Migrant Revolutions: Haitian Literature, Globalization, and U.S. Imperialism

Inspired by the reevaluation of the Haitian Revolution as central to the project of modernity in the Americas, Migrant Revolutions treats writing after the U.S. intervention as a continuation of the revolutionary ideals of 1804. Kaussen perceptively constructs modern Haitian narratives as essentially urban ethnographies and fictions of displacement provoked by the disruptive effect of U.S. imperialism. Her rereading of Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet and Edwidge Danticat will certainly have a great impact on the field of Caribbean and francophone studies.

Professor Valerie Kaussen’s Migrant Revolutions represents thoroughly researched and well-written scholarship. This book breaks new ground in its analysis of the various and contending forces that have shaped and subtended the production of Haitian literature in the twentieth century. By analyzing a set of key themes, including Haitian revolutionary traditions, labor practices under U.S. occupation, and global migrations of people and capital, she successfully challenges prevailing attitudes of colonialism and slavery, through global ideologies of materialism and capitalist modernity to the role of social movements like noirisme and indigenisme. I am confident that this work will make an important contribution to the fields of Francophone cultural studies and Haitian studies.