Attending to the Dead Haitian Literature and the Practice of Mourning

Attending to the Dead Haitian Literature and the Practice of Mourning

Attending to the Dead examines how Haitian writers memorialize loss, whether of a prominent historical figure, a compatriot, a literary forebear, or a dear loved one. The first full-length study of mourning in Haitian literature, the book offers close, contextually grounded readings of a vast body of work—from Alfred Nemours's Histoire de la captivité et de la mort de Toussaint Louverture to Massillon Coicou's poetry and Marie Chauvet's celebrated triptych Amour, colère et folie, to the many literary afterlives of novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis and Radio Haiti founder Jean Léopold Dominique. Building on methods in Haitian Studies to mobilize culturally rooted concepts and epistemologies, or konesans, Nathan H. Dize identifies and explores an array of literary practices of mourning. These include the strengthening of literary kinship through allusions and reading strategies, the reissuance of out-of-print editions, and the gathering of aesthetic references, memories, and sentiments of loss that link Haitian literary culture to broader African diasporic and Caribbean cultural, literary, and religious histories.