On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

This book is a literary and cultural history which brings to the fore a compelling but, so far, largely neglected body of work which has the politics of border-crossing as well as the poetics of borderland-dwelling on Hispaniola at its core. Over thirty fictional and non-fictional literary texts (novels, biographical narratives, memoirs, plays, poems, and travel writing), are given detailed attention alongside journalism, geo-political-historical accounts of the status quo on the island, and striking visual interventions (films, sculptures, paintings, photographs, videos and artistic performances), many of which are sustained and complemented by different forms of writing (newspaper cuttings, graffiti, captions, song lyrics, screenplay, tattoos). Dominican, Dominican-American, Haitian and Haitian-American writers and artists are put in dialogue with authors who were born in Europe, the rest of the Americas, Algeria, New Zealand, and Japan in order to illuminate some of the processes and histories that have woven and continue to weave the texture of the borderland and the complex web of border relations on the island. Particular attention is paid to the causes, unfolding, and immediate aftermath of the slave revolt of 1791, the massacre of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans in the Dominican Northern borderland in 1937 as well as recent events and topical issues such as the earthquake of 2010, migration, and environmental degradation.