Haiti Noir
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“A wide-ranging collection from the beloved but besieged Caribbean island,” from a lineup of authors including two National Book Award finalists (Kirkus Reviews).
“The Haitian-born Danticat has brought her country’s literature back into the world of English-speakers. Filled with delights and surprises, Haiti Noir, taken as a whole, provides a profound portrait of the country, from its crises to its triumphs, from the tiny bouks of the countryside to the shanties of the sprawling bidonvilles. Danticat herself has a lovely story in the collection, and permits two distinguished foreign writers on Haiti, Madison Smartt Bell and Mark Kurlansky, to slide in there among all the brilliant Haitians.” —Daily Beast
Brand-new stories by Edwidge Danticat, Rodney Saint-Éloi, Madison Smartt Bell, Gary Victor, M.J. Fievre, Mark Kurlansky, Marvin Victor, Josaphat-Robert Large, Marie Lily Cerat, Yanick Lahens, Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Kettly Mars, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel, Evelyne Trouillot, Katia D. Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zoboi, Nadine Pinede, and Patrick Sylvain.
“This anthology will give American readers a complex and nuanced portrait of the real Haiti not seen on the evening news and introduce them to some original and wonderful writers.” —Library Journal
“A collection possessing classic noir elements—crimes and criminals and evil deeds only sometimes punished—but also something else, perhaps uniquely Haitian too.” —Los Angeles Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Michael Stipe, REM frontman and rock star legend in his own right, becomes a self-declared "dork nerd" when talking about Patti Smith. "I first met Patti Smith in the autumn of 1975.... Somebody had left a music magazine, Cream, under the desk there was a haunting photograph of a young Patti Smith, leaning against a wall, staring down the camera, all scary and beautiful." In Stipe's startling photographs and 12 brief written homages, Patti Smith is depicted as a down-to-earth goddess, a part of and apart from her evolving entourage of musicians, artists, poets (Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance), and friends. This isn't a traditional book of portraits the images are eerie, smudged, and only a few are of Patti Smith herself. The subjects are rarely identified; there are no captions, and the book has no page numbers. A disproportionate number of the photographs are set in bathrooms. The overwhelming mood is one of disjunction, claustrophobia, exhaustion, temporariness and the effect is raw and intimate. The photo of Stipe braiding Smith's hair is representative: she giggles shyly, looking years younger than her chronological age. And he is no longer the "dork nerd" teenager, but a fellow musician and from his proud, caring mien, even a protector.
