Racialized Visions

Description

As a Francophone nation, Haiti is seldom studied in conjunction with its Spanish-speaking Caribbean neighbors. Racialized Visions challenges the notion that linguistic difference has kept the populations of these countries apart, instead highlighting ongoing exchanges between their writers, artists, and thinkers. Centering Haiti in this conversation also makes explicit the role that race—and, more specifically, anti-blackness—has played both in the region and in academic studies of it. Following the Revolution and Independence in 1804, Haiti was conflated with blackness. Spanish colonial powers used racist representations of Haiti to threaten their holdings in the Atlantic Ocean. In the years since, white elites in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico upheld Haiti as a symbol of barbarism and savagery. Racialized Visions powerfully refutes this symbolism. Across twelve essays, contributors demonstrate how cultural producers in these countries have resignified Haiti to mean liberation. An introduction and conclusion by the editor, Vanessa K. Valdés, as well as foreword by Myriam J. A. Chancy, provide valuable historical context and an overview of Afro-Latinx studies and its futures.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Foreword
Myriam J. A. Chancy

Introduction: Centering Haiti in Hispanic Caribbean Studies
Vanessa K. Valdés

1. The Border of Hispaniola in Historical and Fictional Imaginations since 1791: Redemption and Betrayals
Claudy Delné

2. "The Road of Social Progress": Revolutions and Resistance in the 1936 Lectures of Dantès Bellegarde
Vanessa K. Valdés

3. The Dictator's Scapegoat: Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi's Invasiones haitianas de 1801, 1805 y 1822
Carrie Gibson

4. Mucho Woulo: Black Freedom and The Kingdom of This World
Natalie Marie Léger

5. The Haitian Revolution and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's La última cena (The Last Supper, 1976)
Philip Kaisary

6. Haiti: Jesús Cos Causse's Prelude to the Caribbean
Erika V. Serrato

7. "But the Captain Is Haitian": Issues of Recognition within Ana Lydia Vega's "Encancaranublado"
Mariana Past

8. Haitian and Dominican Resistance: A Study of the Symptom in Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones
Ángela Castro

9. "The Black Plague from the West": Haiti in Roberto Marcallé Abreu's Dystopia
Ramón Antonio Victoriano-Martínez

10. "And Then the Canes Shrieked": Haitianism and Memory in Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Mohwanah Fetus

11. Haiti and the Dominican Republic: Teaching about the Un/Friendly Neighbors of Hispaniola
Cécile Accilien

Concluding Thoughts: Afro-Latinx Futures
Vanessa K. Valdés

Timeline: Pertinent Events in the Greater Antilles Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Cultures
• Caribbean
• History of the Americas
• Latin America
• Indigenous peoples
• Ethnic studies
• Latin American

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438481050
• Langue: English

Extrait

Racialized Visions
SUNY series, Afro-Latinx Futures

Vanessa K. Valdés, editor
Racialized Visions
HAITI AND THE HISPANIC CARIBBEAN
EDITED BY
VANESSA K. VALDÉS
Cover art: “Liberation Will Not Come Through Compromise Fear” (2018–2019) by Rivka Louissaint. Photo transfer, oil, gold leaf on a 3′ × 4′ wood panel. Used with permission from the artist.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Valdés, Vanessa Kimberly, editor.
Title: Racialized visions : Haiti and the Hispanic Caribbean / Vanessa K. Valdés.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2020] | Series: SUNY series, Afro-Latinx futures | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020023212 (print) | LCCN 2020023213 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438481036 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438481050 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Caribbean literature (Spanish)—History and criticism. | Caribbean literature (Spanish)—Haitian influences. | Race in literature. | Blacks in literature. | Blacks—West Indies—Social conditions. | Racism—West Indies—History. | Haiti—Relations—West Indies. | West Indies—Relations—Haiti.
Classification: LCC PQ7361 .R33 2020 (print) | LCC PQ7361 (ebook) | DDC 860.9/9729—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023212
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023213
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the peoples of the Caribbean and her children
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Myriam J. A. Chancy
Introduction: Centering Haiti in Hispanic Caribbean Studies
Vanessa K. Valdés
1 The Border of Hispaniola in Historical and Fictional Imaginations since 1791: Redemption and Betrayals
Claudy Delné
2 “The Road of Social Progress”: Revolutions and Resistance in the 1936 Lectures of Dantès Bellegarde
Vanessa K. Valdés
3 The Dictator’s Scapegoat: Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi’s Invasiones haitianas de 1801, 1805 y 1822
Carrie Gibson
4 Mucho Woulo: Black Freedom and The Kingdom of This World
Natalie Marie Léger
5 The Haitian Revolution and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s La última cena ( The Last Supper , 1976)
Philip Kaisary
6 Haiti: Jesús Cos Causse’s Prelude to the Caribbean
Erika V. Serrato
7 “But the Captain Is Haitian”: Issues of Recognition within Ana Lydia Vega’s “Encancaranublado”
Mariana Past
8 Haitian and Dominican Resistance: A Study of the Symptom in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones
Ángela Castro
9 “The Black Plague from the West”: Haiti in Roberto Marcallé Abreu’s Dystopia
Ramón Antonio Victoriano-Martínez
10 “And Then the Canes Shrieked”: Haitianism and Memory in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Mohwanah Fetus
11 Haiti and the Dominican Republic: Teaching about the Un/Friendly Neighbors of Hispaniola
Cécile Accilien
Concluding Thoughts: Afro-Latinx Futures
Vanessa K. Valdés
Timeline: Pertinent Events in the Greater Antilles Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico
Contributors
Index
Illustrations 5.1 “Don Manuel in the slave hut,” still from La última cena 5.2 “Portrait of Sebastián,” still from La última cena 5.3 “The Count kisses his slaves’ feet,” still from La última cena 5.4 “The Count’s Last Supper,” still from La última cena 5.5 “The Count and Sebastián at the supper table,” still from La última cena
Acknowledgments
I thank God, my ancestors and guiding spirits, and my orishas for this, my fifth book. Thank you, Iris Delia Valdés, Robert Valdés Jr., Gina Bonilla, Iya Dawn Amma McKen, Leroy Martin Bess, Mercedes Robles, and Vicky Martinez, for your love, guidance, and support. My students at the City College of New York continue to provide immeasurable inspiration to me: each semester, I get to meet human beings of all ages and races and ethnicities who come to that school to better their lives, and without knowing it they guide me and my scholarship. I thank President Vincent Boudreau; Dee Dee Mozeleski, Senior Advisor to the President and Executive Director of Combined Foundations at City College; and Erec Koch, Dean of the Division of the Humanities and the Arts, for your support and mentorship over the years.
The compilation of this book has required that I study even further the cultural and intellectual production of the Dominican Republic in particular, a nation that itself continues to inspire more and more students every day. I teach at the university that houses the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, the only academic center outside of the nation that focuses on Dominican studies, and this has been a blessing for me, both personally and professionally: I thank Sarah Aponte, Anthony Acevedo-Stephens, Jessy Pérez, Jhensen Ortiz, and Ramona Hernández for their love and support over the years.
I thank Edwidge Danticat, who was an inspiration for this study; for many here in the United States, Ms. Danticat has singlehandedly represented her country in the public sphere for more than two decades now. For me personally, her anthology The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (2001), and her book of essays, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010), remain touchstones to reflect on the necessity of breathing life into our experiences and putting words on the page.
In the last several years, in my capacities as scholar and educator, as writer of the most recent biography on Mr. Schomburg, and as book review editor of sx salon , the publication that saw the first renderings of this project, I have met and become friends with Caribbeanists who continue to push the field forward: my thanks to Myriam J. A. Chancy, without whom this book would not be in existence, and to Kelly Baker Josephs and the larger Small Axe Project collective, chief among them David Scott, Kaiama Glover, and Alex Gil. Thank you to Anne Eller, April Mayes, Dixa Ramírez, Raj Chetty, Nathan Dize, and Philip Kaisary for your friendship over the years. Thank you, Philip, Natalie Marie Léger, Mariana Past, Ramón Antonio Victoriano-Martínez, Carrie Gibson, Erika Serrato, Cécile Accilien, Mohwanah Fetus, Ángela Castro, and Claudy Delné for your contributions to this project, and thank you for your patience with me as the editor. Thank you for trusting me with your work.
At State University of New York Press, I thank Rebecca Colesworthy, acquisitions editor extraordinaire, who traveled from Albany to Harlem one cold winter’s night in January of 2018 to celebrate the paperback publication of Diasporic Blackness as part of the annual Schomburg celebration at the Schomburg Center, and whose tangible support from that moment on has been unparalleled. Thank you for hearing me when I pitched the Afro-Latinx Futures series; thank you for your support and encouragement of writers and scholars. Thank you to the anonymous readers who offered substantial commentary and for whose effort I am ever grateful. Thank you to everyone at the press who was instrumental in the publication of this book: Dana Foote, who painstakingly copyedited this manuscript; Ryan Morris, who has overseen production of every one of my publications at the press; and Kate Seburyamo, who is overseeing the marketing. I thank Rivka Louissaint for granting permission to use her beautiful work, “Liberation,” as the cover image.
And finally, thank you, dear reader, for your time and your interest.

An earlier version of Erika Serrato’s essay was published as “Lamentos haitianos: Jacques Roumain, Haiti, and the Familiar in Jesús Cos Causse’s Poetry,” in sx salon 22 (June 2016), smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/lamentos-haitianos .
An earlier version of Mariana Past’s essay, originally entitled “Missing the Boat? Signaling Haiti’s Role in Vega’s ‘Encancaranublado,’ ” was published in sx salon 22 (June 2016), smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/missing-boat .
Foreword
MYRIAM J. A. CHANCY
I first became aware that my work, From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic (2012), was making an impact in the field of Haitian and Latin American studies in three distinct moments. The first was when I attended a Haitian Studies Association meeting in Port-au-Prince a year or two after the publication of the book. Most of the scholars who approached me about the book were based in Canada, where it had been published. The fact that the text was supported by a Canadian university press reveals something of the resistance to its themes, making Haiti central