My Soul Is In Haiti

Offers a greater understanding of the spread of Protestant Christianity, both regionally and globally, by studying local transformations in the Haitian diaspora of the Bahamas. In the Haitian diaspora, as in Haiti itself, the majority of Haitians have long practiced Catholicism or Vodou. However, Protestant forms of Christianity now flourish both in Haiti and beyond. In the Bahamas, where approximately one in five people are now Haitian-born or Haitian-descended, Protestantism has become the majority religion for immigrant Haitians. In My Soul Is in Haiti, Bertin M. Louis, Jr. has combined multi-sited ethnographic research in the United States, Haiti, and the Bahamas with a transnational framework to analyze why Protestantism has appealed to the Haitian diaspora community in the Bahamas. The volume illustrates how devout Haitian Protestant migrants use their religious identities to ground themselves in a place that is hostile to them as migrants, and it also uncovers how their religious faith ties in to their belief in the need to “save” their homeland, as they re-imagine Haiti politically and morally as a Protestant Christian nation. This important look at transnational migration between second and third world countries shows how notions of nationalism among Haitian migrants in the Bahamas are filtered through their religious beliefs. By studying local transformations in the Haitian diaspora of the Bahamas, Louis offers a greater understanding of the spread of Protestant Christianity, both regionally and globally.

"A serious historical novel that reads like a dream." --The Washington Post Book World "One of the most spohisticated fictional treatments of the enduring themes of class, color, and freedom." --San Francisco Chronicle NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST This first installment of the epic Haitian trilogy brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world’s first Black republic. From the center of this horrific maelstrom, the heroic figure of Toussaint Louverture–a loyal, literate slave and both a devout Catholic and Vodouisant–emerges as the man who will take the merciless fires of violence and vengeance and forge a revolutionary war fueled by liberty and equality. Bell assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait of this seminal movement through a tableau of characters that encompass black, white, male, female, rich, poor, free and enslaved. Pulsing with brilliant detail, All Soul’s Rising provides a visceral sense of the pain, terror, confusion, and triumph of revolution.

Exploring the subject through many different theoretical frameworks and epistemological traditions, this book confronts the history of Haiti's three major practicing religious faiths: Vodou, Roman Catholicism, and Protestant Evangelicalism. Scholars, researchers, and faith practitioners have often depicted relations between these traditions as antagonistic, conflicting, unproductive, and lacking in mutual understanding. With the aim of exploring the possibility of nation building in Haiti and the benefits of interreligious collaboration, contributors to this book consider topics such as the obstacles to interfaith dialogue, religious conflict, interreligious dialogue in schools, race and identity, and religious pluralism. This book will be beneficial to scholars, practitioners, historians, and sociologists of religion, as well as the religious communities themselves in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora.

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth. The Haitians inherited the most beautiful earth. They are the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. And never will an American know their level of their poverty. Nor the amount of death that lives in their history. However they can be saved, and I dearly wish they will be. No person should suffer as they suffer because of histories past. This is where this dream takes you. Surpass the pain and look for the hope, without hope there is nothing but nothing, nothing but the truth. Amonnons Dream: A warning to world leaders. This is a book intended to change the world. Read it as such. If one poem moves your heart Then I have done my part To move your soul As mine was moved

Winner of the 2021 Haitian Studies Association Book Prize​ Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte is the first US scholarly examination of the politician and caco leader (guerrilla fighter) who fought against the US military occupation of Haiti. The occupation lasted close to two decades, from 1915-1934. Alexis argues for the importance of documenting resistance while exploring the occupation’s mechanics and its imperialism. She takes us to Haiti, exploring the sites of what she labels as resistance zones, including Péralte’s hometown of Hinche and the nation’s large port areas--Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien. Alexis offers a new reading of U.S. military archival sources that record Haitian protests as banditry. Haiti Fights Back illuminates how Péralte launched a political movement, and meticulously captures how Haitian women and men resisted occupation through silence, military battles, and writings. She locates and assembles rare, multilingual primary sources from traditional repositories, living archives (oral stories), and artistic representations in Haiti and the United States. The interdisciplinary work draws on legislation, cacos’ letters, newspapers, and murals, offering a unique examination of Péralte’s life (1885-1919) and the significance of his legacy through the twenty-first century. Haiti Fights Back offers a new approach to the study of the U.S. invasion of the Americas by chronicling how Caribbean people fought back.

During the past ten years, political debates, legal disputes, and rising violence associated with the presence of Haitian migrants have flared up throughout the Caribbean basin in such places as Guadeloupe, the Dominican Republic, French Guiana, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. The contributors to this volume explore the common thread of prejudice against the Haitian diaspora as well as its potential role in the construction of national narratives from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. These essays, written by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and Francophone studies scholars, examine how Haitians interact as an immigrant group with other parts of the Caribbean as well as how they are perceived and treated, particularly in terms of ethnicity and race, in their migration experience in the broader Caribbean. By discussing the prevalence of anti-Haitianism throughout the region alongside the challenges Haitians face as immigrants, this volume completes the global view of the Haitian diaspora saga.

Contributions by Simone A. James Alexander, José Felipe Alvergue, Valerie Babb, Pamela Bordelon, Taylor Hagood, Joyce Marie Jackson, Delia Malia Konzett, Jane Landers, John Wharton Lowe, Gary Monroe, Noelle Morrissette, Paul Ortiz, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Genevieve West, and Belinda Wheeler The state of Florida has a rich literary and cultural history, which has been greatly shaped by many different ethnicities, races, and cultures that call the Sunshine State home. Little attention has been paid, however, to the key role of African Americans in Floridian history and culture. The state’s early population boom came from immigrants from the US South, and many of them were African Americans. Interaction between the state’s ethnic communities has created a unique and vibrant culture, which has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on southern, national, and hemispheric life and history. Black Hibiscus: African Americans and the Florida Imaginary begins by exploring Florida’s colonial past, focusing particularly on interactions between maroons who escaped enslavement, and on Albery Whitman’s The Rape of Florida, which also links Black people and Native Americans. Contributors consider film, folklore, and music, as well as such key Black writers as Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Gwendolyn Bennett, Colson Whitehead, and Edwidge Danticat. The volume features Black Floridians’ role in the civil rights movement and Black contributions to the celebrated Florida Writers’ Project. Contributors include literary scholars, historians, film critics, art historians, anthropologists, musicologists, political scientists, artists, and poets.