Deep thinking…
Processing thoughts and ideas…

“The English Language DOES NOT Humanize the Haitian People”

The American academic world produces some of the most arrogant and selfish academics and thinkers in the world. Because most American scholars and historians write and publish in the English language the same history or story that’s already been published by Haitian/African/Caribbean writers who write in French or Spanish, they give more intellectual value to their own work simply because it is written in English, and it is not because they are assessed as quality scholarship or good research. I call this attitude “intellectual imperialism” relating to the politics of the American Empire in the world to undermine the intellectual and literary productions of writers and historians in the Global South or developing world. Haiti, because of its complex history with the United States and the West, as well as with American and Western academics and writers, is a primary victim of this intellectual climate.

1. Some of them (American academics) do not even bother to cite, for example, Haitian writers who have written on the same issue 50 years ago before they were even born or received an American doctoral (research) degree. C’mon, good people: you cannot just pretend that Haitian historians and writers did not exist in the 18th century, or nobody in Haiti wrote about Haitian national history or Haitian intellectual history from 18thto 20th century, for example.
2. Haitian historians, writers, and scholars have been marginalized in their own discipline (s) of study, especially those who write in French about Haitian national history and Haitian political history.
3. Not because one writes in English for an English-speaking (or American) audience means that individual has to deliberately disengage with a body of scholarship produced in a different language. It is intellectual dishonesty not to give credit or acknowledge intellectual predecessors. For example, you do not give Haitian studies legitimacy because it is done in the English language by American writers, nor do you humanize the Haitian people because you write in English about Haiti and the Haitian experience. Here, I am not referring to Haitian-born writers or those of Haitian descent who write or produce in English. This is not my point here!
4. Unfortunately, in the American academia, producing academic works in the English language does come with academic entitlement or pedigree; nonetheless, I have to state that English as a language does not make one naturally more intelligent than others who write in a different language. I know this is a popular attitude among Americans, even among some American academics that speaking or writing in English is connected with high civilization or culture, intelligence, and fame. By contrast, I also understand writing in English comes with a great deal of academic privileges and reputation because the English language has now become more connected with the politics and expansion of the United States as the world’s most powerful country and empire today. Interestingly, this is a colonial practice in American academia. Such attitude needs to go, what we call decolonization or decolonial practice (See Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, “Decolonising the Mind,” 1986)
5. Nobody expects American academics to be fluent (In fact, some of you are fluent in other languages) in French, Spanish, Kreyòl, Swahili, Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, or another language than your native tongue: English. At least, if you are going to work or specialize on a non-English speaking country as a scholar or academic specialist, it is important to try to “read in translation” or even to “cite in translation.” Or you can seek the help of an expert. DO NOT JUST IGNORE THE NATIVE WRITERS and THEIR INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTIONS!
6. Interestingly, American academics do not express this same attitude toward, for example, French, German, or English writers or historians. This is a rare tradition if they are writing about the history and experience of any of the countries in the West: Germany, France, Italy, England, Spain, Switzerland, etc. Haiti and Haitian writers, for example, continue to be victims of this tradition.
   How to move forward and change this BAD academic practice in America’s intellectual or academic landscape. I want to use Haiti, as an example. Haitian writers and historians have written prolifically and produced good works about some of the key issues in Haitian national history:

· The Haitian Revolution
· Haiti’s colonial history/Slavery and colonization in Haiti
· Haitian resistance to slavery and Western imperialism
· France’s economic exploitation of Haiti (the indemnity/the debt)
· The 1860 revolution
· American military occupation and invasion in Haiti (1915-1934)
· The rise of Haitian radicalism and Marxism in the 20thcentury
· The rise of Feminist movement in Haiti
· Haiti’s popular culture
· The foreign relations between Haiti, the United States, and the West
· The Duvalier regime
· The Aristide phenomenon and the 2nd American military invasion in Haiti
· Haitian Vodou
· Haitian anthropology and ethnology
· The politics of NGOS in Haiti
· Haiti’s economic development and dependency
· Haiti’s public health system
· Haiti’s education system
· Haiti’s environmental issue

Below, I highlight some of the major Haitian writers and thinkers to get acquainted with their writings, especially those published in the French language. For each historical period, I list 30 to 45 well-known writers and thinkers.

A. The 19th century

1. Louis Félix Mathurin (“Boisrond-Tonnerre”
2. Pompée Valentin Vastey (“Baron de Vastey”)
3. Hérard Dumesle
4. Joseph Saint Remy
5. Anténor Firmin
6. Beaubrun Ardouin
7. Coriolan Ardouin
8. Celigny Ardouin
9. B. Lepinasse
10. Antone Dupre
11. Jean-Baptiste Romane
12. J. Leger
13. Démesvar Delorme
14. Bénito Sylvain
15. Louis-Joseph Janvier
16. F.É. Dubois
17. Thomas Madiou
18. Frederic Marcelin
19. Hannibal Price
20. Pauléus Sannon
21. Etzer Vilaire
22. Justin Lhérisson
23. Juste Chanlatte
24. Jules Solime Milscent
25. Massillon Coicou
26. Ignace Nau
27. Emeric Bergeaud
28. P. Lochard
29. Oswald Durand
30. Antoine Innocent

B. The 20th century

1. Marie Vieux-Chauvet
2. Duracine Vaval
3. Dantès Bellegarde
4. François Duvalier
5. Paulette Poujol-Oriol
6. Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall
7. Jean Price-Mars
8. Jacques Roumain
9. Jacques Stephen Alexis
10. René Depestre
11. Alfred Auguste Nemours
12. Horace Pauleus Sannon
13. Henock Trouillot
14. Michel-Rolph Trouillot
15. Ernst Trouillot
16. Jean Fouchard
17. Gérard Mentor Laurent
18. Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau
19. Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain
20. Pradel Pompilus
21. Laennec Hurbon
22. Fernand Hibbert
23. Jean-Baptiste Cineas
24. Philippe Thoby-Marcalin
25. Pierre Thoby-Marcalin
26. J. C. Dorsainvil
27. Leon Laleau
28. Catts Pressoir
29. Louis Borno
30. Roger Gaillard
31. Normil Sylvain
32. Cleante Valcin
33. Suzy Castor
34. Roussan Camille
35. Edris Saint-Amand
36. Ida Salomon Faubert
37. Jacques Stephen Alexis
38. Franketienne
39. Jean Cassimir
40. Morisseau-Leroy
41. Ghislain Gouraige
42. Edwidge Danticat
43. Dany Laferrière
44. Jean F. Brière
45. Carl Brouard
46. Georges Sylvain
47. Felix Morisseaux
48. George Anglande
49. Christophe Philippe-Charles
50. Anthony Phelps
51. René Philoctète
52. Laroche Maximilien
53. Enock Trouillot
54. Georges Corvington
55. Gergard Barthemy
56. Roger Dorsainvil
57. Leslie F. Manigat
58. Catts Pressoir
59. Roger Gaillard
60. Timoléon C. Brutus
61. Damase Pierre-Louis

C. Late 20th century and early 21st century

1. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
2. Danny Laferriere
3. Georges Castera
4. Louis Philippe Dalenbert
5. Evelyn Trouillot
6. Josaphat Robert Large
7. Marie-Celie Agnant
8. Yanick Lahens
9. Jessica Fievre
10. Felix Morisseaux
11. Kettly Mars
12. Lyonel Trouillot
13. Odette Roy Fombrun
14. Roussan Camille
15. Jean-Bertrand Aristide
16. Lemete Zephyr
17. Robert Fatton
18. Alex Dupuy
19. . Edwidge Danticat
20. Michel S. Laguerre
21. Myriam J. A. Chancy
22. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
23. Laennec Hurbon
24. Louis-Philippe Dalembert
25. Gary Victor

*** Of course, I am missing other influential thinkers in my list and may have repeated some writers twice. I wrote this post in response to a series of important articles published in the New York Times (“The Ransom: 6 Takeaways About Haiti’s Reparations to France”; “The Ransom: A Look Under the Hood”; Investigating Haiti’s ‘Double Debt”; “The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers”). Please do not misunderstand the intent of my post! As an academic, I clearly understand academic scholarship is a teamwork that engages the labor of other scholars, for which I am thankful. I also understand academics or scholars depend on previous works done by others to further their own contribution in the field of study or advance knowledge in a particular discipline–hopefully toward the common good and human flourishing in the world. In other words, no one works in isolation, and no one can claim intellectual monopoly when it comes to academic studies, research, and epistemology. Yet we must not ignore those who are writing on the margins and work predominantly from the context of a developing country in the Global South. Their work matters! Their ideas are worth citing (in English)! Their contribution is worth acknowledging in public.

There are actually existing “traditions,” a reference to the way of thinking, intellectual practices, and of perceiving and interpreting the Haitian world and other worlds in Haitian history, and those traditions encompass various worldviews, and fields of study and different areas in the human and Haitian experience, including literary, religious, historical, political, philosophical, and ideological traditions.
It is my idea of the “Haitian canon.” In the same way, throughout the Haitian history, since its birth in 1804, there existed movements, such as labor, feminist, economic, human rights, political movements that have shaped the human experience in Haiti. Haitian writers and historians have documented their own histories and stories, experiences and living conditions, and such (literary) receipts could be traced to the country’s first piece of writing: Haiti’s Declaration of Independence (1 January 1804). In other words, Haitian writers have not been silenced about the Haitian experience in the world.

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Ayisyen ki gen TPS, enprime dokiman sa oubyen fè foto l . Ou kapab bay travay ou si yo ta kesyone estati legal ou pou travay nan peyi a.

Haitians: Your Future & Worth Are Greater Than TPS

Today is not the end of your story or your humanity.
TPS may expire, but your dreams and your purpose remain alive.

Your future is not defined by paperwork.
You are more than a government card.
You are loved. You have dignity. You are strong. You are brave.

You have already overcome so much: dehumanization, humiliation, and alienation in a foreign land. The same courage and determination that carried you this far will carry you into what comes next.

Your future—and the future of your children—are still full of hope, promise, and possibility.
Your gifts are still needed.
Your skills are necessary.
Your knowledge is valuable.
Your dreams are still valid.

Keep your head up!
Stay connected in community.
Don’t let despair overwhelm you.
Keep faith. Believe in God.
Support one another. Seek new paths and new opportunities.
Refuse despair.
Reject dehumanization.

This tragic moment will not define your humanity. Your resilience and determination will keep you moving forward.

“Canada’s Moral Optimism and the Limits of Humane Global Leadership: Reflections on Mark Carney”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s unapologetic speech at Davos in Norway revealed a leader fluent in transnational and global discourse, attentive to the anxieties and asymmetries shaping life in both the Global South and the Global North. He rightly diagnosed the global order as fractured, most notably the U.S.-led model, which he portrayed as not merely strained but structurally broken and perhaps beyond meaningful repair.

Yet Carney’s optimism rests on a familiar paradox. While he called for a more humane and empathetic global order and underscored Canada’s moral responsibility to help craft it alongside the League of Nations, his framework ultimately reinscribes Western authority as the primary steward of global governance. His rhetoric gestures toward anti-imperial critique, but only in its softer form—one that critiques excesses while leaving intact the West’s presumed right to rule.

The speech thus reflects the enduring tension within liberal internationalism: a desire to reform global power without fundamentally redistributing it. Canadians may take pride in Carney’s eloquence and ethical posture, but they should also interrogate the limits of a vision that seeks to humanize empire rather than move beyond it.

If I were Canadian, I would share in that pride, particularly because of Carney’s emphasis on moral leadership, ethical diplomacy, and constructive foreign policies aimed at advancing the common good and human flourishing across the world. Yet I remain deeply grateful to my Haitian ancestors, who recognized far earlier the dangers of imperialism and Western global hegemony in the nineteenth century. Their insight remains instructive today. The Haitian Revolution and the enduring meaning of 1804 still offers lessons the world has yet to fully learn.

In continuity with W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal claim at the turn of the twentieth century that race would constitute the central problem of modernity, the most consequential impediment to global human flourishing in the present moment is the rearticulation of imperial power. This contemporary imperial formation operates through an intensified nationalism and is institutionalized by the strategic surveillance, regulation, and disciplining of nations in the Global South. Any vision of humane global leadership and moral progress that fails to reckon with the significance and global meaning of the Haitian Revolution remains, at best, incomplete.

It takes hopelessness to exist, but optimism to live.

“On Being Human in a Country That Demands Proof”

Starting today, as a naturalized U.S. citizen, I will carry my passport with me for these simple reasons:

1. I was not born in the United States.
2. I speak English with an accent.
3. I am Haitian.
4. I am Black.
5. I am a Black male.
   Summary: I am a Black Haitian immigrant with an accent.

I understand all too well how this country reads bodies before it reads documents. Experience has taught me that these facts are often interpreted not as natural or intrinsic markers of identity, but as grounds for suspicion. I am not undocumented, and yet this combination still demands proof—as though my humanity itself requires validation, legible only through a U.S. stamp.

Here’s my new poem:

“The Smile of Love”

She whispers into my ear,
revealing love’s quiet secret:
happiness lives in a smile.

She leans toward me,
desiring my peace, my assurance,
resting her head against my chest:
waiting, breathing in slow motion,
as if my heart itself
must learn how to curve into joy,
her delight
the soft seduction of love.

I feel it rise slowly,
that gentle awakening,
a smile forming not just on my lips
but in the quiet spaces between us,
where breath meets breath
and longing softens into warm embrace .

A smile, I say to her, is
an eternal gesture
of bliss,
of desire,
of memory being born
in the fragile now.

A smile has a soul, she whispers.
It dwells at the edge
where love and happiness
speak in silence,
where tenderness becomes knowing,
where intimacy
is the quiet secret of commitment.

Pure.
Sublime.
Mesmerizing.

“Notes from a Fragile Love”

My second poem of January unfolds as a narrative of emotional exposure: raw, unguarded, and aching. It speaks to the quiet devastation of loving deeply while remaining unloved. The speaker stands as a witness to a fragile relationship he labored to nurture and protect, only to lose both the beloved and the love he poured into her.

“Notes from a Fragile Love”

I let you go
because the tenderness I offered
was never returned.
The passion I carried
became too heavy to hold alone.

When I told you I missed you,
you turned away,
as if longing were a foreign language
you refused to learn.

When I reached out for comfort,
you said, “You’re a man; deal with it.”
In that moment, you taught me
that vulnerability had no shelter with you.
You wanted emotional connection in theory,
but when it was mine,
it became inconvenient.

You wanted to hold my hand in public:
not for love,
not for passion,
but to be seen,
to borrow visibility without commitment.
You wanted the appearance of us,
not the responsibility.

You rationed the words “I love you,”
as if they were scarce.
I gave them freely,
infinitely,
to seal your heart and mine.
You wanted us hidden when it mattered,
a secret folded into convenience.
I wanted love that could stand in the light.

I carried your words inside me like scripture;
you erased mine as if they never mattered.
I remembered your heartbreak line by line,
while you put on earbuds
to silence mine.

I treasured your moans during lovemaking,
the way your body spoke
trust
intimacy
desire
connection
yet in motion,
you called his name,
and I learned my presence
was never singular.

When I spoke of a future with you,
you said you weren’t ready.
When I imagined a child,
a son bearing both our names.

You laughed,
and my hope became a joke.

That is when I understood:
I was listening with my whole soul
to someone who had already tuned me out.

And that is why
I let you go.
Not because I stopped loving you,
but because I finally loved myself enough
to stop offering intimacy
where it could not rest.