Frankétienne (born Franck Étienne on April 12, 1936, in Ravine-Sèche, Haiti) is a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist and intellectual.[1][2] He is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and Haitian Creole,[3] and is "known as the father of Haitian letters".[4] As a painter, he is known for his colorful abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters), and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010.[1][5]
Frankétienne | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | April 12, 1936 Ravine-Sèche, Haiti |
| Occupation | Writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician |
| Notable awards | Commander 'Ordre des Arts et Lettres' (2010) |
Early life
Frankétienne was born in Ravine-Sèche, a small village in Haiti. He was abandoned by his father, a rich American industrialist,[2][4] at a young age and was raised by his mother in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, where she was a respected entrepreneur, owning her own business to support her eight children, managing to send him, who was the eldest, to school.[2]
He first began writing poetry around 1960. He published his first texts in 1964 and 1965. His first novel, Mûr a créver, was published in 1968. From 1977 onward he found success in theater.[6]
Selected works
- Au Fil du Temps, a compilation of poems
- Ultravocal, a novel
- Pèlin Tèt, a play written in Haitian Creole
- Dézafi, a novel about life during under the Duvalier regime, the first ever in Haitian Creole[7]
- Mûr à Crever, a novel
- Les Affres d'un Défi, a novel
- Désastre (12 janvier 2010), painting
- Difficile émergence vers la lumière, painting
References
External links
- Frankétienne Archived February 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine author profile on Prince Claus Foundation site
- Île en île: Frankétienne author file (in French), with biography, bibliography, and audio
Further reading
- Douglas, Rachel (2009). Frankétienne and Rewriting: A Work in Progress. New York: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-739-12565-6.
- Glover, Kaiama L. (2011). Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Post-Colonial Canon. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-846-31499-5.
- Hadjadj, Bernard (2012). Frankétienne, l'universel haïtien : entretiens. Marseille: Riveneuve. ISBN 978-2-360-13099-3.
- Jonassaint, Jean (2008). Typo-topo-poéthique sur Franketienne. Paris: l'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-06787-5.
- Jonassaint, Jean. "Frankétienne, Écrivain haïtien," Dérives 53/54 (1987)
- Oakley, Seanna Sumalee (2011). Common places the poetics of African Atlantic postromantics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 978-9-042-03408-2.
- Schutt-Ainé, Patricia; Staff of Librairie Au Service de la Culture (1994). Haiti: A Basic Reference Book. Miami, Florida: Librairie Au Service de la Culture. p. 103. ISBN 0-9638599-0-0.
- Trudel, Benoît Jean-Marc (2009). L'énonciation non-rationnelle dans le roman francophone des Amériques: les stratégies socio-poétiques chez Jacques Ferron, Hubert Aquin, Édouard Glissant et Frankétienne. London, Ontario: School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, University of Western Ontario.