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August 1, 2021
“Wat a devilment a Englan!
Dem face war an brave de worse,
But me wonderin how dem gwine stan
Colonizin in reverse.”
Louise Bennett-Coverley, “Colonization In Reverse.
Referencing August 1, 1838, as the actual Emancipation Day, compels reflections on the impulse to freedom throughout the region. Yet, while that passion burned within the soul as it existed in Africa from whence the enslaved people came, its first realization outside of Africa was Haiti.
In “Happy Emancipation Day 2021!” Martin Felix underscores that the Haitian Revolution of 1804 “birthed the first post-slavery independent Black Republic,” thus inspiring and inciting change in Latin America and throughout the Caribbean.
If, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o affirms, “In colonial conquest, language did to the mind what the sword did to the bodies of the colonized,” then by defeating the colonists, language became the new theatre of war as Haiti “tun history upside dung!” Later on, countries determined to decolonize their space through language, hence the conscious development of Haitian Creole and Jamaican and other variants of patois.
Little wonder that as early as 1966, the Jamaican poet would contest consignment to the world’s periphery by positing “colonizin in reverse,” thereby, like Marcus Garvey, anticipating and laying the groundation for “decolonizing the mind.” 
And, furthering the quest to affirm ourselves through our distinctive languages, Black Stalin offered, “Africans always resisting European language. Ah, mean, we get licks to learn English. So, we speak Resistance [Language.].”
Against this backdrop of language contestation, we share Ketlie Camille’s review of Joanne Kilgour Dowdy’s “Olympic Hero: Lennox Kilgour’s Story,” translated into Haitian Creole by Fequiere Vilsaint. This initiative is part of our commitment to including more regional languages as we embrace a multi-media frame.
Read on, and be stimulated on Emancipation Day and beyond!
From BDN Editors