Angélique se lève tous les matins la première, dans la petite maison des faubourgs de Port-au-Prince qu’elle partage avec sa mère, sa sœur Joyeuse, et son jeune frère Fignolé. Dans l’aube grise de février, l’inquiétude l’étreint : Fignolé n’est pas rentré et toute la nuit les tirs n’ont cessé de gronder au loin…Angélique la sage est une fille soumise, une sœur exemplaire, une femme de trente ans en apparence résignée. Sa famille, le fils qu’elle a eu par accident, les malades de l’hôpital, constituent son unique horizon.

Sex, Family and Fertility (Also published by Lexington Books as Fewer Men, More Babies) re-evaluates the debate over family patterns in the Caribbean with respect to the critical importance that child labor plays in peasant household livelihood strategies. Earlier anthropologists widely accepted and provided empirical evidence that the contributions made by children to the peasant household labor pool was a significant determinant of social patterns and high birth rates. In the 1960s researchers began to dismiss the economic utility of children.

After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, over half of U.S. households donated to thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that country. Yet we continue to hear stories of misery from Haiti. Why have NGOs failed at their mission?

Cet ouvrage collectif vise à attirer l’attention sur 15 femmes haïtiennes et leurs contributions à la vie sociale, politique et culturelle en Haïti : Marie Claire Heureuse Bonheur, Catherine Flon, Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau, Yvonne Sylvain, Mona Guérin, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Suzy Castor, Yvette Bonny, Mimi Barthélémy, Mireille Neptune Anglade, Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, Marie Alice Théard, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassègue, Liliane Pierre-Paul et Colette Lespinasse. (Résumé par Mouka)

The Caribbean “market woman” is ingrained in the popular imagination as the archetype of black womanhood in countries throughout the region. Challenging this stereotype and other outdated images of black women, Downtown Ladies offers a more complex picture by documenting the history of independent international traders—known as informal commercial importers, or ICIs—who travel abroad to import and export a vast array of consumer goods sold in the public markets of Kingston, Jamaica.

Women in Haiti are frequent victims of sexual violence and armed assault. Yet an astonishing proportion of these victims also act as perpetrators of violent crime, often as part of armed groups. Award-winning legal scholar Benedetta Faedi Duramy visited Haiti to discover what causes these women to act in such destructive ways and what might be done to stop this tragic cycle of violence.

Vodou is among the most misunderstood and maligned of the world's religions. Mama Lola shatters the stereotypes by offering an intimate portrait of Vodou in everyday life. Drawing on a 35 year long friendship with Mama Lola, a Vodou priestess, Karen McCarthy Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family, beginning with an African ancestor and ending with Claudine Michel's account of working with Mama Lola after the Haitian earthquake.

Raped and colonized, coerced and silenced--this has been the position of Haitian women within their own society, as well as how they have been seen by foreign occupiers. Romanticized symbols of nationhood, they have served, however unwillingly, as a politicized site of contestation between opposing forces. In this first book-length study in English devoted exclusively to Haitian women's literature, Myriam Chancy finds that Haitian women have their own history, traditions, and stories to tell, tales that they are unwilling to suppress or subordinate to narratives of national autonomy.

Les femmes dont il s’agit ici sont plurielles, issues de souches variées avec des parcours différents mais qui ont sû laisser s’exprimer ce qu’elles avaient en commun : une passion, un idéal, un désir d’équilibre. Certains ont déjà fait le grand voyage, d’autres sont encore animées du feu de la vie. Considérées dans l’une ou l’autre des catégories, elles sont d’abord des coups de cœur qui nous ont laissé le meilleur d’elles-mêmes.