“A Border between Geographies of Grief”

Abstract

Chapter 4 analyzes representations of the Haitian-Dominican border in the literature of Edwidge Danticat, Roxane Gay, and Évelyne Trouillot, who each exhume the historical trauma of the 1937 Massacre of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. Jean-Charles argues that these authors understand the border as a space of violence and death but also, quite ironically and powerfully, as a space for creation and possibility.