Chamoiseau normally writes about life in the slum (see Texaco, and about oral history, language and modern-day griots (see Solibo Magnificent in a stylized language that is neither french nor creole but it's own invention. This short book is a departure for him and allows him to focus on the essence of the caribbean experience of slavery. His Creole Folktales are more explicitly idealized.
Here both the language and the story is simple, drawn with broad strokes and the effect is dreamy with sometimes astonishing details catching your attention. The master's huge dog that had demoralized all other fugitives into submission. The old slave that no one ever thought would flee, has spent his life caring for the family and the plantation. The master's rigid discipline over his domain, a firm and sometimes cruel hand - but only when necessary. The chase drawing these three characters further and further into the the forest. It is a journey of 150 pages that leaves you wanting to discover all you can about this living history that is slavery in the Caribbean.
Voodoo
Voodoo too looms large in the popular imagination of Haiti. In music, we can look in recent years to D'Angelo's Voodoo album and it's photos of bare-chested dancers in circles and chicken feathers floating in the air presumably about to be sacrificed. The music too is slow and mysterious, tilted towards New Orleans and Haitian Vodun with occasional shrieks and sound effects providing ambiance. My favourite album of the past decade.
As I've mentioned before, my neighbourhood's Haitian grocery is regarded with suspicion as a sort of Voodoo emporium. You wouldn't expect this given the large population of Haitians in metropolitan Boston and the large number of christian churches that they dominate still the perception of a primitive and nativist voodoo culture informs the haitian landscape.
In movies too, Haitian voodoo is an ongoing motif. Take the James Bond staple, Live and Let Die James Bond battling voodoo cultist and drug dealer, Yaphet Kotto, whose hold over the card reading Jane Seymour character, Solitaire, is organic and vaguely sinister - one of Ian Fleming's best novels if an ordinary Bond film.
Or that great B-movie, Angel Heart starring my first crush Lisa Bonet and Mikey Rourke with its dark sounds, dances and atmospheric pathos and sense of dread.
Toussaint L'Overture and the Slave Rebellion
Toussaint L'Overture is the most striking figure in Haiti's history - a former slave who practiced herbal and African healing, although he was not a Voodoo houngan. He was the most forceful, astute and successful of the generals who led the slave uprising that lead to the founding of Haiti's Republic challenging the French (even scaring Napoleon), the Spanish, and the mulattos. His story is tragic, abolishing slavery and founding the "First Black Republic (tm)" and dying in captivity in the Fort de Joux in Doubs, betrayed by everyone.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Damn, Koranteng, there's a lot going on here - the writing is excellent and the information fascinating. The realtionship between environmental degradation and political decline/collapse makes an awful lot of sense.
I also agree that our media tends toward solipsism, though not more than most and certainly less than some.
I fear "we" (the West) sees parts of the world as beyond hope, as sinkholes beyond redemption - it is perhaps related to a "help those who can help themselves" mentality.
Thanks!
2 - Mac Diva
There are two solutions to Haiti's debacle. The first is immigration. That is what really frightens Americans, Koranteng. Though the country has absorbed millions of immigrants from Europe, an increasing number of Americans want to end immigration now that the color of most immigrants skin is darker than olive. The second solution is, of course, for France to pay Haitians the millions in reparations it owes them. That is what really frightens the French. I wish I could say I believe either solution will occur in my life time, but I don't.