Istwa Across the Water

Toni Pressley-Sanon, assistant professor of African and African American studies at Eastern Michigan University, is the author of The Haitian Peasantry through Oral and Written Literature.

Untwines the aesthetic, sociohistorical, and spiritual ties that bind and unbind the first black republic to the African continent.”—Gina Athena Ulysse, author of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle  “A nonlinear, creative, powerful reflection upon history and the stories we tell about ourselves. What was disconnected is now remembered using the very tools and methodologies employed by Haitians themselves.”—Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, author of Haiti: The Breached Citadel  “Pressley-Sanon’s important book demonstrates that Haitian Vodou is a serious enterprise with its own phenomenology and epistemologies, and that the religion’s unique pragmatic dimensions offer initiatory answers to otherwise unanswerable questions about Haiti’s past, present, and future. A must read.”—Claudine Michel, editor, Journal of Haitian Studies  “Reveals an impressively rich cultural landscape inhabited by women and men whose legendary resilience in the face of adversity clothes a ferocious dedication to their identity as free people.”—LeGrace Benson, author of Arts and Religions of Haiti: How the Sun Illuminates Under Cover of Darkness