Clerise of Haiti
Clerise of Haiti

Author: Marie-Therese Labossiere Thomas

Publisher:

Published: 2010-10

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780974582184

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A young domestic worker devoted to her prominent urban employers in Les Cayes, Haiti, Clerise progressively renounces the traditional values of her rural background. When she later marries and opens a small business, class conflicts and divided loyalties develop amid the terror of the Duvalier regime, and she is ultimately caught in the escalation of violence. Clerise of Haiti is a story of three generations of Haitian women, and covers a thirty year span ending in the late 1970s. Full of humor and resilience, Clerise's unique perspective into the upper classes and the world of the poor explores the complexities of life in a provincial town and highlights the socioeconomic and political forces at play in Haiti.

Les Cayes, Haiti
Les Cayes, Haiti

Author: Lyonel Gerdes

Publisher: Oxford Book Writer

Published:

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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In this touching memoir of a tumultuous childhood, author Lyonel Gerdes shares his experience of overcoming a rough family life. Lyonel Gerdes was born in Haiti, where he lived with his family in the titular town of Les Cayes. Over the years, the family moved from house to house, leaving Gerdes with a mixed bag of good and bad memories. Growing up in unstable homes, Gerdes soon developed multiple insecurities and feelings of unworthiness. But when the country descended into social, political, and economic chaos under the dictatorship of Duvalier, the family’s internal drama intensified. Les Cayes, Haiti offers an intimate and unflinching look at one survivor’s journey in this true story of overcoming childhood trauma.

Miss New York Has Everything
Miss New York Has Everything

Author: Lori Jakiela

Publisher: 5 Spot

Published: 2009-05-30

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0446560227

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Her aunt was a nun who popped pills and did time in Narcotics Anonymous. Her father grew up during the Depression, believed he'd be the next Frank Sinatra, and ended up working in the mills. His daughter, Lori Jakiela, spent her suburban Pittsburgh childhood watching Marlo Thomas in That Girl and dreaming of New York City.Instead, she got bad talent shows, a Junior Miss contest, and college in Erie, PA, where the big attraction was chicken wings. But years later, her Big Apple dreams were still going strong. With her twenties becoming a distant memory, Jakiela answered an airline ad promising a NYC home base, high-flying glamour, and three-day layovers in Paris. The reality was a roach-filled apartment in Queens, a polyester uniform cut like a sack, and a life that wasn't quite what she imagined.

The Book of Emma
The Book of Emma

Author: Marie-Celie Agnant

Publisher: Insomniac Press

Published: 2009-11-08

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1897414064

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One of the biggest stumbling blocks we hit when setting out to make our dreams come true is appreciating what is going well. Most of us have an unfortunate tendency to dwell on the problems rather than on the good things in our lives ... and then we wonder why things just seem to keep getting worse instead of better. In The Power of Appreciation in Everyday Life, psychologist Noelle Nelson explains how you can achieve success in every area of your life through transforming your beliefs with appreciation.

The Infamous Rosalie
The Infamous Rosalie

Author: Évelyne Trouillot

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-03-09

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 1496209346

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Lisette, a Saint-Domingue-born Creole slave and daughter of an African-born bossale, has inherited not only the condition of slavery but the traumatic memory of the Middle Passage as well. The stories told to her by her grandmother and godmother, including the horrific voyage aboard the infamous slave ship Rosalie, have become part of her own story, the one she tells in this haunting novel by the acclaimed Haitian writer Évelyne Trouillot. Inspired by the colonial tale of an African midwife who kept a cord of some seventy knots, each one marking a child she had killed at birth, the novel transports us back to Saint-Domingue, before it became Haiti. The year is 1750, and a rash of poisonings is sowing fear among the plantation masters, already unsettled by the unrest caused by Makandal, the legendary Maroon leader. Through this tumultuous time, Lisette struggles to maintain her dignity and to imagine a future for her unborn child. In telling Lisette's story, Trouillot gives the revolution that will soon rock the island a human face and at long last sheds light on the invisible women and men of Haitian history. The original French edition of Rosalie l'infâme received the Prix Soroptimist de la romancière francophone, honoring a novel written by a woman from a French-speaking country which showcases the cultural and literary diversity of the French-speaking world.

My Mother's House
My Mother's House

Author: Francesca Momplaisir

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-05-12

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0525657169

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One of the Best Books of the Year: Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vulture • This uncompromising look at the immigrant experience, and the depravity of one man, is an electrifying page-turner rooted in a magical reality • “Impossible to stop reading” —Vulture When Lucien flees Haiti with his wife, Marie-Ange, and their three children to New York City’s South Ozone Park, he does so hoping for reinvention, wealth, and comfort. He buys a run-down house in a quickly changing community, and begins life anew. Lucien and Marie-Ange call their home La Kay—“my mother’s house”—and it becomes a place where their fellow immigrants can find peace, a good meal, and necessary legal help. But as a severely emotionally damaged man emigrating from a country whose evils he knows to one whose evils he doesn’t, Lucien soon falls into his worst habits and impulses, with La Kay as the backdrop for his lasciviousness. What he can’t begin to fathom is that the house is watching, passing judgment, and deciding to put an end to all the sins it has been made to hold. But only after it has set itself aflame will frightened whispers reveal Lucien’s ultimate evil.

One of the Good Ones
One of the Good Ones

Author: Maika Moulite

Publisher: Harlequin

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1488076227

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"One of the Good Ones is magic.” —Damon Young, author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker A shockingly powerful exploration of the lasting impact of prejudice and the indomitable spirit of sisterhood that will have readers questioning what it truly means to be an ally, from sister-writer duo Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, authors of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine. ISN’T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH? When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic. One of the good ones. Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected—one that will change everything all over again. "Astonishing!" —Laura Ruby, two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Bone Gap "Brilliant" —Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Thrilling" —SLJ, starred review

Vale of Tears
Vale of Tears

Author: Paulette Poujol Oriol

Publisher: Ibex Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2005-12-01

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1588140202

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Fiction. Caribbean Studies. Translated from the French by Dolores A. Schaefer. VALE OF TEARS is a stark, meditative, and vivid exploration of Coralie Santeuil's life through a series of flashbacks she has on New Year's eve as she makes fourteen stops while walking from one end of the busy city of Port-au-Prince to the other in a last quest to save her life and retain her dignity. Although the novel is set in the period around the Second World War, it is in many ways a book about contemporary Haiti. We pause to wonder what happens to the privileged when their world disintegrates. We contemplate thesurvival skills of the poor. Vale of Tears offers a critical reading of the class system and corruption which plague the country. Paulette Poujol-Oriol is one of Haiti's most celebrated novelists.

Moving Forward
Moving Forward

Author: Karine Jean-Pierre

Publisher: Harlequin

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 148805410X

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“Moving Forward arrives at a moment when inspiration, insight, and optimism are in short supply. Karine Jean-Pierre delivers all three in abundance.” —Stacey Abrams, author of Lead from the Outside “Karine Jean-Pierre illuminates her path to insider status so others can follow in her footsteps.”—Essence “Jean-Pierre inspires us to get involved in politics—every single one of us, no matter where we are from or who we are.”—The Atlantic Most political origin stories have the same backbone. A bright young person starts reading the Washington Post in elementary school. She skips school to see a presidential candidate. In middle school she canvasses door-to-door. The story can be intimidating. It reinforces the feeling that politics is a closed system: if you weren’t participating in debate club, the Young Democrats and Model UN you have no chance. Karine Jean-Pierre’s story breaks the mold. In Moving Forward, she tells how she got involved, showing how politics can be accessible to anyone, no matter their background. In today’s political climate, the need for all of us to participate has never been more crucial. This book is her call to arms for those who know that now is the time for us to act.

Anacaona, Golden Flower
Anacaona, Golden Flower

Author: Edwidge Danticat

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2015-04-28

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0545369886

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The New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist delivers a powerful Royal Diaries volume with the story of Haiti’s heroic queen. With her signature narrative grace, Edwidge Danticat brings Haiti’s beautiful queen Anacaona to life. Queen Anacaona was the wife of one of her island’s rulers, and a composer of songs and poems, making her popular among her people. Haiti was relatively quiet until the Spanish conquistadors discovered the island and began to settle there in 1492.The Spaniards treated the natives very cruelly, and when the natives revolted, the Spanish governor of Haiti ordered the arrests of several native nobles, including Anacaona, who was eventually captured and executed, to the horror of her people. “A gripping story that shows European invasion from a native Caribbean viewpoint . . . readers will connect with Danticat’s immediate, poetic language, Anacaona’s finely drawn growing pains, and the powerful, graphic story that adds a vital perspective to the literature about Columbus and European expansion in the Americas.” —Booklist “Explores the life of a proud, young Taíno woman as she grows into rulership, love, and motherhood . . . The arrival of Columbus’s explorers marks a major turning point in the novel, and Danticat shifts from a languid, poetic style to a tense, high gear that makes it difficult to put the book down.” —Historical Novel Society