From Publisher
Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too much abandon, losing their voices from singing too loudly, going deaf from the clamor of immense speakers, and being punched, stabbed, pummeled, or fondled by other lustful revelers. Now an adult, she resolves to return and exorcise her Carnival demons. She spends a week before Carnival in the area around Jacmel, exploring the rolling hills and lush forests and meeting the people who live and die in them. During her journeys she traces the heroic and tragic history of the island, from French colonists and Haitian revolutionaries to American invaders and home-grown dictators. Danticat also introduces us to many of the performers, artists, and organizers who re-create the myths and legends that bring the Carnival festivities to life.

From The Haitian Institute
A beautiful hardcover book which keeps Haiti's rich cultural heritage alive, it contains over 260 pages of traditional and popular recipes.
The Art and Soul of Haitian Cooking is greatly enhanced by Creole proverbs and superb representations of paintings by some of Haiti's finest artists. The vivid color and culinary themes of the works of art will certainly appeal to the most avid collector of Haitian art.

From The Publisher
Presents some 1,200 essential words and phrases-in both English and Creole-illustrated in full-color and depicted real-life contexts. The vocabulary is organized into twelve distinct thematic areas.

From the Publisher
In award-winning author Edwidge Danticat's first novel for young readers, it is election time in Haiti. Bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, and Celiane Esperance and her mother are nearly killed, giving them a fresh resolve to join Celiane's father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents' struggle to earn a living, her brother's uneasy adjustment to America, and her own encounters with learning difficulties and school violence.

From the Publisher
At an astonishingly young age, Edwidge Danticat has become one of our most celebrated new novelists, a writer who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti

From Library Journal
Danticat, author of the award-winning Breath, Eyes, Memory, has brought together numerous poems, essays, stories, and letters by individuals whose Haitian experiences helped shape them. The definition of the "diaspora" given recently by the Haitian Embassy's Gerard Alphonse Ferere is "any dispersal of people to foreign soils." But in Danticat's introduction, we also learn that the "dyaspora" is the "floating homeland, the ideological one, join[ing] all Haitians living in the dyaspora." Poet Marc Christophe leads the selections with a poem on the sensory Haiti he remembers, "the heated voice of peasant men/ who caress the earth/ with their fertile hands/ the supple steps of peasant women/ on top of the dew." In the chapter on migration, we learn about Gary Pierre-Pierre's interracial marriage and the reactions to it. Martine Bury tells a similar story in her essay, "You and Me Against the World." The selections are varied, colorful, and interesting. Recommended for all libraries.
--Barbara O'Hara, Free Lib. of Philadelphia

From Publisher
L'histoire d'une jeune fille d'Haïti à travers quatre générations où persiste la tradition. Dur, cru et chaleureux, ce roman a été comparé à ceux d'Alice Walker et de Toni Morrison.

Marilene Phipps's poetry invites the reader to share sharp slices of Caribbean experience: Haiti is both stage and backdrop for people who move in various strata of the social scheme and through the three stages of life, in lieu of answers to the Sphinx's riddle. Through voices, nostalgic and tender, denouncing and shrill, we journey to a mythologizing Caribbean land populated with people whose dramatic intensity and fights for life are turned into sometimes funny, sometimes disquieting, and always richly evocative, palpable poetry.

From the Publisher
"From the universally acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak! a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a "dew breaker" - a torturer - a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality." "We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter; his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims." In the book's powerful denouement, we return to the Haiti of the dew breaker's past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption - albeit imperfect - that will change him forever.

From The Publisher
It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border. Amabelle, orphaned at the age of eight when her parents drowned, is a maid to the young wife of an army colonel. She has grown up in this household, a faithful servant. Sebastien is a field hand, an itinerant sugarcane cutter. They are Haitians, useful to the Dominicans but not really welcome. There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed. But there are always rumors. Amabelle loves Sebastien. He is handsome despite the sugarcane scars on his face, his calloused hands. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror enfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins. The Farming of Bones is about love, fragility, barbarity, dignity, remembrance, and the only triumph possible for the persecuted: to endure.

From the Publisher
Haiti in Focus is an authoritative and up-to-date guide to this fascinating country. It explores the land, history and politics, economy, society and people, culture and environment, and includes tips on where to go and what to see. Charles Arthur is the co-ordinator of the London-based Haiti Support Group and the co-editor of Libte: A Haiti Anthology.

TO ORDER: Marlenera23@aol.com 

Following Haiti Trivia (Educa Vision, 1998), Haitian Art Trivia is the second in a planned series of introductions to various aspects of Haiti, its culture and its people by author and poet Marlène Rigaud Apollon.

Written in English and Creole, it is divided into six sections, each with questions and answers: Brief History of Haitian Painting, Painting as Historical Record, Painting Everyday Life, Painting Children and Young People, Painting Religious Themes and Painting a World of Beauty and Fantasy. Apollon uses examples of paintings by various artists, known and unknown to illustrate each theme.

This is a book meant to teach and to entertain. Among the author’s main goals, as stated in her dedication, is to motivate young people to learn more about not only Haitian art but also about Haiti’s historical events and culture and to help them look at Haiti in a more positive way. Although written for young people, as with Haiti Trivia, Haitian Art Trivia is a book that people of all ages who have little exposure to Haiti can enjoy and learn from.

From the Publisher
Nine powerful stories about life under Haiti's dictatorships: the terrorism of the Tonton Macoutes; the slaughtering of hope and the resiliency of love; about those who fled to America to give their children a better life and those who stayed behind in the villages; about the linkages of generations of women through the magical tradition of storytelling.

This is a collection of short stories about life in contemporary Haiti and Haitian refugees in the United States by the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). "The collection's title comes from a Haitian storytelling tradition in which the 'young ones will know what came before them. They ask Krik? We say Krak! Our stories are kept in our hearts.'"

From the Publisher
When Diane Wolkstein, herself a well-known storyteller, traveled throughout the Haitian countryside in search of stories, she harvested a rich collection of twenty-seven tales, each of which is illuminated by fascinating introductory notes. From orange trees growing at the command of a child to talking fish, these stories present us with a world of wonder, delight, and mystery.

From The Publisher
The genre of the peasant novel in Haiti reaches back to the nineteenth century and this is one of the outstanding examples. Manuel returns to his native village after working on a sugar plantation in Cuba only to discover that it is stricken by a drought and divided by a family feud. He attacks the resignation endemic among his people by preaching the kind of political awareness and solidarity he has learned in Cuba. He goes on to illustrate his ideas in a tangible way by finding water and bringing it to the fields through the collective labor of the villagers. In this political fable, Roumain is careful to create an authentic environment and credible characters. Readers will be emotionally moved as well as ideologically persuaded.

Lyonel Desmarattes is a journalist, poet, actor, writer, editor and broadcaster with Voice Of America. Among his many well praised works, his book Mouche Defas is a wonderful adaptation of the famous work Tartuffe, by Moliere.
The book came out of his play adaptation, which was presented by Twoup Kreyolad at Rex Theatre, at the French Institute (L'Institut Francais d'Haiti) in the early eighties.
Mr. Desmarattes' book shows the great flexibility of the kreyol language as it gains acceptance in the world.

From the Publisher
"A startling, stunning, and fascinating book about the blend of music, religion, and politics in Haitian culture. McAlister's mastery of many different ways of knowing makes this study an endless source of insight, intrigue, and inspiration. The book succeeds magnificently as an exploration into Rara rituals and Haitian music, but it also presents original and generative insights into every aspect of Haiti's past, present, and future."-George Lipsitz, author of Dangerous Crossroads "This is a smart and thoughtful book by a very talented ethnographer. Anyone interested in Haiti will appreciate the work of Elizabeth McAlister."-Karen Brown, author of Mama Lola:A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn "A rare in-depth look at an extremely popular, yet often misunderstood phenomenon. With this book and CD, Elizabeth McAlister, an involved observer, makes an incalculable contribution to our musical and cultural literature."-Edwidge Danticat, author of The Farming of Bones:A Novel

From the Publisher
As a first-hand account of the weird mysteries and horrors of voodoo, Tell My Horse is an invaluable resource and fascinating guide. Based on Zora Neale Hurston's personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies and customs and superstitions of great cultural interest.