Aunt Résia and the Spirits and Other Stories (CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French)

The Haiti of Yanick Lahens's path-breaking short fiction is a country demanding our compassion as it reveals to us its horrors. For decades among the forefront of Haitian writers, Lahens has embarked on a renewal of the genre of short stories that she inherited from Caribbean―and especially Haitian―traditions. Through her elliptical and sharp style she succeeds in conveying the authenticity of her people's tragic fight for survival within the scope of our shared human experience. Here is day-to-day life, packed with its myriad emotions, desires, and contradictions, against a backdrop of extraordinary circumstances.The men and women glimpsed in Lahens's stories are confronted with the overwhelming task of simply staying alive. "The Survivors" unfolds under the Duvalier dictatorship. The story, centered on a group of men who dream of somehow striking out against the regime, shows how fear is passed down from generation to generation. Life is no simpler in the post-Duvalier world of the title story, in which a young man is caught between a mother who lives a devout life filled with self-imposed restrictions and an aunt who religiously serves the spirits of Vodou but makes no apologies for working in the black market. The twelve-year-old girl who narrates "Madness Had Come with the Rain" finds herself swept up in a violent riot following the death of a modern Robin Hood. Lahens’s women, although they may act as the poto mitan (or "central pole") in family life and society, experience a particularly grim fate. In the eviction tale "And All This Unease" a beautiful girl reminisces about her happy childhood in the country in order to forget her current life as a prostitute.Yanick Lahens presents testimonies, opens intimacies, sometimes offers hope, but always returns to the despair afflicting Haiti, because lying within it is the key to her country. The first collection of Lahens's unforgettable short stories available in English, this volume will bring one of the most important voices in contemporary literature to the wider audience it deserves.

Literature & Fiction

Lahens, Yanick

United States

University of Virginia Press

The Haiti of Yanick Lahens's path-breaking short fiction is a country demanding our compassion as it reveals to us its horrors. For decades among the forefront of Haitian writers, Lahens has embarked on a renewal of the genre of short stories that she inherited from Caribbean―and especially Haitian―traditions. Through her elliptical and sharp style she succeeds in conveying the authenticity of her people's tragic fight for survival within the scope of our shared human experience. Here is day-to-day life, packed with its myriad emotions, desires, and contradictions, against a backdrop of extraordinary circumstances.
The men and women glimpsed in Lahens's stories are confronted with the overwhelming task of simply staying alive. "The Survivors" unfolds under the Duvalier dictatorship. The story, centered on a group of men who dream of somehow striking out against the regime, shows how fear is passed down from generation to generation. Life is no simpler in the post-Duvalier world of the title story, in which a young man is caught between a mother who lives a devout life filled with self-imposed restrictions and an aunt who religiously serves the spirits of Vodou but makes no apologies for working in the black market. The twelve-year-old girl who narrates "Madness Had Come with the Rain" finds herself swept up in a violent riot following the death of a modern Robin Hood. Lahens’s women, although they may act as the poto mitan (or "central pole") in family life and society, experience a particularly grim fate. In the eviction tale "And All This Unease" a beautiful girl reminisces about her happy childhood in the country in order to forget her current life as a prostitute.
Yanick Lahens presents testimonies, opens intimacies, sometimes offers hope, but always returns to the despair afflicting Haiti, because lying within it is the key to her country. The first collection of Lahens's unforgettable short stories available in English, this volume will bring one of the most important voices in contemporary literature to the wider audience it deserves.

« Yanick Lahens est cette figure de l’écriture féminine qui a su donner une touche particulière à la littérature haïtienne en soulevant de nouvelles problématiques. Voix singulière et douée d’une spontanéité sans équivoque, elle a produit une œuvre d’une grande portée littéraire toute imprégnée de tendresse, d’amour et d’amitié. Une œuvre qui retranscrit la quotidienneté de Port-au-Prince et des campagnes haïtiennes en mille morceaux ». Dieulermesson Petit Frère

La petite corruption: Nouvelles (French Edition)

Literary

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Sweet Undoings

Genre Fiction

Deep Vellum Publishing

In Port au Prince, Haiti, the police roam the streets and no one is safe. Fignolé, a musician and political radical, is missing. His sisters Joyeuse and Angelique search for their young brother amid the colorful bustle, urban deprivation, and political tension of the city; when they eventually locate him, they will have found more about themselves than they wanted to know. This story explores one day and three lives in a city where love is hard to find, life is cheap, and death is all too familiar. It is the tense, passionate, and vividly told story of small victories of hope in the face of a seemingly impossible fight against a monolithic regime.

The Colour of Dawn

Layland, Alison

Seren

Winner of the 2014 Prix Fémina &amp; 2015 French Voices Award
After she is found washed up on shore, Cétoute Olmène Thérèse, bloody and bruised, recalls the circumstances that led her there. Her voice weaves hauntingly in and out of the narrative, as her story intertwines with those of three generations of women in her family, beginning with Olmène, her grandmother.
Olmène, barely sixteen, catches the eye of the cruel and powerful Tertulien Mésidor, despite the generations-long feud between their families which cast her ancestors into poverty. He promises her shoes, dresses, land, and children who will want for nothing…and five months after moving into her new home, she gives birth to a son. As the family struggles through political and economic turmoil, the narrative shifts between the voices of four women, their lives interwoven with magic and fraught equally with hope and despair, leading to Cétoute’s ultimate, tragic fate.
Yanick Lahens was born in Port-au-Prince in 1953 and is one of Haiti’s most prominent authors. She published her first novel in 2000, was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina in 2014 for Moonbath, and is the 2016 winner of a French Voices Award.

Moonbath

Une enfance haïtienne (French Edition)

Comics & Graphic Novels

COLLECTIFS

VICTOR, Gary

Prophète, Emmelie

Dalembert, Louis-Philippe

MARS, Kettly

TROUILLOT, Évelyne

Lovely Fifi, Kermonde

Auguste, Bonel

Cavé, Syto

Régis Jr, Guy

Graphic Novels

Gallimard]

Littérature haïtienne: Urgences d'écrire, rêves d'habiter

Essays & Correspondence

FAYARD

Tante Resia et les dieux: Nouvelles d'Haffl

L'Harmattan

Guillaume et Nathalie

Ils se rencontrent un mois avant le séisme qui a ravagé Haïti en janvier 2010. Guillaume est un sociologue de Port-au-Prince, Nathalie une architecte tout juste arrivée de France. Issus tous deux de la classe moyenne noire, ils tentent d'endiguer la misère qui les encercle. Entre le cinquantenaire revenu de ses utopies et la jeune femme au sombre passé, l'attirance est immédiate. C’est le début d’une relation passionnée…

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