This chapter reads twentieth-century Haitian fictions of the Haitian Revolution to address how the political uses of Haiti’s independence war have made it a difficult literary subject for Haitian writers. The political custom of using Haitian revolutionists to express partisan political aims is prevalent in Haiti, so much so that it is the socio-political context animating Haitian narratives of the Revolution. I read Marie Chauvet’s novel, Dance on the Volcano (1957); René Depestre’s Vodou epic, A Rainbow for the Christian West (1967); Évelyne Trouillot’s novel, The Infamous Rosalie (2003); and Jean-Claude Fignolé’s novel, Quiet Dawn (1990), fictional autobiography, I, Toussaint Louverture, with the Complicit Pen of the Author (2004), and novel, One Hour for Eternity (2008), and consider how each of these works addresses the exploitative uses of the Revolution in the prevailing political discourses of their time. I examine the painful intimacies of socio-political disunity presented in their writings, showing how creative treatment of the Revolution requires, at worst, questioning the Revolution’s success and, at best, resigning oneself to its unfinished nature.

Caribbean literature from the mid twentieth century is often centrally concerned with nationalism and independence. But literature from this period, both within the anglophone Caribbean and across the pan-Caribbean region, also responded to a series of other – sometimes complementary, sometimes competing – political projects. This chapter looks at how literature represented and addressed institutional changes such as the rise of trade unions, the development of political parties and constitutional changes in the anglophone Caribbean; the advent of DOM status in the French Caribbean; Puerto Rico’s anomalous status as an Associated Free State of the USA; Cuba’s annexation into the US economy; and the Cuban Revolution. Writers sought to document these changes, to mobilize social movements, and to imagine new political possibilities. In the process, they negotiated the push and pull between literary commitment and artistic freedom. For a variety of reasons, anglophone literary figures were often drawn to West Indian federation. Even after federation failed, writers still frequently couched their nationalism in regional terms and looked to various pan-Caribbean inspirations for a larger vision of citizenship and community. This chapter will examine how writers from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s sought to support, critique, and navigate the political transformations of the era.