Dear Haiti, Love Alaine


Book Description

“I couldn’t put Dear Haiti, Love Alaine down!” —New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory “An enchanting and engrossing novel full of wit and laughter.” —Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory “Remarkable, funny, and whip-smart.” —Ibi Zoboi, author of American Street, National Book Award finalist “Maika and Maritza Moulite have created quite the masterpiece.” —NPR.org “Alaine’s sarcastic quips...are worth the price of admission alone.” —HYPEBAE “A beautiful story from start to finish.” —Buzzfeed Alaine Beauparlant has heard about Haiti all her life... But the stories were always passed down from her dad—and her mom, when she wasn’t too busy with her high-profile newscaster gig. But when Alaine’s life goes a bit sideways, it’s time to finally visit Haiti herself. What she learns about Haiti’s proud history as the world’s first black republic (with its even prouder people) is one thing, but what she learns about her own family is another. Suddenly, the secrets Alaine’s mom has been keeping, including a family curse that has spanned generations, can no longer be avoided. It’s a lot to handle, without even mentioning that Alaine is also working for her aunt’s nonprofit, which sends underprivileged kids to school and boasts one annoyingly charming intern. But if anyone can do it all...it’s Alaine. “Delightful.” —Essence magazine “Alaine Beauparlant is YA’s new favorite heroine.” —Author Nina Moreno for Bustle “Seamlessly blending story lines and allusions to Haiti’s history and culture, the authors create an indelible, believable character in Alaine—naive, dynamic, and brutally honest—who stretches and grows as her remarkable, affectingly rendered family relationships do.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Sisters Maika and Maritza Moulite deliver a phenomenal coming-of-age story with this stunning novel.” —Booklist (starred review) “Enchanting.” —Kirkus Reviews Winner of a Parent’s Choice Award!




Haiti, I Love You


Book Description

Hati, I Love You, the fifth book of poetry, is a love collection for everyone to share one




Finding Chika


Book Description

"Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can’t help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic.” --Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club and The Art of Memoir From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom’s most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, “No one in Haiti can help you with.” Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost. Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed—a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.




Love, Anger, Madness


Book Description

The only English translation of “a masterpiece” (The Nation)—a stunning trilogy of novellas about the soul-crushing cost of life under a violent Haitian dictatorship, featuring an introduction by Edwidge Danticat Originally published in 1968, Love, Anger, Madness virtually disappeared from circulation until its republication in France in 2005. Set in the barely fictionalized Haiti of “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s repressive rule, Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s writing was so powerful and so incendiary that she was forced to flee to the United States. Yet Love, Anger, Madness endures. Claire, the narrator of Love, is the eldest of three daughters who surrenders her dreams of marriage to run the household after her parents die. Insecure about her dark skin, she fantasizes about her middle sister’s French husband, while he has an affair with the youngest sister, setting in motion a complicated family dynamic that echoes the growing chaos outside their home. In Anger, the police terrorize a middle-class family by threatening to seize their land. The father insinuates that their only hope of salvation lies with an unspeakable act—his daughter Rose must prostitute herself—which leads to all-consuming guilt, shame, and rage. And finally, Madness paints a terrifying portrait of a Haitian village that has been ravaged by militants. René, a young poet, is trapped in his family’s house for days with no food and becomes obsessed with the souls of the dead that surround him.




Wandering Memory


Book Description

The daughter of Haitian journalist and pro-democracy activist Jean Léopold Dominique, who was assassinated in 2000, Jan J. Dominique offers a memoir that provides a uniquely personal perspective on the tumultuous end of the twentieth century in Haiti. Wandering Memory is her elegy for a father and an ode to a beloved, suffering homeland. The book charts the biographical, emotional, and literary journey of a woman moving from one place to another, attempting to return to her craft and put together the pieces of her life in the aftermath of family tragedy. Dominique writes eloquently about love, loss, and traumas both horrifically specific and tragically universal. For readers familiar with Jean Dominique and his life’s work at Radio Haïti, the book offers an intimate perspective on a tale of mythic proportions. For the reading public at large, it offers an approachable and resonant introduction to contemporary Haitian literature, history, and identity.




Speak With a New York Accent


Book Description

Finally, the go-to handbook for pulling off a convincing New York Accent. Hollywood dialect coach Ivan Borodin invites you to benefit from twenty years of preparing actors for stage and screen. The New York born instructor outlines the major aspects of this famously aggressive accent, including: *Monotone delivery *Increased nasality *Favoring the upper lip *'Yuge' changes *Unraveling contractions After going through this program, you'll have the audience convinced you're a New Yorker mid-way through your first sentence. This course is innovatively supported by free-to-access YouTube videos. Study this book while a veteran dialect coach spoon feeds you the subtleties of the accent. Interested in mastering a New York accent? Then this course will take you there in a very different way. Benefit from the best of two decades of experience. Awaken the New Yorker in you with this straightforward publication from a dialectician with a profound love of accents. 'Speak with a New York Accent' takes the exotic art of performing with dialects and delivers easy-to-follow lessons. Break all barriers to learning the New York accent with this book, and at your next audition the casting directors will be scraping their jaws off the floor. This program is also extremely helpful for comedians and voice-over artists. Ivan Borodin has taught dialects and accent reduction since 1993 at Los Angeles City College and Los Angeles Valley College Community Services, and several other schools. He has worked as a dialect coach on several films, including 'The Truth about Angels'.




God Loves Haiti


Book Description

A native of Haiti, Dimitry Elias Léger makes his remarkable debut with this story of romance, politics, and religion that traces the fates of three lovers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the challenges they face readjusting to life after an earthquake devastates their city. Reflecting the chaos of disaster and its aftermath, God Loves Haiti switches between time periods and locations, yet always moves closer to solving the driving mystery at its center: Will the artist Natasha Robert reunite with her one true love, the injured Alain Destiné, and live happily ever after? Warm and constantly surprising, told in the incandescent style of José Saramago and Roberto Bolaño, and reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez’s hauntingly beautiful Love in The Time of Cholera, God Loves Haiti is an homage to a lost time and city, and the people who embody it.




Creole Meets English: Kreglish - The Easiest Way to Learn Creole


Book Description

Make Learning, Understanding, and Speaking Creole Easy & Fast! The Smart Way with Kreglish! If you're one of the people who thinks learning a new language is hard and time consuming then this is the book for you. Kreglish is a new way to learn Creole that makes mastering the language a quick and simple process. This Creole language learning book will help you recognize Creole alphabets, identify the words and teach you to pronounce them with confidence. Kreglish isn't just a book, it's a new methodology that will help you learn Creole in the shortest time so you can keep up with most conversations while laying a solid foundation for the future. Teach Yourself Creole Anytime & Anywhere! Whether you're on a flight and only have a couple of hours to learn Creole or simply planning a vacation, this book will allow you to easily teach yourself Creole without taking up all your time. You can bring Creole Meets English along and learn enough during the flight to be able to communicate when you get there. It's filled with most words, phrases, and examples you need to know to get through your trip. Coupled with the unique self-instruction resources, it allows you to hold a conversation with a native speaker under various situations in less than 24 hours! It's the perfect choice for travelers or anyone else who wants to expand their skill set. It can also be used to teach kids Creole from an early age. Key Features of Kreglish: Build a Foundation Allows you to start speaking Creole immediately using essential words and phrases. Learn with Confidence Helps you learn phrases and words to formulate full sentences and actual conversations. Achieve Your Goals Helps you develop practical language skills instead of simply memorizing vocabulary. Learn from what You Know We use hundreds of words that are spelled the same way in English and Creole to help you understand faster and better. Made for Everyone Filled with sentences and mocked conversations for adoptive parents, adopted children, vacationers, business travelers, and medical professionals Start learning Creole today and begin speaking like a native. Meet Your Goals With Creole Meets English




The Councillor


Book Description

When the death of Iron Queen Sarelin Brey fractures the realm of Elira, Lysande Prior, the palace scholar and the queen's closest friend, is appointed Councillor. Publically, Lysande must choose the next monarch from amongst the city-rulers vying for the throne. Privately, she seeks to discover which ruler murdered the queen, suspecting the use of magic. Resourceful, analytical, and quiet, Lysande appears to embody the motto she was raised with: everything in its place. Yet while she hides her drug addiction from her new associates, she cannot hide her growing interest in power. She becomes locked in a game of strategy with the city-rulers - especially the erudite prince Luca Fontaine, who seems to shift between ally and rival. Further from home, an old enemy is stirring: the magic-wielding White Queen is on the move again, and her alliance with a traitor among the royal milieu poses a danger not just to the peace of the realm, but to the survival of everything that Lysande cares about




Krik? Krak!


Book Description

Arriving one year after the Haitian-American's first novel (Breath, Eyes, Memory) alerted critics to her compelling voice, these 10 stories, some of which have appeared in small literary journals, confirm Danticat's reputation as a remarkably gifted writer. Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly those struggling to survive under the brutal Duvalier regime, Danticat illuminates the distance between people's desires and the stifling reality of their lives. A profound mix of Catholicism and voodoo spirituality informs the tales, bestowing a mythic importance on people described in the opening story, "Children of the Sea," as those "in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves." The ceaseless grip of dictatorship often leads men to emotionally abandon their families, like the husband in "A Wall of Fire Rising," who dreams of escaping in a neighbor's hot-air balloon. The women exhibit more resilience, largely because of their insistence on finding meaning and solidarity through storytelling; but Danticat portrays these bonds with an honesty that shows that sisterhood, too, has its power plays. In the book's final piece, "Epilogue: Women Like Us," she writes: "Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter's mouths so they say nothing more." The stories inform and enrich one another, as the female characters reveal a common ancestry and ties to the fictional Ville Rose. In addition to the power of Danticat's themes, the book is enhanced by an element of suspense (we're never certain, for example, if a rickety boat packed with refugees introduced in the first tale will reach the Florida coast). Spare, elegant and moving, these stories cohere into a superb collection.