Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982–2017, By John Patrick Walsh

Reviewed by: Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982–2017 by John Patrick Walsh Michele Kenfack Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982–2017 BY JOHN PATRICK WALSH Liverpool UP, 2019. ix + 254 pp. ISBN 9781786941633 paper. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti reconfigured the literary landscape by exacerbating (re)writing and archival practices, as writers sought to create a space for therapeutic self-expression, for rebuilding, and for filling in the gaps in official records. If critical analyses of post-earthquake texts have underlined the correlation between natural disasters and various historical, political, social, and economic cleavages within the country, the ecological concerns of Haitian writers have often been overlooked. [End Page 248] John Patrick Walsh's Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982–2017, offers a Haitian ecocritical perspective grounded in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Walsh (re)centers the discourse about the interconnections between human and environmental concerns around the often-marginalized voices of Haitian writers. By connecting and analyzing past and recent fictional and nonfictional works through the lens of "migration and refuge," he uses literature as an "echo-archive" to demonstrate that before the earthquake, Haitian literary production has long exposed intertwined social, political, and ecological disasters. The first part of the book combines conceptual and historical discussions with textual analyses. Walsh's theory of an "eco-archive" is rooted in the relationship between human experience and nature. Indeed, as he argues, "writers draw inspiration from the symbolic and material links between language and environment to compose texts that represent ecologies of Haitian experience" (34). Haitian fundamental migrant experience is at the center of his ecocritical analysis, which explores the dynamics that shape the interaction between migrants and the environment. An ecological poetics emerges from the key figure of the refugee, and from symbolic images such as the boat, the journey, and the abyss, through overlapping political and environmental problems as well as interconnected temporalities. Walsh further explains the concept of "eco-archive" by comparing Caribbean ecological thought to its North American and European counterparts. Such a contrastive analysis, however, undermines the very purpose of the book: against the backdrop of Western controversies, the multiple voices of Haitian environmentalist discourse are barely heard. The broader Caribbean literary landscape provides a dynamic and more effective conceptual space to reflect on Haitian literature as an "eco-archive." Indeed, Caribbean writers recount a common, dark history that echoes across space and time. By juxtaposing Caribbean fiction and nonfiction, including Jacques Roumain's Gouverneurs de la rosée, Louis-Philippe Dalembert's L'autre face de la mer, and Edouard Glissant's Poétique de la relation, Walsh reveals a Haitian ecological approach that conceives nature as a mnemonic device for perpetuating history within the framework of an ecological "poetics grounded in histories of migration" (46). John Patrick Walsh pays close attention to several texts in order to explore the archival function of Haitian literature, which is activated through writers' creative endeavors to record and interrogate history. Within the framework of this creativity, literary representations reimagine the connection between history and nature and thus bridge the gap between historical contexts while erasing temporal and spatial borders. Walsh's central preoccupation is the refugee crisis caused by forced migration that stems from social and political instability. It is particularly interesting to discover how he unveils René Philoctète's poetic imaginary that blends language and archival knowledge to retell the story of the "Parsley Massacre." He contends that in Le peuple des terres mêlées, the novelist portrays the interwoven stories of the people and the land, tying them to a longer history of struggle and violence, and thus, transforming "an apparent border into an ecopoetic site of memory" (58). The unfolding stories of refugees engaged in various modes of survival reveal to the reader another key figure of Walsh's theory, that is, the migrant [End Page 249] writer, who travels to different places and as such experiences an acute sense of displacement. Walsh is especially interested in how the constant mobility of exiled writers influences their literary production. His study sheds light on their ability to combine multiple...

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