Ton Bon Capitain and other Black Caribbean Dramas

This dramatic work tales the history of a woman who records her voice to communicate with her husband, as she doesn´t knows writing. She sends her cassette recordings from Haiti to Martinique, where her husband works. In her recordings she tells him all of what happens to her. As the husband is at work in another island, he rarely sees her at all. The work shows her sending the cassettes via mail. I read this work in French for a class. The author is Haitian. Another Caribbean work I can recommend you is The Tragedy of the King Christophe, by Aimé Cesaire, from Martinique, which tells the comic history of the first Haitian leader, which crowned himself king and not president, and which had a court of black courtiers like European Courts. This work may explain much of Haiti´s contradictions. You can find this work easily as it is a classic. Another black drama from the Caribbean is Las Facultades by Aravind Adyanthaya, which tells the history of a black retainer who pretends the daugther of the owners of a plantation. This work is in Spanish and it is fairly recent. You can interview the author himself, as he has a theater company here in Puerto Rico. These are works I can recommend you inmediately. They don´t deal with derogatory themes and they deal everything with dignity. Ton Bon Capitain is the most interesting and modern of all, and I have the work at hand so I can photocopy it to hand it to you.