Edwidge Danticat's prose has a Chekhovian simplicity--an ability to state the most urgent truths in a measured and patiently plain style that gathers…

- Madison Smartt Bell

Haiti was founded by African slaves who rose against their European masters, had a revolution, and created a new state. There is no other such event …

- Madison Smartt Bell

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I o…

- Madison Smartt Bell

In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway cozies up to revolution by romanticizing it (and not only with those execrable love scenes).

- Madison Smartt Bell

To me, there is nothing more soothing than the song of a mosquito that cant get through the mesh to bite you.

- Madison Smartt Bell

Imaginative writing has always been a solitary and indeed a somewhat antisocial activity. Apprenticeship existed, no doubt, but it was an apprentices…

- Madison Smartt Bell

Since the 1960s, exile for Haitians is a condition that ends only to begin again.

- Madison Smartt Bell

In TheColorful Apocalypse, Greg Bottoms explores the frontier between inspiration and psychosis with the expressive power, the passionate fervor, and…

- Madison Smartt Bell

I dont call myself a very good Christian, but I think I know one when I see one, and I also think I know when I dont.

- Madison Smartt Bell