All notes are the author’s unless otherwise indicated. Marie Vieux-Chauvet writes in an elegant literary French, which she interrupts with colloquialisms, creolisms, and even English in an effort to create specific voices. The creolisms-that is, the use of Creole words such as morne or combite in French texts-are an homage to the indigeniste (nationalist) Haitian literary tradition and a departure from bovarysme, the imitation of French styles practiced by the earliest, generally mulatto, Haitian writers. At times she uses the creolisms as if they were idioms. For example, her peasants refer to themselves as nègres, a Creole word related to the Spanish word negro but which primarily means “men” or “people” and only secondarily means “black men” (nègre blanc is how one says “white man” in Creole).