Tag Archives: Haitian Creole
Haitian Sacred Arts as Public Education: Antoine Innocent’s “Mimola, or the Story of a Casket,” translated from French and Haitian Creole by Susan Kalter
By Nathan Dize Mimola, or the Story of a Casket begins with an obituary, an homage to the family matriarch who survived the Middle Passage and who built and sustained a family, now two generations in the making. Antoine Innocent’s novel blends the urbane journalistic qualities of Port-au-Prince with the rich folk tradition of the […]
The Art of “Tonbe-Leve”: Frankétienne’s “Dézafi,” Translated from Haitian Creole by Asselin Charles
By Nathan Dize In a 1975 interview, journalist Jean Léopold Dominique praised Frankétienne’s publication of Dézafi, meaning “cockfight,” because it provided a polysemic analogy for Haitian life, at once a metaphor as well as a depiction of reality. The cockfight in the novel takes place both in the actual cockfighting ring, but also in the […]