Michael Deibert’s With the Pen in One Hand and the Sword in the Other: Haiti and the United States in the Nineteenth Century examines Haiti’s first century, its role in liberation movements across the Americas, and its complicated relationship with the United States. Bringing fiction into conversation with historical nonfiction, the panel considers how private family histories intersect with a nation’s struggles, and what Haitians carry across generations and borders in memory, attachment, and aspiration. Dimitry Elias Léger’s Death of the Soccer God follows Gilbert Chevalier from Port-au-Prince to New York and the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, exploring how family pressures, ambition, fame, and political violence can transform a life into national mythology. And in Micki Berthelot Morency’s I Shall Find You, a Haitian mother’s separation from her newborn daughter sets in motion a story of adoption, migration, family secrets, and the search for one’s origins. Moderated by Fabienne Josaphat, author of Kingdom of No Tomorrow. In English with Haitian Creole with interpretation.
Buy With the Pen in One Hand and the Sword in the Other: Haiti and the United States in the Nineteenth Century