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History Into Story: Suzanne Césaire, Lafcadio Hearn, And Representations Of The 1848 Martinique Slave Revolts, Kara M. Rabbitt

Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal

In 1952 Suzanne Césaire, Martinican theoretician, essayist, and wife of National Assemblyman and cultural leader Aimé Césaire, wrote and produced a play titled Aurore de la liberté (“The Dawn of Liberty”) about the Martinican slave revolts that resulted in the end to slavery on the island on May 23, 1848. Having access to no historical account of these events, Suzanne Césaire made liberal use of an 1890 English-language novel by the Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn —Youma: The Story of a West-Indian Slave. In different eras, for different audiences, in different genres and languages, both Hearn and Césaire thus …