Please join us at Books and Books for a conversation between translator Kaiama L. Glover and writer Edwidge Danticat about Dance on the Volcano, by Marie Vieux-Chauvet.

Madison Smartt-Bell says, “With what’s going on racially and politically in the United States today, now is an excellent time for this masterpiece novel to appear in English – and in a translation which does full justice to the great beauty of Chauvet’s prose.”

Set in late-18th century Haiti, Dance on the Volcano follows the extraordinary career of Minette, who uses her prodigious voice to cross racial barriers. Her talent brings her an opportunity to perform at the Theater of Port-au-Prince, an honor previously reserved only for whites. However, once the curtain falls she finds herself back to life as normal. Praised but unpaid, applauded but shut out, Minette develops a political and racial conscience that that will not rest as long as slavery still exists on the island. Her involvement soon leads her to butt heads with the man she loves, a free black man as cruel to his slaves as many white landholders, and to cross paths with the future heroes of the revolution.

Kaiama L. Glover is the translator of Ready to Burst by Frankétienne and Dance on the Volcano by Marie Vieux-Chauvet. She received a B.A. in French History and Literature and Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University. She is now an associate professor of French at Barnard College. Her book, Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, explores the Haitian Spiralist movement. She sits on the editorial boards of the Romanic Review andSmall Axe and regularly contributes to The New York Times Book Review. 

Edwidge Danticat is a writer and editor born in Port-au-Prince. Her parents separately moved to the United States, and Danticat followed them there at the age of 12. Danticat grew up speaking French and Creole and she spoke no English upon arriving in the U.S. However, after only two years, she began writing in English and is now the accomplished author of over a dozen books, including the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory; the story collection Krik? Krak!; The Farming of the Bones; and Behind the Mountains. Danticat currently lives in New York and teaches Creative Writing at New York University.