NWIG 86-3&4 (2012)

Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture, and the Earthquake of 2010. MARTIN MUNRO (ed.).
Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2010. vi + 200 pp. (Paper US$
25.00)

JONNA KNAPPENBERGER
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Port-au-Prince, Haiti. January 12, 2010. When the ground stopped shaking, less than a
minute after the earthquake began, hundreds of thousands of people were buried under
the rubble. Well over a million others were left to camp out on the streets and pray for
salvation. The gwo katastrof also created an exodus in the days and months after the
earthquake, people from the magnetic capital returned to their original hometowns across
Haiti. I have heard friends tell and retell their stories, including a 22-year-old college
student who crawled out of a house with nothing, but managed to borrow money to make
the 12-hour trip by motorcycle and bus back to her home in northern Haiti. But by mid-
2011, the capital seemed to regain its pull, once again drawing young people back.
What was left, over a year after the quake, was the inevitable rubble in a country
characterized by a gridlocked state government, foreign NGOs, and a massive stream of
donations and pledges that never make it to tent cities. For the residents, what remained
was the retelling of their stories, life hanging onto the hope of normalcy, and political
disaffection.
Martin Munros edited volume, Haiti Rising, brings together 25 writers to
document, discuss, and contextualize the earthquake. While some of the entries are useful
and refreshing, and two in particular are excellent, many of the chapters fail to say
anything new and instead rehash critiques of international media, Haitian politics, and the
details of the earthquakes aftermath.
What kind of justice does this book do to the earthquake experience, or to the
experience of the people in tents? Individually dated, the essays were written on the heels
of the event (between January and June 2010). But it seems that even five months is too
soon to expect a fully-developed analysis of such a catastrophe; writers are still
processing the event and struggling to find useful ways to talk about Haiti in disaster.
Despite being published by a university press, the text is not purely academic.
Munro lays out his threefold purpose: to acknowledge Haitian culture and history; to
record testimonies; and to raise funds for Haitian artists. Much of the cultural and historic
information will be old-hat to those who already know something about Haiti.
The book is divided into four sections. The first, Survivor Testimonies, can be
useful for other survivors who want to compare experiences, or for those unfamiliar with
the obvious points to be made about disadvantaged Haiti unfair media coverage, an
unjust world system, disaster capitalism, social inequality, etc. Part Two, Politics,
Culture, and Society, includes essays by a number of influential scholars. Deborah
Jensons The Writing of Disaster in Haiti looks at Haitian representations of disaster in
Haitian letters, including the writing of Louverture, Dessalines, writer Hrard Dumesle,
and others. Jenson also alludes to the historic and often forgotten string of earthquakes in
the region. This is easily one of the books best chapters. Part Three, History, offers
useful context, though it tends to repeat well-known facts. Contributors include John
Garrigus, Laurent Dubois and Jean Casimir, and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith. Part Four,
Haiti and Me, includes contributions by people with long connections to the country,
among them Maryse Cond, whose essay is largely autobiographical.
The best chapter in the book is its last: Port-au-Prince, I Love You, by Matthew
Smith. This sort of heartfelt and well-researched history, offered next to post-earthquake
landscape imagery, is an ideal form for contextualizing the gwo katastrof. Smith takes an
imaginary walk through the city, recalling its names, places, people, and music
throughout the years.
Only six of the contributors lived through the earthquake. Fourteen were not
present, and readers can only guess where the other five were. For the best chapters,
physical presence hardly matters; in other pieces, however, writers struggle with either a
lack of data or the unwieldy emotional baggage that accompanies survival.
When it comes to discussing Haiti after the earthquake, eyewitness authority
competes with the authority of those who were not witnesses but have other professional
experience with Haiti. Scholars and Haitian-American friends have told me they wish
they had been there, to experience the catastrophe in their field site or homeland. These
regrets take survival for granted the accident of time and place that survivors know
intimately. Nonetheless, observing from afar has had major effects on the claims that
have been made about Haiti during and after the event.
Clichd critiques of CNN and the news media recur in the book, and contributors
often draw on completely imaginary scenes to talk about what happened. Imagining the
darkness of Port-au-Prince that night, as Bill Drummond does (p. 174), is quite different
from living a night that was, indeed, very dark, except for the bright lights from the
backed-up cars and trucks along the Delmas Road and other thoroughfares. The book
allows space for its authors to record memories and feelings, and space to share the basics
of Haiti with a broader audience. Its best pieces are those that avoid the lesson of
emotional pessimism taught by the disaster, those that find perspective and remember
that Haiti is not just Port-au-Prince at 4:50 p.m. on January 12, 2010.