Some themes seem to come back to me even when I don’t realize it at the beginning. Madness, motherhood and all the shapes it can take, unlikely encou… - Évelyne Trouillot

This is a year not just to celebrate the past; it is a year to build, to change, to question, to recover our history and demystify it.

Sadly, it’s easy for publishers to fall into the trap of publishing texts that spread hastily formed impressions of a country and its people and unquestioningly recirculate damaging stereotypes. In that regard, books that abound in superficial references to vodou and pile up images of violence and deprivation seem to attract some editors, conveniently reinforcing their narrow perception of the Haitian reality. It takes a conscious commitment to diversify the array of translated books and to include non-Anglophone Black authors without trying to confine them to pigeonholes.

The writer is also a citizen: a citizen who writes. Someone who makes sense of things. For me, this production of meaning does not happen in a vacuum, in a space without place, without society. The social calls out to me.