Jean Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806) was a Haitian nationalist and the first ruler of a free Haiti. Although he was a courageous military leader during the war of independence, he failed as an administrator and statesman. There is little detailed...

During the first United States occupation of Haiti, from 1915 to 1934, Haitian band composer Occide Jeanty wrote compositions for the Haitian Presidential Band that contained culturally encoded critiques of U.S. occupation forces. In his compositions, Jeanty invoked the legend of Haitian general Jean-Jacques...

Choosing five recent (and excellent) books(*) from a vast secondary literature -- with an eye to their usefulness as structuring element rather than with the intent to render exact critical judgement -- I will argue in this essay that in the works of...