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Lavil: Voices From Post-Earthquake Port-Au-Prince
Moving stories of life in a country enduring an ongoing crisis
Seven years after the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck Haiti, the island nation remains in crisis, all but ignored by the international community. At the center of this crisis is Lavil—“The City” in Kreyol, as Port-au-Prince is known to Haitians—the cultural, political, and economic capital of Haiti and home to over 2.5 million resilient souls.
This immersive and engrossing oral history collection gives voice to the continuing struggle of Haitian people to live, love and prosper while trying to rebuild their city and country after disasters both natural and man-made.
Among the Juslene , who moved to Port-au-Prince as a child for educational opportunities but was instead forced to work as a restavek—an unpaid servant—and who maintains unwavering hope despite the loss of her family when the city was destroyed. Johnny and Denis , a teacher and his younger brother, who spent years hustling for work and looking out for each other in one of the city’s sprawling post-earthquake tent camps. Lamothe , a wry and well-read expert on Haiti’s clean water crisis, who is one of the many Port-au-Prince citizens dedicated to rebuilding his city and nation.
Seven years after the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck Haiti, the island nation remains in crisis, all but ignored by the international community. At the center of this crisis is Lavil—“The City” in Kreyol, as Port-au-Prince is known to Haitians—the cultural, political, and economic capital of Haiti and home to over 2.5 million resilient souls.
This immersive and engrossing oral history collection gives voice to the continuing struggle of Haitian people to live, love and prosper while trying to rebuild their city and country after disasters both natural and man-made.
Among the Juslene , who moved to Port-au-Prince as a child for educational opportunities but was instead forced to work as a restavek—an unpaid servant—and who maintains unwavering hope despite the loss of her family when the city was destroyed. Johnny and Denis , a teacher and his younger brother, who spent years hustling for work and looking out for each other in one of the city’s sprawling post-earthquake tent camps. Lamothe , a wry and well-read expert on Haiti’s clean water crisis, who is one of the many Port-au-Prince citizens dedicated to rebuilding his city and nation.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
336 pages, Paperback
Published May 23, 2017
4 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Peter Orner
41 books295 followersPeter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of three novels: Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and his most recent, Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, 2011) which was recently called epic by Daniel Handler, "...epic like Gilgamesh, epic like a guitar solo." (Orner has since bought Gilgamesh and is enjoying it.) Love and Shame and Love is illustrated throughout by his brother Eric Orner, a comic artist and illustrator whose long time independent/alt weekly strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green was made into a feature film in 2008. Eric Orner's work is featured this year in Best American Cartoons edited by Alison Bechdel.
A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner.
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize. The novel is being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and German. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.
Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.
Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney's/ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Harper's Magazine wrote, "Hope Deferred might be the most important publication out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years."
Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations.
Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visting Law Faculty, 2000). Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He would like to divide his time between a lot of places, especially San Francisco and Chicago.
A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner.
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize. The novel is being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and German. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.
Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.
Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney's/ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Harper's Magazine wrote, "Hope Deferred might be the most important publication out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years."
Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations.
Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visting Law Faculty, 2000). Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He would like to divide his time between a lot of places, especially San Francisco and Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 29, 2022
LAVIL: Life, Love, and Death in Port-au-Prince, ed. Peter Orner and Evan Lyon, 2017, Verso Books
"Built for 200,000 people, yet home to more than 2 million, Port-au-Prince is a city that constantly reminds you of the obvious...it is a testamonial city. It is a city that everything - fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval - has conspired to destroy, yet it still carries on, in part due to the resoluteness of the people."
✒️ from Edwidge Danticat's introduction to LAVIL
.
This is a collection of oral histories of Haitians in and around "Lavil" - Kreyol for "the city" (or downtown) of Port-au-Prince.
The January 2010 earthquake serves as time point here; stories often relate to where people were at that time, and how their lives changed.
There are a range of ages and experiences shared here, from teens to elders, family members who work together when they have lost everything, LGBTQ activists providing a refuge for people who are disowned by their families, religious leaders of many belief systems, hospital patients with HIV/AIDS, school teachers and community organizers, and many others.
🇭🇹 On an editorial/organizational note, I really appreciated the use of footnotes in this book making reading experience more seamless than flipping back and forth. Also the use of real language + interpretation side-by-side (Kreyol/English, occasionally French/English) in the stories of the subjects. There are also fantastic supplemental materials, including a good map, and a detailed timeline of events of Haiti, pre-Columbian to time of publication.
📚 Related readings:
• The Black Jacobins by CLR James - Haitian revolution history
• Aftershocks of Disaster, ed. Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón - similar format of oral histories of Puerto Rico after the 2017 hurricane
• Voices of Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, tr. Keith Gessen - oral histories after Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine & Belarus
• Silencing the Past by Michel Rolph-Trouillot - Haitian history and general historiography
"Built for 200,000 people, yet home to more than 2 million, Port-au-Prince is a city that constantly reminds you of the obvious...it is a testamonial city. It is a city that everything - fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval - has conspired to destroy, yet it still carries on, in part due to the resoluteness of the people."
✒️ from Edwidge Danticat's introduction to LAVIL
.
This is a collection of oral histories of Haitians in and around "Lavil" - Kreyol for "the city" (or downtown) of Port-au-Prince.
The January 2010 earthquake serves as time point here; stories often relate to where people were at that time, and how their lives changed.
There are a range of ages and experiences shared here, from teens to elders, family members who work together when they have lost everything, LGBTQ activists providing a refuge for people who are disowned by their families, religious leaders of many belief systems, hospital patients with HIV/AIDS, school teachers and community organizers, and many others.
🇭🇹 On an editorial/organizational note, I really appreciated the use of footnotes in this book making reading experience more seamless than flipping back and forth. Also the use of real language + interpretation side-by-side (Kreyol/English, occasionally French/English) in the stories of the subjects. There are also fantastic supplemental materials, including a good map, and a detailed timeline of events of Haiti, pre-Columbian to time of publication.
📚 Related readings:
• The Black Jacobins by CLR James - Haitian revolution history
• Aftershocks of Disaster, ed. Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón - similar format of oral histories of Puerto Rico after the 2017 hurricane
• Voices of Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, tr. Keith Gessen - oral histories after Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine & Belarus
• Silencing the Past by Michel Rolph-Trouillot - Haitian history and general historiography
February 5, 2025
I enjoyed this book a lot - a patchwork of first hand accounts forming a portrait Haiti in the years following the 2010 Earthquake that killed over 300,000 people. I picked it up in a second hand shop with little knowledge about Haiti outside of its devastating earthquake - a point that the authors make clear has been at the core of peoples understandings (and misunderstandings) of the country. The interviews within are a testament to survival, love and faith, and leave me wanting to know how Haiti is doing ten years since its publishing. 5 ⭐️
December 29, 2023
I have always wondered about Haiti's place in the world and how it got there. This book offers insightful accounts from those who struggle, hustle, and survive there. It also offers the history of the nation and its encounters with other leading powers of the world. I know that Haiti's situation is dire and has been especially since the last huge earthquake, but I would have appreciated at least a couple more accounts of stories of success and about Haitian culture because as alluded to, but not fully explained, I know it's rich. Other books in this Eyewitness account series offer a more balanced approach. I don't know; there is a lot of strife there. There is also a clear-eyed report of what agencies/NGOs and governments have and have not done.
One theme that's in other books in this series is a section on what you as a reader can do, and that wasn't in this book. It's probably Pollyanna-ish to think that you can solve the world’s most intractable problems from the comfort of your home, so maybe you're supposed to intuit more from this book than do like vote better and have more informed compassion and understanding.
At any rate, with so little info out there about Haiti, I still found Lavil to be an invaluable resource.
One theme that's in other books in this series is a section on what you as a reader can do, and that wasn't in this book. It's probably Pollyanna-ish to think that you can solve the world’s most intractable problems from the comfort of your home, so maybe you're supposed to intuit more from this book than do like vote better and have more informed compassion and understanding.
At any rate, with so little info out there about Haiti, I still found Lavil to be an invaluable resource.
August 10, 2017
Heartbreaking, but enlightening; the stories of hardship and resilience, told in Haitians's own words, are amazing.
March 9, 2019
I love Haiti, books about Haiti and especially first hand accounts of life and experiences in Haiti - this book nails them all.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews