Spirit of Haiti

Myriam J. A. Chancy
Spirit of Haiti
(SUNY Press, November 2023)

A moving tale of contemporary Haiti told through the intersecting lives of four young people struggling to hold on to hope and their identities amid a militarized coup in the early 1990s. 
Vivid and poignant, Spirit of Haiti follows the intersecting lives of four young witnesses to military-ruled Haiti during the early 1990s. Léah, an apparition, rises from the sea like a siren one morning off the coast of Cap Haitien, clothes untouched by water, blue stones wrapped around her neck, eyes blind to light. Soon to be a mother, Carmen returns to Haiti from Canada as if responding to the call of the vodou spirits. Alexis flees the island in search of a land without strife. Finally, there is Philippe, who walks the northern hills alert to ancestral voices still haunting its peaks and valleys. Doing what he must to get by in the tourist trade and now weakened by illness, he struggles to maintain spiritual dignity and a hold on hope. First published in 2003 and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize in the Caribbean and Canada region, Spirit of Haiti is a novel about confronting the failings of the human heart and the triumph of memory over despair.


Praise for Spirit of Haiti

“Myriam Chancy conjures up not only the past which continues to haunt … but also the loas and spirits of the dead. She deftly weaves her narrative and, via the perspectives of her characters, sheds light on the circumstances and emotional complexity of those who emigrate as well as those who remain behind.”
—Loida Maritza Perez, author of Geographies of Home: A Novel

“Myriam Chancy’s ambitious first novel tells the story of not one, but several Haitis, at crucial historical periods. Through captivating and well-developed characters, we also share in the experience of the Haitian diaspora, who, even as they leave Haiti, take its joys and pains with them.”
— Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory

“Spirit of Haiti is novel as art installation, shifting the reader’s awareness from geographical and temporal fixity to a sensitive consciousness of the living, dynamic kinship ties from the shores of West Africa to the rivers in the southern United States, north to rebellious fires in Canada, all circling Haiti at the center…Chancy reminds us of the ways we forget the humanity in each other that imperil us and the ways we remember that keep us whole.”
— Akilah White, critic


Myriam J.A. Chancy, Ph.D. (Iowa) is a Guggenheim Fellow, and Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of the Humanities Chair at Scripps College. Chancy is the author of the award-winning book, What Storm, What Thunder (Harper Collins Canada/Tin House USA 2021), which was named a Best Book of Fall 2021 by Time, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, The Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Good Housekeeping, LitHub and Harper’s Bazaar and was awarded the American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation. WS, WT was also shortlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, Caliba Golden Poppy Award, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize & Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is the author of a new book of critical essays on the post-earthquake situation, Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters (UTexas Press, 2024), and the 20th anniversary edition of her first novel, Spirit of Haiti, a finalist for the Canada/Caribbean region Commonwealth Prize 2004 appears fall 2024 with SUNY Press. Other academic publications include: Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony, and Transmission in the African Diaspora (U of IL Press, 2020), From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions from Haiti, Cuba & The Dominican Republic (WUP 2012), Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (Rutgers 1997), and Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (Temple 1997), which won a Choice OAB Award. Her past novels include: The Loneliness of Angels (winner of the Guyana Prize 2011), The Scorpion’s Claw; and Spirit of Haiti. Her novel, Village Weavers, will be published by Tin House Books in 2024. Her recent writings have appeared in Whetstone.com Journal, Electric Literature, and Guernica. She is a frequently invited guest speaker, delivering talks and creative readings on the subject of Caribbean, Haitian and social justice issues.