[Paul, Franck Laraque], Franck's brother and co-author, was not present in Boston for the event, but his spirit was represented by Lesly René, Laforèt Petit-Frère and [Jacques Antoine Jean] who read his poems from the bilingual, English-Creole anthology Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry (Curbstone Press, 2002) which Paul Laraque edited and other volumes (see Boston Haitian Reporter of May 2002). A revolutionary poet, he once corresponded with the celebrated French Surrealist guru André Breton, and was among the entourage of poets and intellectuals (René Depestre, Jacques Stephen Alexis, Théodore Baker, Gérald Bloncourt, Gérard Chenet, Pierre Mabile, etc.) who welcomed Breton in Port-au-Prince during the latter's famous visit to Haiti in December 1945.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
231 p, Contents: Postcolonial modernism/modernist postcolonialism --; "Not borrowers, but bearers of a tradition" --; Listening to Eliot : poetic revolution and common speech --; Public poets
Simpson discusses the rise in West Indian literature, especially addressing the increase in critical interest from the rest of the world for the abundance of West Indian short story collections that have appeared within the last two decades. The decades of the 1940s and 1950s are examined as the Golden Age of West Indian short stories, and compared to the single author collections that are now supported through popular sales.;
"[Thomas] Sutpen launches his design with that obliviousness that is American innocence. Once on Haiti, Sutpen disregards the manifest evidence of impending 'slave' revolt and hybrid racial ancestries. Sutpen's famously preserved innocence amounts to the habit of looking without seeing." (author)
