --Newsweek

Permalink | Comments

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

When Haitians tell a story, they say Krik? and the eager listeners answer Krak! In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.

Permalink | Comments

After the Dance : A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti

After the Dance : A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti

In After the Dance, one of Haiti's most renowned daughters returns to her homeland, taking readers on a stunning, exquisitely rendered journey beyond the hedonistic surface of Carnival and into its deep heart.

Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too much abandon, losing their voices from singing too loudly, going deaf from the clamor of immense speakers, and being punched, stabbed, pummeled, or fondled by other lustful revelers. Now an adult, she resolves to return and exorcise her Carnival demons. She spends the week before Carnival in the area around Jacmel, exploring the rolling hills and lush forests and meeting the people who live and die in them. During her journeys she traces the heroic and tragic history of the island, from French colonists and Haitian revolutionaries to American invaders and home-grown dictators. Danticat also introduces us to many of the performers, artists, and organizers who re-create the myths and legends that bring the Carnival festivities to life. When Carnival arrives, we watch as she goes from observer to participant and finally loses herself in the overwhelming embrace of the crowd.

Part travelogue, part memoir, this is a lyrical narrative of a writer rediscovering her country along with a part of herself. It's also a wonderful introduction to Haiti's southern coast and to the true beauty of Carnival.

Permalink | Comments

Behind the Mountains by Edwidge Danticat

Behind the Mountains by Edwidge Danticat

In award-winning author Edwidge Danticat's first novel for young readers, it is election time in Haiti. Bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, and Celiane Esperance and her mother are nearly killed, giving them a fresh resolve to join Celiane's father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents' struggle to earn a living, her brother's uneasy adjustment to America, and her own encounters with learning difficulties and school violence.

Permalink | Comments

The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States by Edwidge Danticat

 The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States by Edwidge Danticat

In four sections-Childhood, Migration, First Generation, and Return-the contributors to this anthology write powerfully, often hauntingly, of their lives in Haiti and the United States. Jean-Robert Cadet's description of his Haitian childhood as a restavec-a child slave-in Port-au-Prince contrasts with Dany Laferriere's account of a ten-year-old boy and his beloved grandmother in Petit-Gove. We read of Marie Helene Laforest's realization that while she was white in Haiti, in the United States she is black. Patricia Benoit tells us of a Haitian woman refugee in a detention center who has a simple need for a red dress-dignity. The reaction of a man who has married the woman he loves is the theme of Gary Pierre-Pierre's The White Wife; the feeling of alienation is explored in Made Outside by Francie Latour. The frustration of trying to help those who have remained in Haiti and of the do-gooders who do more for themselves than the Haitians is described in Babette Wainwright's Do Something for Your Soul, Go to Haiti. The variations and permutations of the divided self of the Haitian emigrant are poignantly conveyed in this unique anthology.

Permalink | Comments