Haiti Noir

August 29, 2011
Michael Stipe, REM frontman and rock star legend in his own right, becomes a self-declared “dork nerd” when talking about Patti Smith. “I first met Patti Smith in the autumn of 1975.... Somebody had left a music magazine, Cream, under the desk there was a haunting photograph of a young Patti Smith, leaning against a wall, staring down the camera, all scary and beautiful.” In Stipe’s startling photographs and 12 brief written homages, Patti Smith is depicted as a down-to-earth goddess, a part of and apart from her evolving entourage of musicians, artists, poets (Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance), and friends. This isn’t a traditional book of portraits—the images are eerie, smudged, and only a few are of Patti Smith herself. The subjects are rarely identified; there are no captions, and the book has no page numbers. A disproportionate number of the photographs are set in bathrooms. The overwhelming mood is one of disjunction, claustrophobia, exhaustion, temporariness—and the effect is raw and intimate. The photo of Stipe braiding Smith’s hair is representative: she giggles shyly, looking years younger than her chronological age. And he is no longer the “dork nerd” teenager, but a fellow musician—and from his proud, caring mien, even a protector.

November 1, 2010

The latest in the "Akashic Noir" series presents new stories by editor Danticat, as well as by Haitian and non-Haitian authors such as Evelyne Trouillot and Mark Kurlansky.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 22, 2010
As Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) points out in her excellent introduction to this solid entry in Akashic's acclaimed noir series, most of its 18 stories were written before the devastating earthquake of January 2010. This natural tragedy lends a strong undercurrent to the fictional takes on a country that was already ravaged by the terrible human problems of poverty, violent crime, and political corruption. Powerful genre-benders include Katia D. Ulysse's "The Last Department," a stylish, Poe-inspired story about the mutual enmity of two daughters, one who "made it" in America and the other who stayed behind; and Yanick Lahens's "Who Is That Man?" in which an innocent man gets caught in the middle of drug cartel business. Other standouts are Patrick Sylvain's "Odette" and Kettly Mars's "Paradise Inn." Many selections aren't especially noir, at least not in the way that most crime fiction readers would recognize, but Danticat has succeeded in assembling a group portrait of Haitian culture and resilience that is cause for celebration.

December 15, 2010
Eighteen authors who either live in Haiti or have connections to the country contribute stories of greed, love, lust, murder, and other traditional noir themes. Along with many others unfamiliar to North American readers, there are a couple of surprises, including Mark Kurlansky, an American writer known for nonfiction but who, as a newspaper reporter, covered Haiti and the Caribbean for nearly a decade. Most of the stories are written in English, but a couple have been translated from the French. A solid contribution to the series, especially for its showcasing of a setting not commonly portrayed in crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)