Reading Haitian Literature in Postcolonial and Ecocritical Perspectives

Abstract

The Haitian novel, especially Marie Vieux-Chauvetʼs trilogy Love, Anger, Madness (1968) makes a link between exploitation of nature and human beings. Marie-Viex Chauvet is a Haitian writer who fervently criticized the Duvalier regime. Connecting her political attack on the Duvalier regime and ecofeminism, Vieux-Chauvet delineates how the American occupation destroyed her country. She was not only author to voice the exploitation of nature in Haiti; Jacque Roumain, whose Gouverneurs de la Rosée (1944) is still the forerunner of Haitian literature that sought to reclaim the nature and landscape into for the peasants in Haiti. However, this paper primarily focuses on Vieux-Chauvetʼs Love, Anger, Madness. Both novels describe the environmental destruction in Haiti during the occupation era, yet Love, Anger, Madness launches a fiercer criticism of Haitian politics, and rebels against the continuous oppression of women and the environment.