Cruel Destiny and The White Negress: Two Novels by Cleante Desgraves Valcin

ClÉante Desgraves Valcin was a poet, writer, and feminist who explored race, gender, nationalism, and sovereignty in her sentimental fiction. Her two acclaimed novels, Cruel Destiny (1929) and The White Negress (1934), are now available in English translation, offering a fresh spin on the tragic mulatta trope and revealing the racial prejudices, class tensions, and anti-colonial resentments of an island under American occupation.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 14 June 2024
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

ClÉante Desgraves Valcin (1891-1956) was a poet, writer, and feminist who is best known for being Haiti's first published female novelist. She used her sentimental fiction to explore issues of race, gender, nationalism, and sovereignty. Valcin was a contemporary of Harlem Renaissance writers such as Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston and emerged as an influential writer and political figure among the Black Atlantic diaspora. Her two acclaimed novels, Cruel Destiny (1929) and The White Negress (1934), are now available in English translation. Cruel Destiny tells the tragic love story of Armand and Adeline, who are drawn together by a magnetic attraction but kept apart by a dark family secret. It also explores the troubled and twisted relationships between the Haitians and their former colonial masters, the French. The White Negress tells the story of a Frenchwoman who moves to Haiti and is torn between two very different men, a Black Haitian lawyer and a white American carpetbagger. Valcin reveals the racial prejudices, class tensions, and anti-colonial resentments of an island under American occupation. Together, these two novels expand our understanding of Caribbean literature and the political struggles and artistic triumphs of Black women in the Americas.

Weight: 567g
Dimension: 229 x 152 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978837591