The Book of Ka

The Book of Ka

The first of the nine interconnected stories in The Dew Breaker is set in Lakeland, Florida, and is narrated by Ka, a young female Haitian immigrant who lives in New York. She has traveled to Florida with her father, also a Haitian immigrant, in order to sell her mahogany sculpture of her father to Gabrielle Fontana, a Haitian-American television star and art collector.

Ka and her father stay in a hotel, but when Ka wakes in the morning her father has vanished, and the sculpture is gone, too. Her father finally returns at sunset, without the sculpture. He drives Ka to a lake and indicates that he threw the sculpture in the water. Ka is angry, and her father explains that he did not feel worthy of the statue. His daughter has always been told that her father had been imprisoned in Haiti, but now he confesses that he was never in prison; instead he was responsible for killing and torturing many people who were prisoners. He says he would not do such things now.

When they return to the hotel, Ka calls her mother, wanting to know how she could love her husband, knowing what she knows about him. Her mother responds that she and Ka have saved him; it was when he met his future wife that he stopped torturing others.

The next day, Ka and her father visit Gabrielle for lunch. When asked where in Haiti he comes from, Ka’s father lies, in order to reduce the possibility of being identified. When they leave the Fonteneaus’ house, Ka dreads the long journey home, knowing that she must come to terms with what she has learned about her father’s dark past.

Seven

A Haitian immigrant in New York is about to be reunited with his wife, whom he has not seen in seven years, since they were married in Haiti. He has spent those years working, saving, and acquiring a green card so that he can bring his wife to the United States. The man, who works two jobs as a janitor, shares a basement apartment with Michel and Dany, two other Haitian immigrants. They rent the apartment from a Haitian immigrant couple (who later turn out to be Ka’s parents).

The man greets his wife at JFK airport and drives her home, pleased that she has taken trouble with her appearance in honor of the occasion. That night they make love. He goes to work the next morning, leaving her at home, where she listens to Haitian radio stations. She spends an entire week in the apartment, fearful that she would get lost if she ventured outside. She passes the time cooking and listening to the radio, which informs her of the troubles of being a Haitian immigrant in New York. She also writes letters home. On the weekend, her husband takes her to a park in Brooklyn, and she thinks back to times they spent in Haiti together. She is conscious of being in a strange land where she does not speak the language.

Water Child

Nadine is a thirty-year-old Haitian immigrant who lives alone in Brooklyn and works as a nurse in the Ear, Nose and Throat department of a hospital. Her parents in Haiti write to her, urging her to call more often, but she feels disinclined to do so. Having split up with her boyfriend, she still suffers mental pain from the abortion she had seven months ago. She lives an isolated life.

Nadine has to deal with the distress of a patient in the ward, Ms. Hinds, a woman who has had a laryngectomy, leaving her without the ability to speak. Nadine has to train Ms. Hinds to write down what she wants to say.

That night, Nadine tries to call Eric, her ex-boyfriend, but finds that he now has an unlisted number. (Eric is the man in “Seven,” who has now been reunited with his wife.) She calls her mother instead, but they are unable to talk of anything important.

The next day, after she says good-bye to Ms. Hinds, Nadine sees a distorted, enlarged reflection of herself in the metal of the elevator doors, which reminds her of her aborted pregnancy and the fact that the baby would have been born that week.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

·         An unabridged audio CD of The Dew Breaker was published in 2004 by Recorded Books.

The Book of Miracles

This story is narrated by Anne, the wife of the dew breaker, as she, her husband, and their daughter drive to a Christmas Eve Mass. Anne is the only member of the family who believes in miracles and is eagerly anticipating the midnight Mass, which is the only time she and her family go to church together. During the Mass, Ka spots a man she thinks is Emmanuel Constant, who is wanted for murder and torture committed when he led a death squad in Haiti. Fliers have been posted in the neighborhood with his picture on them. Anne worries that one day her husband’s face may appear on a similar flier. She also worries that one day her daughter may find out about her father’s past. As she goes to take Holy Communion, Anne looks at the man and realizes he is not Constant. But she decides never again to attend Mass for fear that someone might recognize her husband.

Night Talkers

Dany, the tenant in “Seven,” returns to the Haitian countryside to visit his blind aunt, Estina Estème, who lives in a one-room house in a valley. Dany wants to tell her that he has found in New York the man who killed his parents and was also responsible for blinding her. When Dany tries to tell his aunt his story he is interrupted by a visitor, but that night he dreams about the conversation he wants to have with her. He recalls the night his family’s home was blown up and his parents shot. He was six years old, and he remembers seeing the man responsible for the carnage, who threatened to shoot him as well. After Dany found himself living in the house of the guilty man in New York, he once went to the man’s bedroom at night, intent on killing him. But he lost the desire to kill out of fear that he might be mistaken about the man’s identity. Dany does not get the chance to tell his aunt the full story because one night she dies in her sleep.

The Bridal Seamstress

Aline Cajuste, a young Haitian-American who is an intern journalist with a Haitian-American periodical, interviews Beatrice Saint Fort, who is retiring from her job as a bridal seamstress. Beatrice is also originally from Haiti. After the interview, they walk in the neighborhood, and Beatrice points out the house where a Haitian prison guard lives. She tells Aline that, when she was young and still living in Haiti, this man, angry that she refused to go dancing with him, took her to a prison where he whipped the soles of her feet. Intrigued by Beatrice’s story, Aline later takes a close look at the house, but a neighbor tells her that no one lives there. She goes back to Beatrice and says the house is empty, but Beatrice replies that the man always lives in empty houses, otherwise he would be caught and sent to prison. She thinks that he is always able to find her, wherever she lives. Aline concludes that the woman’s anguish over what she suffered has left her mentally unbalanced.

Monkey Tails

Michel, the tenant at the dew breaker’s house in New York, looks back at a traumatic day in Haiti in 1986, when he was a fatherless twelve-year-old boy. The dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier has just been driven from power, and members of the dictator’s once-feared militia, the Tonton Macoutes, are being attacked in the streets by the angry populace. Michel seeks out his friend Romain, an older boy, who was abandoned by his father, Regulas. Regulas is a militia member who is being sought by the local people because of the crimes he committed against them. Romain and Michel decide to escape the chaos by going to a hotel, but they are unable to get a room. It turns out that Romain thought he might find his father at the hotel. While they are there, Romain lets slip that Michel’s father is a local man named Christophe. Michel had suspected this but had never been willing to acknowledge it. Romain then says he is fleeing the country, and Michel is to go home to his mother. The next day Michel discovers that Regulas shot himself to avoid being captured. Michel never hears of Romain again.

The Funeral Singer

Rézia, Mariselle, and Freda, three young female Haitian immigrants in New York in the 1970s, become friends when they are the only Haitian students in an English class. …

Stella, first published in 1859, is an imaginative retelling of Haiti’s fight for independence from slavery and French colonialism.  Set during the years of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), Stella tells the story of two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who help transform their homeland from the French colony of Saint-Domingue to the independent republic of Haiti. Inspired by the sacrifice of their African mother Marie and Stella, the spirit of Liberty, Romulus and Remus must learn to work together to found a new country based on the principles of freedom and equality. This new translation and critical edition of Émeric Bergeaud’s allegorical novel makes Stella available to English-speaking audiences for the first time.

Considered the first novel written by a Haitian, Stella tells of the devastation and deprivation that colonialism and slavery wrought upon Bergeaud’s homeland. Unique among nineteenth-century accounts, Stella gives a pro-Haitian version of the Haitian Revolution, a bloody but just struggle that emancipated a people, and it charges future generations with remembering the sacrifices and glory of their victory.  Bergeaud’s novel demonstrates that the Haitians—not the French—are the true inheritors of the French Revolution, and that Haiti is the realization of its republican ideals. At a time in which Haitian Studies is becoming increasingly important within the English-speaking world, this edition calls attention to the rich though under-examined world of nineteenth-century Haiti.