Marie Vieux-Chauvet was een Haïtiaanse auteur wiens werken vaak de complexe relaties tussen individuen en de maatschappij onderzoeken. Haar proza staat bekend om zijn intensiteit en zijn vermogen om in de diepten van de menselijke psyche te duiken. Door haar verhalen onthult ze de spanningen tussen persoonlijke verlangens en maatschappelijke beperkingen. Haar schrijven onderscheidt zich door krachtige taal en meeslepende verhalen.
Kaiama L. Glover examines Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean literature
whose female protagonists enact practices of freedom that privilege the self,
challenge the prioritization of the community over the individual, and refuse
masculinist discourses of postcolonial nation building.
Dance on the Volcano tells the story of two sisters growing up during the Haitian Revolution in a culture that swings heavily between decadence and poverty, sensuality and depravity. One sister, because of her singing ability, is able to enter into the white colonial society otherwise generally off limits to people of color. Closely examining a society sagging under the white supremacy of the French colonist rulers, Dance on the Volcano is one of only novels to closely depict the seeds and fruition of the Haitian Revolution, tracking an elaborate hierarchy of skin color and class through the experiences of two young women. It is a story about hatred and fear, love and loss, and the complex tensions between colonizer and colonized, masterfully translated by Kaiama L. Glover.