The Codeswitchers: A novel.

by Rone Shavers

The Codeswitchers details what happens when a long-removed diaspora returns to its point of origin. Set in Haiti after a protracted, low-level civil war between the country's social and economic factions, the novel charts the fortunes of the American-born Charles Walker and his cousin, Richard G. Plantagenet, who eventually becomes Haiti's Prime Minister. Narrated by those who die because of the direct and indirect actions of Richard and his close circle of acquaintances, the novel draws heavily upon the schism that is currently developing between Haitians who live in the country, and the Haitian "10th Department": those who live abroad, but still involve themselves in, and attempt to control, Haitian national policies and affairs.;As the Haitian diaspora grows larger, the 10th Department has grown to include those who have few social or cultural ties to Haiti at all, save that they have grandparents or parents who were born there. But if one is not born or has never lived in the country one supposedly belongs to, can one then really claim to be from (or better still, "of") that country? That is to say, Richard, as well as the 10th Department individuals who keep him in power, rises to prominence by exploiting, perverting, and destabilizing nationalistic concepts of identity. What happens in The Codeswitchers, then, is the erasure of a politics rooted in nationalism, and what the novel attempts to posit is the folly of racialized cultural and national identities in a global age.

207 pages, NOOKstudy eTextbook