Brief Writing Updates on Price-Mars:

I have decided to reframe the structure and content of my forthcoming book on Jean Price-Mars as an intellectual biography (Tentatively, I will title it: “Jean Price-Mars: An Intellectual Biography”). My desire is to make it the definite study on Price-Mars in the English language. (The reader should know that this is a different text than the forthcoming book Jean Eddy Saint Paul, Glodel Mezilas, and I edited on Price-Mars, which we have entitled “Between Two Worlds: Price-Mars, Haiti, and Africa”) The implications of this intellectual shift and project are many:

1) I would have to add two new chapters to the book:

a) On the intellectual circles and transnational circuits that influenced the ideas and writings of Price-Mars, following a similar strategy and methodology as I have done for Jacques Roumain in my recently-published book, “Thinking in Public,” and my forthcoming book on Jean-Bertrand Aristide: “Aristide: A Theological and Political Introduction to His Life and Thought.”

b) A new chapter on Price-Mars as a public intellectual in the Haitian public sphere and as a transnational cultural critic of the Black Atlantic culture and thought, which may involve my interactions with his commentaries and critiques (1) on the intellectual life (i.e. politics, literature, Haitian intellectual history, i.e.) of his native land, (2) the role and education of women in the Haitian society, (3) public education system in Haiti, and 4) Key figures (i.e. W. E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, William Wadé Harris (affectionately called “The ‘Black Elijah’ of West Africa”), and James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey) in Black Thought. I will synthesize his ideas in this particular chapter.

2) It will take me another year to complete the book. Sorry folks if you have been patiently waiting for this work to come out. I will ask the publisher to give me another year so that I could produce this ambitious project. 

*** So far, I have completed five chapters: two chapters on the Pan-Africanist vision of Price-Mars, one chapter on Price-Mars’ philosophy of religion, one chapter on Price-Mars’ interpretation of the concept of God in African traditional religion, and another chapter on Price-Mars’ perspectives on African traditional religion, Islam, and Christianity. This one takes the comparative method to examine the subject matter. I’m half way completing two more drafts on Price-Mars’ writings on race, and the Haitian Revolution as a humanistic and global event. 

Say a word of prayer for me to the great Lord to give me both physical and intellectual strength, as well as to confer upon me greater clarity of thought and precision in expression. 

Happy Day!!!