Kannjawou par Lyonel Trouillot (review)

Reviews 233 discovery of love has somehow humanized him. Such things may happen in life, but not convincingly in this novel. Florida State University, emeritus William Cloonan Trouillot, Lyonel. Kannjawou. Arles: Actes Sud, 2016. ISBN 978-2-330-05875-3. Pp. 193. 18 a. An impoverished street serves as a microcosm of the whole in Trouillot’s new novel. Following a similar approach used by another Haitian author, Emmelie Prophète in Impasse Dignité (FR 86.6), Trouillot dissects the dynamics and dysfunction of his country via a focused study of a group of friends living in lack on the “rue de l’Enterrement.” Leading up to the local decaying cemetery, this street is not an altogether bad location to inhabit, we are told by Man Jeanne, the novel’s doyenne of sage advice and adages, since its presence and the tinkling sound of grave robbers toiling away in the night are helpful mortality reminders of just how soon all the street’s residents will join the ranks of the dead. The novel’s broader backdrop is a humanitarian occupation of Haiti by various international NGOs with numerous and equally damning references to the American Occupation of the country (1915–1934). Charlemagne Péralte’s contribution as a guerilla fighter during that period is lauded in the text and his photo prominently on display serves as inspiration for the more currently militant minded in the group. The band of five, as the clan is referred to, consists of the narrator, a self-described scribe whose penchant for studying life’s itineraries fuels the journal we are reading, his brother Popol, Wodné, and two sisters Sophonie and Joëlle. Following a brief sketch of the early years of the group’s friendship, the narrative quickly moves to the current status of young adulthood with its limited prospects for future success and overall sense of defeat: “Comment se révolter contre un ennemi qui change sans cesse de ton et de visage?” (21). To push back in some concrete way against the occupation, the friends form a cultural center in an alley, offering books, discussion, and wisdom as dispensed by the local, formally radical university professor, with whom the narrator has formed a bond via shared literature, despite their different class standings. Pivotal in the text is the neighborhood restaurant-bar, the Kannjawou, which serves as a dividing line between the rich NGO administrators who can afford to frequent it and the band of locals whose only member to enter does so through a wait staff door. A perfectly chosen metaphor of irony and class division, the term Kannjawou in creole connotes a vast celebration, a sharing, economically off limits to those of the rue de l’Enterrement in need of it most. The text’s chapters with their evocative style read easily and the panoply of characters and events that appear in its pages does not cease to intrigue: Halefort, the head grave robber arranges a mutually beneficial alliance with the local police while Julio, whose reluctant acceptance of his homosexuality deepens the narrative, walks fatalistically toward his encounters with paying army officers. As touched and concerned readers of this contemporary Haitian exposé, we are left in the end with the narrator’s own uncertainty regarding the future: “Quel soi-même on finit par être, au bout de quel parcours” (16)? University of Colorado Denver Linda Alcott Linguistics edited by Bryan Donaldson Anscombre, Jean-Claude, Évelyne Oppermann-Marsaux, et Amalia RodríguezSomolinos , éd.Médiativité, polyphonie et modalité en français: études synchroniques et diachroniques. Paris: PSN, 2014. ISBN 978-2-87854-609-5. Pp. 268. 17 a. Any utterance carries multiple levels of meaning beyond the core“message”itself, including a speaker’s attitude about the information conveyed, the reliability of the source of that information, and—in some cases—echoes of voices other than that of the speaker. These are the threads that unify the contributions to this volume, dedicated to intersections of three linguistic notions: médiativité, roughly a speaker’s indication of the source and reliability of information (“evidentiality” in the AngloSaxon literature); polyphonie, the presence in an utterance of voices or points of view other...