The Daily Beast offers a list of books, articles, and documentaries about Haiti, including a biography of Toussaint L’Ouverture, a leader in the 1791 rebellion that resulted in the abolition of slavery on the island (and ultimately, in the establishment of Haiti as an independent nation), and Graham Green’s The Comedians (which, as Gerald Posner writes, is “about a world-weary hotelier in the darkest period of the Duvalier dictatorship. It’s a remarkably grim and moving look inside a country controlled by violence and corruption”).
Of particular note:
Best Introduction to Haiti’s Writers
The single best introduction to Haiti’s writers and literature is Madison Smartt Bell’s superb essay in the July 17, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books. In one sitting you’ll get a taste of the incredible range of the Haitian literary tradition and helpful pointers about what to read next.
This article contains a few more recommendations from Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat (whose Brother, I’m Dying is on the Beast reading list), and here’s a young adult/children’s list.
I’ll also add Pierre Clitandre’s Cathedral of the August Heat, a disjointed but incredibly evocative novel about life in a shantytown outside Port au Prince.
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: a true story from Hell on Earth – Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, Andrew Thomson; descriptions of UN missions in wartorn countries, one Haiti. I’m a big fan of the UN, but it has its limits.