Dance on the Volcano

I’ve always had an interest in the Haitian Revolution, as the only slave rebellion to have produced a free state ruled by former slaves and free non-whites. Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s novel gives a different perspective than that of the history books, following one character’s experience of pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue and the beginning days of the revolution itself.The principal characters and events are real — Vieux-Chauvet wove her research, focused on that one character, Minette, a “free person of color”, into an historical novel.The book begins in the years leading up to the revolution in late eighteenth century Saint-Domingue, to become free Haiti. Minette is a young girl, living with her sister Lise, and her mother Jasmine, who sells scarves and other items on the street in Port-au-Prince.Minette is gifted with a magnificent singing voice. Once trained by a benefactor, the white Creole actress Mme Acquaire, Minette experiences a much broader spectrum of life than someone of her class in colonial Saint-Domingue would normally experience. She performs at the Comédie of Port-au-Prince, despite a ban on non-white performers. The public’s appreciation and admiration is so great that even the most ardent opponents of rights for non-whites are compelled to allow her exception.Living the life of a young girl in Port-au-Prince, in the small world of her family and friends, conditions could just be what they were. But as she takes on a role as a performer for the privileged classes of planters and slaveowners, she sees more. She sees within the households of white planters how slaves are routinely tortured, how freedmen (and women) are regarded as less than human. And she sees, in her own case, how her talents will get her only so far — she becomes, at best, a privileged member of an unprivileged class. She can sing for the privileged classes but she is being granted an exception for her talent only, not for herself. She learns the word “injustice”.Minette also falls in love with a person who wraps up what may be inevitable contradictions in pre-revolutionary Haitian society. Jean-Baptiste Lapointe is a free, slave-holding black man. He fights against the wealthy white planters, in tenuous alliance with a group of rebels who help both the free but oppressed and the enslaved. But he abuses his own slaves and treats them with utter disrespect, reveling in his own position of power and privilege. Minette’s turn toward rebellion is also a turn against her lover’s character, if not completely against himself.Minette, Lapointe, and many other characters in the book are true, historical figures from revolutionary Haiti (as are the events depicted in the novel drawn from real historical events). Vieux-Chauvet arrays the characters in such a way as to portray a spectrum of virtues and vices — unrebellious mulatto women doing their best to thrive and survive in a world where they have no power, dedicated warriors who risk everything, sympathetic whites who do what they can, . . . I’m not in any position to judge how accurate the personal portrayals are — I suspect they are almost certainly cleaned up to create a dramatic and edifying novel.The book was originally written in 1957 but is only now translated into English. Vieux-Chauvet’s writing is dramatic in tone, even over the top (even given its subject matter) at times, kind of the way that acting in silent movies is over the top, as if straining a bit to convey and emphasize emotion and meaning. But this was one of those books I read more compulsively the farther I got into it.Obviously, I wouldn’t substitute a novel for history. In fact, reading Vieux-Chauvet inspired me to look at some of the same research she presumably relied upon (see Jean Fouchard’s historical writing), as well as other sources (see the more recent Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois). I’d also recommend Yanick Lahens’ novel of Duvalier-era Haiti, Moonbath, for a portrayal of modern village Haiti.

You know those books that as you're reading (and appreciating) them, you start to think that actually, this book might just make a better movie than book? That's a little bit how I felt with Marie Vieux-Chauvet's generally great, occasionally frustrating Dance on the Volcano. The book feels like it has so many different plot points (some distinctly better than others), with an underlying visual quality that made me feel like this would perfectly translate into an amazing period drama (Hollywood, hit me up).Dance on the Volcano tells the story of Minette, a young Haitian woman with a beautiful singing voice who becomes the first "colored" woman to perform in the higher circles of Haitian society. The story directly addresses racism, class differences, colorism, slavery, and more, with the plot covering a period of great unrest in Haitian history. Yet it does all of these explicitly through Minette's eyes, who grows and matures over the course of the story and begins to form her own opinions about the tragedies occurring in her home. It's an often-powerful text, occasionally bogged down by odd stylistic choices (phrases alternating between being very modern and very old-fashioned) and some overplotting (with one subplot that I mostly understood the intellectual merit of, but hated on a personal level).This is a story of a history that I imagine most readers were as unfamiliar with as I was - not simply Haitian history, but Haitian culture and culture clashes. Dance on the Volcano is sure to be as interesting an introduction to you as it was to me.

A beautiful book and beautifully translated!