Synopses & Reviews
Lisette, a Saint-Domingue-born Creole slave and daughter of an African-born
bossale, has inherited not only the condition of slavery but the traumatic memory of the Middle Passage as well. The stories told to her by her grandmother and godmother, including the horrific voyage aboard the infamous slave ship
Rosalie, have become part of her own story, the one she tells in this haunting novel by the acclaimed Haitian writer Évelyne Trouillot.
Inspired by the colonial tale of an African midwife who kept a cord of some seventy knots, each one marking a child she had killed at birth, the novel transports us back to Saint-Domingue, before it became Haiti. The year is 1750, and a rash of poisonings is sowing fear among the plantation masters, already unsettled by the unrest caused by Makandal, the legendary Maroon leader. Through this tumultuous time, Lisette struggles to maintain her dignity and to imagine a future for her unborn child. In telling Lisettes story, Trouillot gives the revolution that will soon rock the island a human face and at long last sheds light on the invisible women and men of Haitian history.
The original French edition of Rosalie linfâme received the Prix Soroptimist de la romancière francophone, honoring a novel written by a woman from a French-speaking country which showcases the cultural and literary diversity of the French-speaking world.
Review
“Lyonel Trouillots novel Children of Heroes is a real tour de force. Set in Haiti, it is a story about surviving the vulnerabilities of childhood. Beautifully written and beautifully translated, its images linger.”—Rose M. Réjouis, winner of the American Translators Association Prize Rose M. R�jouis
Review
Lyonel Trouillot is perhaps the best known of contemporary Haitian novelists. Children of Heroes shows the author in his prime form for stylistic clarity and emotive impact. His characteristic first-person narrative is a well-constructed story that is vividly realistic and a most tragic tale.”—Thomas C. Spear, editor of Une Journée Haïtienne and coeditor of Céline and the Politics of Difference Thomas C. Spear
Review
“Trouillot writes with his heart on his sleeve . . . and his unabashed empathy for plucky Colin and brave, sexy Mariéla recalls elements of Dickens.”—Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly
Review
"Trouillot's undestated prose, his way of putting a lush sentence together make Children of Heroes a novel worthy of examination and multiple reads."—Kreyolicious Kreyolicious
Review
“A lyrically written novella on love, loss, and the creation of home by captive African women and men out of the horror of the Middle Passage. A wonderful contribution to the corpus of Francophone women writers in the Caribbean.”—T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French, Vanderbilt University
Review
"In language both sumptuous and biting, Haitian university professor Trouillot gives us insight into New World slavery by telling the story of a Creole slave in 1750 Saint-Domingue."—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Review
"An uplifting homage to people loving one another and creating relationships under the most dire of circumstances."—Historical Novel Society
Review
"Those who read Trouillot's novel in the English can do so as a result of the astute choices made by translator M.A. Salvadon and her sensitivity to the subject matter of the original text. . . . She has done the good deed and work of enabling more readers to access the work of the versatile and prolific contemporary Haitian writer, Évelyne Trouillot."—Danielle Legros Georges, Women's Review of Books
Synopsis
Their fathers favorite saying, between drinks and blows, was, “Life holds only bad surprises, and the last one will be death.” And now, Colin observes of the man sprawled under all the broken furniture, their father was definitely and forever out of surprises. Children of Heroes is the story Colin tells of what happened—and what happened before that. Testimony, confession, a childs outpouring: this is his painfully matter-of-fact account of how he and his older sister, Mariéla, killed the man who tyrannized them and their piously pathetic mother, who is now a “blank.” As he describes their flight from the slum in Haiti to an uncertain somewhere called “far away,” Colin conjures a bleak picture of the life he and his sister are trying to leave behind. And whether these two—children only in age—are guilty or merely victims of the violence festering in their city is a question only the reader can answer. In its picture of a world in which the heroes and the destroyers—whether fathers or leaders—are often indistinguishable, and where lifes poetry and poverty are inextricably linked, this book tells a story of Haiti that is at once intimate, universal, and otherworldly.
About the Author
Évelyne Trouillot was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she lives and works as a university professor. She is the author of four novels, four collections of short stories, two volumes of stories for children, two books of poems, and an award-winning play. The original French edition of Rosalie l’infâme received the Prix Soroptimist de la romancière francophone, honoring a novel written by a woman from a French-speaking country which showcases the cultural and literary diversity of the French-speaking world. M. A. Salvodon, an associate professor of French at Suffolk University, translated, with Jehanne-Marie Gavarini, Nina Bouraoui’s Tomboy (Nebraska, 2007). Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-born writer and the author of The Farming of Bones, winner of the American Book Award.