In this novel, Jean-Claude Martineau, A.K.A. Koralen, reconstructs the advent of the Haitian Revolution in the everyday living of the protagonists, in the slow movement of their praxis. Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, Pétion, Clervaux, Catherine Flon or Lamour Derance are no longer mythical figures from a faraway time, but real people in their search of freedom and dignity. Written with the flair of the poet and the memory of the historian and storyteller, the book is easy and enjoying to read.
J.-C. Martineau believes that it's incumbent upon Haitians to construct the positive narrative of their history: "If Europe, more precisely France, can use its culture to glorify its heroes who were nothing but enslavers and authors of genocides, why can't we do the same to glorify the leaders of our resistance? " he says.
Arada Pledge is a masterpiece of the revolutionary persistence of the enslaved Africans. A showcase of the greatness of the human spirit.Another dimension the reader can [glean] from this beautiful and great novel of Jean-Claude Martineau is the representation of the enslaved or formerly enslaved as embodiment of which is good, human, gracious, the embodiment of the positive heroes and heroines accepting the sacrifices that it entailed to bring change to the degrading and subhuman conditions of their fellow companions in oppression. Arada Pledge is a masterpiece of the revolutionary persistence of the enslaved Africans. A showcase of the greatness of the human spirit.
