There Is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince

by Greg Beckett

This is not just another book about crisis in Haiti. This book is about what it feels like to live and die with a crisis that never seems to end. It is about the experience of living amid the ruins of ecological devastation, economic collapse, political upheaval, violence, and humanitarian disaster. It is about how catastrophic events and political and economic forces shape the most intimate aspects of everyday life. In this gripping account, anthropologist Greg Beckett offers a stunning ethnographic portrait of ordinary people struggling to survive in Port-au-Prince in the twenty-first century. Drawing on over a decade of research, There Is No More Haiti builds on stories of death and rebirth to powerfully reframe the narrative of a country in crisis. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Haiti today.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology

312 pages, Hardcover

Published March 26, 2019

Reviews

[Cabot · Rating 3 out of 5]

How I feel about this book depends on where in the book I am. Beckett, being a white Chicago-trained anthropologist traveling to Haiti to talk about crisis (and its normalization) faces a lot of troubles about his positionality, and I think this book suffers from a lack of reflection on that. Likewise, the first chapter, about a forest on the edge of Port-au-Prince, feels disjointed, out of place, and relatively devoid of needed historical context. Had I stopped reading here, the book would be one star. However, the following chapters are actually really interesting and more thoughtful, and provide a deeply insightful take on what it feels like to live in an environment where layered crises (political violence, economic exploitation, environmental degradation) come to feel ordinary— and one lives in a world of ontological insecurity. To this end, he makes a lot of interesting points about temporality (living in a present that feels severed from a stable past and promised future) and the fact that crisis is manufactured (which raises a lot of historical questions that could be addressed more). The final two chapters, in particular, about the 2nd coup against Aristide and the earthquake, are excellent. Had the first chapter been removed this could’ve been a 4-5 star book.

[Katie Durow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beckett's story in "There is No More Haiti" is one of crisis, disaster, death, and hope. There is no way to understand crisis without thinking about the human impact. Crisis is felt as both individual and collective, personal and impersonal. Crisis can make it seem like the future is impossible. Haiti's people are living with crisis constantly, and they live both with hope and resignation for the future. This future promises to be both full of crisis and disaster, but also possibility. The paths towards an imagined future with life exists in people helping others, people looking for life, people telling stories. There is beauty in being completely powerless but choosing to keep going nonetheless.

Though incredibly repetitive and coming from a very privileged and male-centered perspective, this texts paints a vivid picture of the powerless of life in Haiti and the peoples’ capability of going on.