New Books In French Studies

Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.” Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall’s Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games (University Press of Mississippi, 2021) illustrates how this holds true not just in the writing of historical narratives but also the history of film. The book shows how one of the most important revolutions in world history, a revolt in which enslaved people fought for their freedom and created the first majority Black and post-slavery republic, has been silenced, ridiculed, or whitewashed by American and European film makers. She introduces us to Haitian directors such as Raoul Peck who want to tell their own story, free of white saviors but with the full horrors of slavery. The boo