Dram Zafra

Joel Lorquet's Dram Zafra was another one of his socially conscious graphic novels on an important topic or theme of modern Haiti. In this case, Haitian braceros who cut sugarcane in the Dominican Republic, but also touching upon other themes like migration and exploitation. Like his other comics, this one features some interesting storytelling but underdeveloped art. That said, this short work, through telling the tale of 3 Haitian men who go cut cane in the DR to escape misery but only find more suffering and deprivation, is emotionally powerful. One of the 3 men dies in the Dominican Republic, another loses an arm for sleeping with a married Dominican woman, and the third, Murat, is imprisoned for entering the Dominican Republic illegally. The two survivors who eventually make it back to Haiti, one via a prison escape and the other after 6 months of living in the batey, return to their old lives with new ideas and conceptions of their experience abroad. Indeed, one, Murat, connects the bracero system to slavery while the armless Jean-Orius opens a boutique or shop. It is a shame Lorquet did not continue to write and illustrate stories in Haitian Creole. If his work was written in the standard Haitian Creole orthography and he was open to new genres, perhaps more Haitians would have followed in his footsteps and Haiti would have developed better comics. Nonetheless, Lorquet's socially relevant work addresses major issues Haiti faced during the 1980s while attempting to show the dignity of poorer Haitians.