Wed, Mar 26 |
Haiti Cultural Exchange
Join us to celebrate the publication of "The First and Last King of Haiti;" a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
Time & Location
Mar 26, 2025, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Haiti Cultural Exchange, 558 St. John's Place, Brooklyn, NY 11238
About the Event
About the Book: The essential biography of the controversial rebel, traitor, and only king of Haiti. Henry Christophe is one of the most richly complex figures in the history of the Americas, and was, in his time, popular and famous the world over: in The First and Last King of Haiti, a brilliant, award-winning Yale scholar unravels the still controversial enigma that he was.
Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon’s forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe—after nine years of his rule as King Henry I—shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti’s first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?
The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
About the Author: Marlene L. Daut is Professor of French, African American Studies, and History at Yale University. She is the author of the award-winning Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press, 2023); Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017); and Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool, 2015).
About the Conversation Partner: Kaiama Glover’s research, writing, and teaching are situated at the intersection of French, francophone, Caribbean, and Haitian literary studies. Her work explores phenomena of border-crossing, marginality, gender, and canon-formation, querying––through rigorous textual study––the shifting categories of ‘center’ and ‘margins’ as they are constituted across the postcolonial Afro-Americas. Her work has been supported by fellowships at the New York Public Library Cullman Center, the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, the PEN/Heim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation.