Julia Alvarez's A Wedding in Haiti

I finally read Alvarez's A Wedding in Haiti and though it was endearing, full of detail on the personal life of Alvarez (as well as forms of Dominican 'whiteness' in Santiago), and well-intentioned, it was sad to see how dependent she was on foreign white writers for understanding Haiti's history (something she compares to a nightmare at one point and exaggerates the extent of a 'genocide' against the remaining whites in Haiti during the days of Dessalines). But her relationship with the Haitian worker Piti and his family (and that of his Eseline, his future wife, which inspires the first trip to Haiti taken by Alvarez, her husband, etc.) is useful for looking at symbiotic and positive relationships between Haitians and Dominicans, even if it began with Alvarez and her white American husband starting a coffee farm, inherently unequal power relations.

What I particularly enjoyed was some of the rather repetitive and silly human drama that comes with all couples or trips. Alvarez and her husband, Bill, fighting and arguing, especially on their second trip to Haiti after the earthquake, was actually humorous and provided a fully human portrait of herself and her companions. Moreover, she has a very compassionate take on Haiti post-earthquake, describing in sad detail the devastation of Port-au-Prince, her own guilt and fears (she's influenced by the media reports of large-scale violence and crime in Haiti), and the obvious social inequality. Unfortunately, Alvarez lacks a more critical lens that sees beyond the benign intentions of missionaries, aid workers, and NGOs as a contributor to dependency and the inability of the Haitian state to develop accountability.

She does get to see rural Haiti (Moustique and other small villages and towns, for instance), go to Le Cap, visits Port-au-Prince (including spending a night in Petionville with a wealthy son of an American and a Tuareg woman from Niger, Adam), gets a personal tour of the capital from a Haitian police officer assigned at the Dominican consulate, experiences Haiti while driving across the country (from Santiago in the DR to all over the Haitian countryside (for the wedding, one in which Piti and Eseline are chastized for premarital relations!). It's an interesting book for sure, and certainly speaks to the possibility for people of different cultures, races, and languages to communicate, as Alvarez did with Eseline, her mother, her own parents deteriorating due to age and Alzheimer's, and Haitian people she encounters, such as one woman she shares an extra portion of pineapple (or was it mango?) with. Like I said previously, it's an endearing book written with simple prose that is immediately accessible and likely a reflection of some of the Dominican goodwill and interest in less combative or hostile relations with the sibling on the other side of the island. Who knows, maybe I'll finally read How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a novel given to me by a friend.