Books about Toussaint and the
Haitian Revolution
Hubert Cole. Christophe: King of Haiti. New
York: The Viking Press, 1967. /
C.L.R. James.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
(1938)
Edourad Gissant.
Caribbean Doscourse (2004)
/ Barbara Harlow.
Resistance Literature (1987)
Josaphat B. Kubayanda.
The Poet's Africa: Africanness in the Poetry of Nicolas Guillen and Aime
Cesaire
(1990)
Paul Laraque and Jack Hirschman.
Open
Gate An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry
(2001)
David P. Geggus, ed.
The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.
University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
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To Toussaint
L'Ouverture
By
William Wordsworth
(1770–1850) * * *
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To Toussaint
L'Ouverture
By
William Wordsworth
(1770–1850) Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless
den;
O Miserable Chieftain! Where and when
Wilt thou find Patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left
behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common
wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind. * * * *
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Toussaint L'Ouverture (c.1744-1803),
Haitian patriot and martyr. A self-educated slave freed shortly
before the uprising in 1791, he joined the black rebellion to
liberate the slaves and became its organizational genius.
Rapidly rising in power, Toussaint joined forces for a brief
period in 1793 with the Spanish of Santo Domingo and in a series
of fast-moving campaigns became known as L'Ouverture [the
opening], a name he adopted. Although he professed allegiance to
France, first to the Republic and then to Napoleon, he was
singleheartedly devoted to the cause of his own people and
advocated it in his talks with French commissioners. Late in
1793 the British occupied all of Haiti's coastal cities and
allied themselves with the Spanish in the eastern part of the
island.
Toussaint was the acknowledged leader against
them and, with the generals Dessalines and Christophe , recaptured
(1798) several towns from the British and secured their complete
withdrawal. In 1799 the mulatto general André Rigaud enlisted the aid of
Alexandre Pétion and Jean Pierre
Boyer, asserted mulatto supremacy, and launched a revolt against
Toussaint; the uprising was quelled when Pétion lost the
southern port of Jacmel. |
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In 1801, Toussaint conquered Santo Domingo, which
had been ceded by Spain to France in 1795, and thus he governed
the whole island. By then professing only nominal allegiance to
France, he reorganized the government and instituted public
improvements. Napoleon sent (1802) a large force under General
Leclerc to subdue Toussaint,
who had become a major obstacle to French colonial ambitions in
the Western Hemisphere; the Haitians, however, offered stubborn
resistance, and a peace treaty was drawn.
Toussaint himself was treacherously seized and
sent to France, where he died in a dungeon at Fort-de-Joux, in
the French Jura. His valiant life and tragic death made him a
symbol of the fight for liberty, and he is celebrated in one of
Wordsworth's finest sonnets and in a dramatic poem by Lamartine.
Bibliography
C.L.R. James.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
(1938;
2d ed. 1963))
C.
Moran, Black Triumvirate: A Study of L'Ouverture, Dessalines,
Christophe (1957)
A. M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., Toussaint
L'Ouverture: Haitian Liberator (1989)* * *
* *
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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