Disasters, Vulnerability, and Narratives - Writing Haitis Futures

This book offers an interdisciplinary discussion of a wide range of narrative responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. By putting postcolonial literary studies in dialogue with disaster studies, the monograph excavates the multiple tensions within these narratives, while also demonstrating how together they can help us to navigate the complicated past, present, and future of this and other similarly complex disasters. This book examines the potentials and limitations of these texts as they attempt to forge a narrative form that approximates the experience of the event challenging, in the process, current definitions of 'disaster', 'reconstruction', and 'recovery.'

List of contents

PART I: DISASTER MAKING 1. January 12 2010: From Hazard to Disaster 2. Disaster's Past, Present and Future: Beyond Exposure, Failure and Resilience 3. Rasanblaj: Scholarship of Care PART II: DISASTER TIME 4. Halting the Tremors 5. Recalling History and Reimagining the Future PART III: DISASTER SPACE 6. Navigating Through the Rubble 7. Future Rebuilding and Reconstructions PART IV: DISASTER SELVES 8. Narrating Conversion and Rescue 9. Imagining Novel Lives Rasanblaj: A Future Reassembled

About the author

Kasia Mika is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University London. Her research focuses on disaster studies, postcolonial approaches to environmental and medical humanities, and Caribbean and island studies. In Disasters, Vulnerability, and Narratives: Writing Haiti's Futures (Routledge 2019), she turns to narratives of the 2010 Haiti earthquake to conceptualize hinged chronologies, slow healing, and remnant dwelling. Building on this work, she has produced a short documentary, Intranqu'îllités (2019; dir. Ed Owles), on art and creativity in Haiti (AHRC Research in Film Award 2019). Her articles appeared in: Area, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Moving Worlds, Modern and Contemporary France.

Product details

• Authors: Kasia Mika, Kasia (Kitlv/royal Netherlands Institute of Mika
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2020
• EAN: 9780367588496
• ISBN: 978-0-367-58849-6
• No. of pages: 244
• Series: Routledge Studies in Hazards, Disaster Risk and Climate Change
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Haiti, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, Climate Change, SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / Geography, environmental science, engineering & technology, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Natural disasters, Human Geography, Regional Geography, Environmental science, engineering and technology, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, Development and environmental geography