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    Hadriana in All My Dreams
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    Hadriana in All My Dreams
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    Hadriana in All My Dreams
    Ebook196 pages2 hours

    Hadriana in All My Dreams

    By René Depestre and Edwidge Danticat

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Included in "10 Best New Books to Read This May," Chicago Review of Books.

    "Originally published in 1988 and written by one of Haiti’s seminal authors, still with us at age 90, this vibrant, erotically charged work shows how humans counter fear—particularly the fear of death—in varied more or less magical ways, even as it paints a fresh and enticing picture of Haitian culture. . .Luscious and affirmative reading, this is work both the serious-minded and the lighthearted can enjoy."
    —Library Journal, Starred review

    "Depestre presents a rich and nuanced exploration of large and significant themes expertly couched in one fantastical, expertly translated tale."
    —Booklist, Starred review

    "One-of-a-kind...[A] ribald, free-wheeling magical-realist novel, first published in 1988 and newly, engagingly translated by Glover. . .An icon of Haitian literature serves up a hotblooded, rib-ticking, warmhearted mélange of ghost story, cultural inquiry, folk art, and véritable l'amour."
    —Kirkus Reviews, Starred review

    "The sights and sounds of Haiti’s vibrant carnival season invigorate this tale of vodou and Haitian culture. . .The truth of Hadriana’s fate proves more poignant than horrifying, but in Depestre’s hands, this incident is a touchstone of a culture in which distinctions between the empirical and spiritual are obscured, and whose traditional celebrations and beliefs introduce an element of the mythic into the everyday. Eroticism and humor course through his narrative. Depestre’s intimacy with his subject matter and his familiarity with the people he portrays—the story is set in his hometown, at the time when he was 12 years old—give readers an insider’s look at Jacmelian culture."
    —Publishers Weekly

    "For the first time, this slim and beguiling novel about the mysterious death and possible zombification of a young woman on her wedding day has been translated into English...With its lyrical commentary on the origins of myth, this mesmeric and frequently erotic work transcends its focus on a young woman to address the complexities of race, class and religion."
    —Shelf Awareness for Readers, Starred Review

    With a foreword by Edwidge Danticat. Translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover.

    Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.

    Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti's Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre's lusty claim that all beings—even the undead ones—have a right to happiness and true love.

    From the introduction by Edwidge Danticat:

    Despestre offers us the kind of tale we rarely get in the hundreds of zombie stories featuring Haitians, stories set both inside and outside of Haiti. In Hadriana in All My Dreams we get both langaj—the secret language of Haitian Vodou—as well as the type of descriptive, elegiac, erotic, and satirical language, and the artistic license needed to create this most nuanced and powerful novel.

    Kaiama L. Glover is an associate professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, coeditor of Yale French Studies' Revisiting Marie Vieux-Chauvet: Paradoxes o

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAkashic Books
    Release dateMay 2, 2017
    ISBN9781617755552
    Unavailable
    Hadriana in All My Dreams
    Author

    René Depestre

    René Depestre, born in 1926, is one of the most important voices of Haitian literature. A peer of seminal figures like Aimé Césaire, Pablo Neruda, and André Breton, Depestre has engaged with the politics/aesthetics of negritude, social realism, and surrealism for more than half a century. Having lived through significant moments in Haitian and New World history--from the overthrow of Haitian dictator Élie Lescot in 1946, to the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris in 1956, to a struggle with Haiti's François "Papa Doc" Duvalier in 1957, to a collaboration with Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and a fraught relationship with Fidel Castro in the 1960s and '70s--Depestre is uniquely positioned to reflect on the extent to which the Americas and Europe are implicated in Haiti's past and present. He is the author of Hadriana in All My Dreams.

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    Reviews for Hadriana in All My Dreams

    3.5/5

    11 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Depestre's novel is beautiful depiction of Haitian culture, the likes of which I had never been exposed. The story of Hadriana Siloe's tragic death and the following complications between her family's Catholic faith and the town of Jacmel's Vodoo traditions sets up a wonderful story of cultural melding, communal loss of a beloved child of the town, and enduring love. Patrick, the narrator and close friend of Hadriana, takes the audience through the tumultuous events leading up to Hadriana's wedding, death, and zombification while ever lamenting the loss of his beloved. The novel is riveting, inspiring, and absolutely fascinating.
    • 5/5
      A classic of Haitian literature, Hadriana In All My Dreams is a vibrant and sensual tale about Carnival in Jacmel, the magic of Voodoo, the mystery of zombification, a lascivious butterfly, lots of sex (with a multitude of creative words and phrases for describing genitalia), and a young woman's death on her wedding night which sends an entire town into mourning. The story is written with lush, beautiful sexy language that brings Haitian culture to life in a way that's haunting and powerful.
    • 1/5
      Every review I see here likes the book, or loves the book, so please read this review with caution: it could very well be that I'm about to describe my own problems rather than the book's. Let me also say that I've started and put this book down three times and now I'm giving up. Why? Because what other reviewers are calling "erotic" I would call a romanticization of rape that feels unrelenting in the book's early pages. "Superb adolescents, having gone to bed virgins, safe within the cocoon of the family would awaken dismayed, with blood everywhere, brutally deflowered" (40). But it's okay, because these girls, adolescents in this paragraph, are described as "women" in the next, and we're told that, despite the blood and brutality, they had dreams of "swooning joy" (40). To which I say, there are plenty of books that don't ask me to pretend that rape is no big deal, so why should I waste my time with this piece of shit?
    • 5/5
      I happily join the one other person (as of the writing of this review) who felt that this novel was a 5 star read. This was the most fantastical, erotic read of the year by a long mile. The language, despite being a translation, is marvelous with a rhythmic cadence that can make it feel like the narrator is short of breath. I found this riveting, rather than distracting. I also found the blunt nature of the magical realism refreshing. I would certainly recommend this read with the caveat that I feel this is a novel you will either love or not.
    • 4/5
      This was an interesting read with beautifully written prose. The opening chapter led me to believe that this would be a magical love story between a transformative being and Hadriana. However, it was basically a vivid, ethnographic portrayal of carnival and the zombie process in a provincial village. The writing was fluid enough to make it an entertaining read but there was never a character I could really care deeply about; I was watching their story instead of feeling like I was a part of it. The middle section of the narrative allowed the author to politically and culturally dissect Haiti culture in a colonial context; it was interesting how Depestre weaved that into the story although, I don't think he delved far enough on how "zombies" could be seen to represent the oppressed colonized. Overall, it was a good book. I will give his other novels a go.
    • 4/5
      A humorous, erotic, dreamlike, magical-realist tale of Voudou, Zombies, and folklore. Hadiana presents a microcosm of Haitian (more specifically Jacmelian) culture set in the late 1930s when the author would have been a pre-teen. The book is a very warm recounting of all-things Haitian; a sort of love story/memoir of and for Haiti by a homegrown author who left in near-permanent exile to become a Marxist activist and promote global anti-European decolonization efforts after WWII.Although I enjoyed the work greatly (it's full of warmth, color, and sensuality), I found the overall message somewhat puzzling as is often the case with magical-realist and surrealist novels. Hadriana appears to involve racial and sexual catharsis, but perhaps is intended simply as entertainment touching on myriad aspects of Haitian culture, again as love memoir. Likely it was meant to be fully understood only by native Haitians. Regardless, I highly recommend it!
    • 4/5
      Translated from French, Hadriana In All My Dreams is a tale of zombies and romance, Voodoo and eroticism in Haiti in the late 1930's. The narrator tells the tale of Hadriana and others who come into contact with supernatural forces, and the beliefs of the Haitians in the city of Jacmel. Depestre does a good job contrasting Voodoo and Catholicism and the relation of the native islanders to Hadriana and her family, a weatlhy white family from France. Eroticism plays a significant part of the tale, an aspect of Voodoo I was unaware of. Some of the language used related to the erotic details seemed a little off or forced, so it was helpful to read to interpreter's notes at the end where she says " figuring out how to translate Depestre's twenty or so terms for human genitalia indeed had me stretching the limits of the English language" to make me forgive some of the terms used that seemed unusual and at times, laughable. The author paints a vivid picture of Haiti and the island and its culture are one the centerpieces of this novel and I feel handled very well. The story itself bogs down in the middle- there is a lack of suspense at points, I feel - without giving much away, I will only say certain outcomes seemed inevitable but a number of pages were spent where the tale didn't seem to get any closer to resolution. Overall, the descriptions of Haiti, the contrast between Voodoo and Catholicism as well as the wealth white French family and their relations to the Haitians made this a good read and make me interested to seek our more of Depestre's work.Thanks to the publisher Akashic Books for the advance reading copy.
    • 5/5
      Haitian René Depestre’s novel is to zombie literature as Mary Shelley’s book is to mad scientists and monsters or Bram Stoker’s is to vampires. Sure, there is a healthy serving of the fantastical here, but there is also so much more. Recommended to anyone interested in the historical social makeup of Haiti or colonialism in general.
    • 3/5
      Mooie parabel van 18-jarige Hadriana Silo?, een blanke Francaise die in Jacmel woont en op de dag van haar huwelijk, voor het altaar ineenstuikt en voor dood neervalt. En daarna een zogenaamd zombie-bestaan leidt en vooral de auteur achtervolgt op zijn lange trektocht weg van zijn vaderland. Uiteindelijk vindt hij haar terug in Jamaica, waar ze blijkt naar toe gevlucht te zijn.Vele surrealistische elementen, uitgebreid geput uit de Haitiaanse verbeeldingswereld. Documentair ook heel interessant over het zombie-fenomeen en over de clash tussen katholicisme en voodoo. Allegorie van de Haitiaan in de migratie die ver weg van zijn vaderland er niet van losgeraakt.Mooie compositie, maar op het einde vrij abrupt tot stilstand en vele vragen nog onbeantwoord.
    • 3/5
      Mooie parabel van 18-jarige Hadriana Siloé, een blanke Francaise die in Jacmel woont en op de dag van haar huwelijk, voor het altaar ineenstuikt en voor dood neervalt. En daarna een zogenaamd zombie-bestaan leidt en vooral de auteur achtervolgt op zijn lange trektocht weg van zijn vaderland. Uiteindelijk vindt hij haar terug in Jamaica, waar ze blijkt naar toe gevlucht te zijn.Vele surrealistische elementen, uitgebreid geput uit de Haitiaanse verbeeldingswereld. Documentair ook heel interessant over het zombie-fenomeen en over de clash tussen katholicisme en voodoo. Allegorie van de Haitiaan in de migratie die ver weg van zijn vaderland er niet van losgeraakt.Mooie compositie, maar op het einde vrij abrupt tot stilstand en vele vragen nog onbeantwoord.
    • 4/5
      Hadriana dans tous mes rêves is essentially the story of a beautiful young woman who collapses on her wedding day in Jacmel in 1938, is buried, and then goes missing from the cemetery. And we all know what it means when a Haitian corpse goes missing...The highlight of the book is of course the description of the Jacmel carnival, intended as a celebration of the wedding of the most popular young people in town but in the event a gloriously extravagant voudou wake around Hadriana's open coffin. Depestre is particularly interested in how the participants' perception of events is influenced by their belief in the supernatural, so we get this twice in subtly different forms, once from Patrick's impressionable point of view and once from Hadriana's more detached perspective. Either way, it's quite a party, and Depestre pulls out all the stops to give us the kind of extravagant description that wouldn't be out of place in a novel written in the 20s or 30s. Everything is very heavily eroticised, at times to an extent verging on the pornographic. Depestre is obviously making a point about the way sexual fantasies reinforce and encourage collective beliefs, but he's also clearly taking advantage of his privileged position as author to indulge his own sexual fantasies. This may be a book about an independent-minded young woman triumphing over a macho culture, but it doesn't really seem to qualify as a feminist work.There's some amazing writing here, and it's definitely an interesting and enjoyable book to read, but I did end up with an uncomfortable feeling that Depestre was cheating a bit: we get both an entertaining, erotically-charged zombie story and a Marxist, postcolonial account of how voudou beliefs fit into the dominant ideology, but he plays the postmodern joker and refuses to commit to either of those ways of reading the book.
    • 4/5
      I received the book, HADRIANA IN ALL MY DREAMS: A NOVEL from Akashic Books in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.HADRIANA IN ALL MY DREAMS: A NOVEL by Rene’ Despestre and newly translated by Kaiama L. Glover, is a reprint of this title first published in 1988.The author, Rene’ Despestre, is a very distinguished and respected writer. His is a very strong and important voice representing Haitian literature. Born in 1926, Rene’ Despestre has “lived through significant moments in Haitian and New World history” and “is uniquely positioned to reflect on the extent to which the Americas and Europe are implicated in Haiti’s past and present”.HADRIANA IN ALL MY DREAMS is a classic piece, winning the French Prix Renaudot and other prestigious prizes upon publication (in 1988).The book consists of a Table of Contents; a map; a foreword by Edwidge Danticat; a glossary of terms and the translator’s note. Contents include 3 main parts - First Movement, Second Movement, Third Movement with 6 main chapters (and their subsequent parts).The glossary was very interesting and helpful, as was the foreword and translator’s note. Chapter Six, Hadriana’s Tale, was an important chapter; as was Parts 5 & 6 of Chapter Four, Requiem for a Creole Fairy, which defines a zombie and tells us about the zombie process or a ‘Zombiferous Pharmacopoeia’.In January of 1938, a young woman, Hadriana Siloe’ and her fiance Hector Danoze, are to be married at the Saint Philippe and Saint Jacque Church in the southern Haitian town of Jacmel. With the ‘death’ of Hadriana on the altar steps as she was about to say ‘I Do’, a “pitiless battle began between the two belief systems that have long gone head-to-head in the Haitian imagination; Christianity and Vodou”. [Vodou is defined in the glossary as “popular Haitian religion born of the syncretism of rites originating in sub-Saharan Africa and Catholic beliefs; an agrarian cult that plays the same role in Haitian life as that of pagan sects in ancient societies.”]I must admit that I am not very familiar with the complexities and subtleties of Haitian culture. I made many forays into history books and atlases from which I learned much - about geography, the exploration and exploitation of the Americas, the horrendous slave trade and Haitian religious and cultural beliefs. This book was very interesting to read - entertaining; humorous at times; puzzling (often); a story of magic, fantasy, love, culture clashes, carnival scenes, hysteria, sensualness, sex, eroticism, local traditions, nostalgia, gender and race. It is one of the most exotic and unusual stories I have ever read. It isn’t everyday that one reads about a recipe that will turn another person into a zombie.I liked the outline map. I must say (again) that the glossary was interesting and helpful, as was the foreword and translator’s note. The carnival hysteria; the costumes and parade of characters at the funeral; the characters themselves - all set the tone and pace and sense of place. Some interesting bits that helped define the story for me a bit more were the following:p. 124 “that the real Haiti had been exposed.” “The Jacemelians - with their necrophilic imagination had incorporated their daughter into a fairy tale”.p. 127 an explanation of Haiti and zombiespp. 149-154 Chapter 5, Part 2 Letter from JacmelAll in all, a very unusual, interesting book.
    • 4/5
      Several years ago, I was doing research on Haitian Vodou and was surprised to find so little authentic material out there. Only two sources provided glimpses into Vodou's mysterious beliefs and practices – Zora Neal Hurston’s Tell My Horse and filmmaker Maya Deren’s documentary, “Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti.” Both Hurston and Deren spent considerable time in small Haitian communities, gaining the trust of the locals, in order to gain unprecedented access to rites and ceremonies that outsiders normally never see.I’ve never encountered any fiction that has done justice to this misunderstood religion; it all tends to focus on the more sensationalistic elements (e.g, ritual animal sacrifice and zombies), but Rene Depestre’s amazing Hadriana In All My Dreams rectifies that. Briefly, it tells the story of a beautiful and much beloved young French woman who dies at the altar on her wedding day, in front of the entire Haitian village of Jacmel. But she isn’t truly dead. She has been turned into a zombie by an evil sorcerer who wants her for his own. The tale unfolds through the eyes of a teenaged boy who is a confidant and secret admirer of Hadriana, as well as Hadriana herself, who recounts her horrific experience of being trapped in a seemingly lifeless body while the townsfolk and her family argue over her funeral rites.While this might all sound like the stuff of horror fiction, Depestre’s novel is actual filled with ribald humor, steamy sexuality and ultimately, romance. The funeral itself, which coincides with the village’s annual carnival, is chockful of glorious details of Haitian Vodou traditions and ceremony. It crackles with the fire of the genuine. It does not shy away from things that Westerners might view as primitive or naïve, while at the same time, it does not sensationalize them. If anything, the story exudes a warmth and familiarity that could only come from a native son of Haiti.I am so glad I was introduced to this little gem. I went in looking for an education and left with a love story that was by turns fanciful, comical, suspenseful and thoroughly engaging.