Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Perhaps no other revolution in modern times, whether American, French, Russian, or Algerian, has stirred such different emotions and raised so many theories of the act itself as the Haitian Revolution. This essay is framed around the given and received interpretations of Haiti’s long history in order to demonstrate that there is neither curse nor punishment in Haiti’s history; there is only intrigue, interest, and interference. The natural disasters whether earthquakes or hurricanes do not occur because of some rational targeting of the country but are the results of the arbitrariness of nature. Of course, how Haiti has dealt with these natural disasters can be interpreted from positions of class narrative, religious narrative, and cultural narrative.

Keywords

Haiti revolution narrative cultural religious class

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen, R.L. ( 1974). Politics of the attacks on Black studies. Black Scholar, 6(1), 2-7.

Asante, M.K. ( 2007). An Afrocentric manifesto. Cambridge , UK: Polity.

Bell, S. ( 2000). Master of the crossroads. New York, NY: Panther Books.

Bellegarde-Smith, P. ( 1990). Haiti: The breached citadel. Boulder , CC: Westview.

Carruthers, J.H. ( 1986). The irritated genie: Essays on the Haitian Revolution . Chicago, IL: Kemetic Institute .

Cruse, H. ( 1967). The crisis of the Negro intellectual. New York, NY: Morrow.

Danticat, E. ( 1998). The farming of bones: A novel. New York, NY: Soho Press.

Danticat, E. ( 2004). The dew breaker. New York, NY: Knopf.

Farmer, P. ( 1994). The uses of Haiti. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.

10.

Fanon, F. ( 1963). The Wretched of the Earth. New York, NY: Grove.

11.

Gilroy, P. ( 1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

12.

Hare, N. ( 1965). The Black Anglo-Saxons. New York, NY: Marzani & Munsell.

13.

James, C.L.R. ( 1989). The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Vintage.

14.

Lawless, R. ( 1992). Haiti’s bad press. New York, NY: Schenkman Books.

15.

Mazama, A. ( 2003). The Afrocentric paradigm. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

16.

Metraux, A. ( 1959). Voodoo in Haiti. New York, NY: Pantheon.

17.

Robinson, R. ( 2008). An unbroken agony: Haiti, from revolution to the kidnapping of a president. New York, NY: Basic Civitas.

18.

Roumain, J. ( 1947). Masters of the dew. London, UK: Heinemann.

19.

Shabaka, S. ( 2001). An Afrocentric analysis of the 19th century African-American migration to Haiti: A quest for the self-determining community (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.

20.

Shacochis, B. ( 1999). The immaculate invasion. New York, NY: Viking.

21.

Trouillot, M.-R. ( 1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history . New York, NY: Beacon.