What writing about Haiti’s first, last, and only king taught me about archives, ethics, and unreliable narrators.
By Marlene L. Daut
As a literary and intellectual historian, I have spent a large part of my career focusing on how literary fictions (poetry, drama, novels, and short stories) affected the way that people living in the 18th and 19th centuries understood the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). My newest book, a biography called The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of...