Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature: Alexis, Depestre, Ollivier, Laferrière, Danticat (review)

Martin Munro's Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature presents a compelling vision of twentieth-century Haitian Literature under the rubric of exile. It offers a broadly synthetic survey of the field through insightful and original readings of the classic authors of Haitian Modernity: Jacques-Stephen Alexis, René Depestre, Emile Ollivier, Dany Laferrière and Edwidge Danticat. Combining an eye for textual detail with an expansive theoretical foundation, Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature challenges readers to rethink the entirety of Haitian Modernity in light of the ongoing struggle to construct and inhabit a politically and economically autonomous Haitian space. Munro's grasp of the field is masterful, his skilful analyses penetrating. Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature builds upon the work of critics such as Michael Dash and Yanick Lahens, who have underscored the essentiality of the theme of exile to Haitian Literature. The author's contribution is to extend their insights into a theorization of modern Haitian Literature in its entirety, offering both a general interpretive framework as well as extensive textual analysis. The cumulative effect of Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature is to reorient our understanding of this field as a whole, convincingly arguing for exile as the master-trope of Haitian Literature. Munro investigates the ongoing Haitian desire to inhabit a decolonized space, at once territorial, cultural, and linguistic, and the impulse arising from this absent presence that he explores via the trope of dislocation. Following Lukács, Munro demonstrates the multiple levels at which the novel in Haiti has become in the post-war period the 'transcendental home' of its nomadic authors (p. 29). In addition to the writers that are his main focus, Munro touches upon virtually every important writer of Haitian modernity and pre-modernity in his discussion of place and displacement. In addition, the introductory analysis of the development of Haitian modernity lucidly synthesizes a highly readable account of Haitian literature in the years leading up to 1946. One only wishes that Munro had included a more extensive analysis of the work of Marie Chauvet and Frankétienne, who surely deserve to be included within this Pantheon of Haitian literary modernity. The book will be of interest for both specialists of Haiti and Franco-phone literature, as well as anyone wishing a general introduction to postwar Haitian Literature. Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature is perhaps the most original and convincing overview of the major Haitian writers available to date.