THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION AND THE POWER OF HISTORICAL FICTION

Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Young, Jessica

Area of Concentration

American Studies

Abstract

The Haitian Revolution of 1791 has long been misrepresented and marginalized in academic sources and expunged from the collective Western consciousness. As a result, not many people know about the only successful overthrow of colonial slavery, the birth of the first Black nation in the New World, and Haiti’s sprawling international impact on Western wealth and territories. In Chapter One, I retell my experience learning about the Haitian Revolution. I provide a brief history on the historical event, and I explore the pervasive governmental, academic, and social factors that initiated and perpetuated the historical event’s erasure from Western consciousness. These factors are difficult to combat, and this reality suggests that the Haitian Revolution will face continued erasure. In Chapter Two, I explore yet another historical event that’s been deleted from Western consciousness: the 1985 Air India Bombing. I identify parallels between the erasure of the Air India Bombing and the Haitian Revolution, and I recognize that, categorically, the institutions threaten both events’ remembrance. One would think that both the Air India Bombing and the Haitian Revolution are consigned to cyclical erasure, but one project focusing on the former proves the cycle can be broken. Renee Saklikar’s historical fiction (in poetry form) children of air india bypasses the barriers that governmental, academic and social forces have imposed on the memory of the Air India Bombing. Saklikar’s work reaches audiences far and wide, introduces the topic of the Air India Bombing to them, and then conveys the event in such a way readers remember it, they carry it, and it changes them, the way any holistic history lesson should. Towards the end of the chapter, I discuss how Saklikar’s work achieves this phenomenon, and I claim that her work is replicable for the Haitian Revolution. In Chapter Three, I launch a project modeled after Saklikar’s to increase recognition and remembrance of the Haitian Revolution. In Chapter Three, I discuss my experience with the research, creativity, and flexibility this kind of project requires. This project is the first phase of a what could be a multi-year or lifelong project.

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