Haitian literature

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.

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.

At the same time, social realism in literature was advanced by Jacques Roumain (Gouverneurs de la rosée, 1944) and René Depestre.

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.

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.

Linguist John Singler suggests that it most likely emerged under French control in colonial years when shifted its economy focused heavily on sugar production.

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).

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.

[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.