Island Heart

Poetry. Caribbean Studies. Ida Faubert (1882--1969) is a 20th-century Haitian-French poet considered a Caribbean--and especially Haitian--literary foremother. An English-language volume of Faubert's makes her work more widely accessible to students, scholars, and readers of Latin-American, African-diasporic, Caribbean and Haitian letters; and more generally available to readers of poetry and the poetry of women. Born in Port-au-Prince and reared in Paris, Faubert neither easily fit socially-prescribed categories for women of color in France or Haiti, nor conformed to them--living and burning through France's Belle Époque, world wars, and Haiti's Indigenist revolt in art. Bicultural, biracial, privileged, and complex, Faubert was a deft writer and socialite who promoted and participated in the movements of Haitian writers and literature in Haiti and France. While her work is garnering growing critical attention, she is seen as one of Haiti's great women poets.