what is Haitian literature?

Haitian literature is suspended between Africa and France. As one of its earlier texts, one may cite Fligneau's play The Haitian expatriate (1804). The rest of the century remained under the spell of aesthetic currents imported from France: Romanticism, Parnassianism, and Symbolism. The emergent literature found its place in the newly founded periodicals, such as L'abeille haytienne, Le Républicain, and L'Observateur. In 1836 the group of the Cénacle joined the Romantic poets such as Ignace Nau, Coriolan Ardouin, Oswald Durand. Another important literary journal was La Ronde.
The 2oth century gave rise to the génération de la gifle, humiliated by the American occupation that started in 1915. It created several militant literary magazines: La Revue de la ligue de la jeunesse haïtienne (1916), La Nouvelle Ronde (1925), and above all La Revue indigène (1927). Indigenism, hitherto dispised, became the vogue of the day, and such writers as Jean Prince-Mars started to explore the African roots of the Haitian people. In the 1940s, the paradigms of social realism found a fertile ground on the island. The tendency is exemplified in Gouverneurs de la rosée (1944) by Jacques Roumain. In the 1950s the réalisme merveilleux of René Depestre may be seen as a Francophone version of realismo magico. Finally, the most visible of contemporary Haitian writers is Dany Laferrière.

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