Le Cri des oiseaux fous

Laferrière Le Cri des oiseaux fous creatively tells the story of his alter-ego's last night in Port-au-Prince. After learning of the murder of his friend, Gasner Raymond, a journalist who was covering a strike at Ciment d'Haiti, Vieus Os's mother is fortunately able to procure a passport for our narrator to leave the next day. Vieux Os's name was on the list of targets for macoutes to kill, even though he never engaged in politics (preferring to cover culture in his journalism and individualism). The rest of the novel proceeds as the narrator seeks to say his goodbyes, appreciate Port-au-Prince, ponder exile and dictatorship, and, finally, endeavor to tell the love of his life his feelings for her. Like Pays sans chapeau, which tells the story of Vieux Os's return to Haiti after the events of this novel, nothing is what it seems as Vodou spirits appear (or do they?).

For readers interested in the history of Port-au-Prince and the Duvalier regime, particularly its transformation under Baby Doc, this novel is essential reading. Port-au-Prince comes to life in the evening strolls of Vieux Os across the city, from Carrefour to Petionville. The city's several movie theaters, restaurants, cunning street dogs, and social inequality are palpable. Moreover, the reader is forced to consider the impact of dictatorship and exile on a young dreamer, unsure of himself and what his future will be. 

Since its based on the life of the author, one cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to recount these difficult moments of fearing for one's life, or the constant menace of tonton macoutes and spies in a city where poverty breeds desperation. This aspect of Duvalierism is inescapable here, and brings to mind Chauvet. Indeed, Vieux Os goes straight to the belly of the beast where macoutes abound, personally witnessing conversations about torture from infamous killers for the regime.

And despite the obvious toll of political repression and attacks on the freedom of the press represented by the murder of Gasner Raymond, Vieux Os tries to contextualize all around him with relation to the state, the cultural politics of noirism, duvalierism's targeting of fathers and sons (while underestimating the power of women), and what it means to be an individual in such a place. What are one's responsibilities to one's country? How can such a society continue if the rich in Petionville give nothing and, alongside the state, only take? 

The crumbling of the Duvalier regime seems imminent, and not just due to conflicts between the military and the macoutes. The joyous celebration of the students during a staging of Morisseau-Leroy's translation of Antigone hints at a generation threatening cultural change, despite Vieus Os personally choosing Musset (French) and Morisseau-Leroy (Creole). The underlying perspective here of Vieux Os is one cognizant of Haitian cultural particularity, but eager to retain ties with the universal. Price-Mars is respected, but indigeniste or noirist claims to cultural authority are undermined by the shifting nature of the Duvalierist regime and a generation coming to terms with itself. Perhaps the fact that Mercedes, the Dominican prostitute, adores Alexis's L'espace d'un cillement, hints at the larger regional and global implications of belonging in the world.