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A story of love, violence, and race set at the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution
in 1791, African American writer Arna Bontemps’s Drums
at Dusk immerses readers in the opulent and brutal—yet
also very fragile—society of France’s richest
colony, Saint Domingue. First published in 1939, this novel
explores the complex web of tensions connecting wealthy plantation
owners, poor whites, free people of color, and the slaves
who stunned the colony and the globe by uniting in a carefully
planned uprising. The novel’s hero, Diron Desautels,
a white Creole born in Saint Domingue who belongs to the French
antislavery group Société des Amis des Noirs,
attempts to spread his message of “liberty, equality,
fraternity” in a world fraught with conflict.
Imaginatively inhabiting a wide spectrum of Haitian voices,
including those of white indentured servants, female slaves,
and Toussaint L’Ouverture, who later emerged as the
revolution’s best-known hero, Bontemps’s work
reflects not only the intricacies of Haitian society on the
eve of the revolution, but also a black artist’s vision
of Haiti in the twentieth century, during the U.S. Marines’
occupation and at the brink of war in Europe.
A new introduction by Michael P. Bibler and Jessica Adams
reveals how Drums at Dusk—even seventy years
after its original publication—contributes to contemporary
studies of the American South as part of the larger plantation
region of the Caribbean, and inspires a reevaluation of assumptions
about revolution, race, and nationalism.
Born in Alexandria, Louisiana, Arna Bontemps
(1902–1973) deeply involved himself in the Harlem Renaissance
and carved out a long career as a writer and academic. He
is author of Black Thunder and other novels and editor
of Father of the Blues: An Autobiography by W. C. Handy.
He also wrote poetry, short stories, and essays.
Michael P. Bibler teaches American literature
at the University of Manchester and is the author of Cotton’s
Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the
Southern Plantation, 1936–1968.
Jessica Adams is the author of Wounds
of Returning: Race, Memory, and Property on the Postslavery
Plantation. |
