Kaiama Glover’s stunning elucidation of Haitian Spiralist literature is a tour-de-force... If Spiralism itself constitutes the most magnificent cultural artifice of Haitian dystopia, Glover’s groundbreaking study is essential reading for those interested in exploring the limits of Caribbean expression achieved by these superb writers, and the volcanic intensity of the literary movement that has perhaps most fully expressed the ... Read more‘schizophonic’ beauty and horror of Haitian reality. In this compelling book, Glover charts the association of Caribbean stories with the performative interpersonal dimensions of krik krak, with the revisiting of epic historical memories in the present or the future, and with figures and fractured revenants like the zonbi, the schizophrenic, or conflictual marasa or twins. The spiral is a chameleon-like form: it can be conceptualized as a literary form or genre, as the hybrid African/New World cultural space of the genesis and reception of creole, or as the evanescence of ideological heroism into a fog of disputed memories.
Research in African Literatures, Volume 43 Number 3
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