Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and the Literary Imagination ANNOTATION
"Highly stimulating history of Haitian and US perceptions of each other as seen in each country's literature from 1850s-1990s. Dash sets these texts in political context and repeatedly demonstrates the narrow line between 'imaginative' and 'objective' descriptions of Haiti by US writers. This critical perspective, combined with the author's knowledge of 20th-century Haitian literature, makes this study a particularly valuable one"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Imaginative literature, argues Michael Dash, does not merely reflect, but actively influences historical events. He demonstrates this by a close examination of the relations between Haiti and the United States through the imaginative literature of both countries. The West's mythification of Haiti is a strategy used to justify either ostracism or domination, a process traced here from the nineteenth-century until it emerges with a voyeuristic fierceness in the 1960s.
Home
