I would say is that any new biographer needs to understand the importance of the cast of characters or historical figures who surround their subject. It is remarkable to think about how important the lives of other people are when you are writing a biography. Even though I was researching Christophe’s life, I had to pull threads that involved his family, his friends, his allies, and his enemies, as far as I could, not to the same in-depth degree, of course. But, for example, his wife, whose last name you will see by reading the book, is not the one that most people present. Marie-Louise Coidavid, Christophe’s wife, in fact, had another last name that she used before she married him, which is not Coidavid. And again, it’s one of those stories where I could have missed this by thinking, nope, this must be a mistake, and instead I pulled that thread, and I found out that, no, the mistake was in not having that name attached to her in other writings about her life.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marlene L. Daut.
Marlene L. Daut is Professor of French, African American Studies, and History at Yale University. She is the author of The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, January 2025); the award-winning Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press, 2023); Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017); and Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool, 2015).
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was born in the Los Angeles area in California to a Haitian mother who was born in Port-au-Prince, who came to this country when she was 13 years old, and to a father from the United States, who traces his ancestry to distant Irish and German genealogy.
I have 3 siblings and 2 step siblings. I did my graduate work at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and my undergraduate degree was from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
I would say the first book that really inspired me was Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! Danticat was the first Haitian author I ever encountered. I actually first read one of her essays in Seventeen magazine when I was just a teenager, and it opened up a whole world of inquiry for me in terms of wanting to know more about Haiti’s history. But after I read her book during my freshman year of college, I began asking my mother a lot of more historical questions, and ultimately I became very interested in learning about the Haitian Revolution.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your work?
Well, I really love to teach about the Haitian Revolution. My ultimate goal is to bring this story to more people, to as many as possible, in fact. While I do write a lot of academic articles and books, most recently, The First and Last King of Haiti, which is my forthcoming biography of Henry Christophe, I also create a lot of educational materials, and I have developed some pedagogical tools that can help school teachers and instructors at various levels teach the Haitian Revolution. I have contributed an essay on the Haitian Revolution to Black history books, like DK’s The Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained, for example, and I write articles about how to teach the Haitian Revolution, as in “Teaching Perspective: The Relation between the Haitian and French Revolutions” ; in fact, before I wrote The First and Last King of Haiti, I collaborated on a short, educational video with Ted-Ed, which has the same title. The video is about five minutes long. It has worksheets associated with it, quizzes, essay questions, etc., and schoolteachers all around the world are using this video, which has been viewed, last time I checked, more than 600,000 times, and it’s been translated into more than 20 languages.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
There are so many stories that I wish I could point out, but I will say the story of the man who owned the hotel that Christophe worked in after he fought in the battle of Savannah comes to mind. The Battle of Savannah took place in October 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, and Christophe, in an unlikely turn of events, finds himself there, joining on the side of the French who are fighting with the United States against Great Britain. After participating in the American Revolution at the age of only twelve, Christophe then appears in the French colony of Saint Domingue, as Haiti was then called, and he works in this hotel called La Couronne, and it turns out that the owner of the hotel is not who most people think it was. So, in the book I unfold this very fascinating story that involves a man of Spanish descent, but who had been wrongly identified as a Portuguese Jew, and so he had to fight to be able to keep the hotel because of these highly racist laws that France had at the time that prevented Portuguese and Jewish people from inheriting property in the colonies.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
I definitely think the “aha moment” came when I wanted to learn more about the Haitian Revolution and I started to read about its history and then I wondered why I had never been taught this history in schools, because, even growing up Haitian-American, there were just so many things about the story of how Haiti became independent and slavery-free that remained hidden or occluded; and related to that, when I went to graduate school, I initially wanted to study New Orleans French speaking writers, because I majored in French as an undergraduate. And then I learned just how many nineteenth-century authors there were out there from Haiti, writing and publishing in Haiti, whose names I never knew, and it just inspired me to want to know more, and to want to bring their buried histories and their buried contributions to global literature to light. I truly believe that in nineteenth-century Haitian writings there are lessons that everyone can learn, and I wanted more people to be able to encounter the stories told in these writings and to hear about the lives of these authors from Haiti.
Are there things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
I think we need to teach about the Haitian Revolution in schools, in the United States and all around the world, starting from a very young age. I will know that this mission of spreading the story of the Haitian Revolution and its global impact, in opening up the age of abolition, for instance, I will know that this quest has been successful when by the time students get to me in the undergraduate classroom, they’ve all heard about the Haitian Revolution, just like they’ve all heard about the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the US Civil War. When my students are no longer having “aha moments” by taking my class on the Haitian Revolution, I will know that we have succeeded. And, so, the best thing that society, our politicians, community organizers, can do is if they see that the story of the Haitian Revolution is in danger of being targeted by the mania for banning books and ideas, they need to speak out, to remind people that the Haitian Revolution is a story that is for everyone, because it helped the entire world. The Haitian revolutionaries, the freedom fighters of Saint-Domingue, they opened the age of abolition, and so many of the freedoms we take for granted today were won at the price of their blood.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I would say one of the really interesting revelations that I had while writing Christophe’s biography is what a good leader Christophe tried to be. I think anyone who reads the book will see that he made a lot of mistakes, absolutely, and he had many flaws. But he knew how to lead, if that makes sense. He had charisma. He knew how to talk to people so that they trusted him, but he also created circumstances that made people fear him, and there is a fine line between trust and fear when people are following someone. Are they willing to follow someone’s lead because they trust the person truly or is it actually because they are afraid not to follow? And so I would say a good leader would be one who can strike that balance to convince people that they have their best interests in mind (and to truly have as the goal the best interests of the people they are leading), by creating circumstances where the people know that their leaders won’t harm them, where they believe they’ll be protected. And I think along the way during Christophe’s leadership, the people of the kingdom ultimately came to feel that Christophe could no longer protect them, that he was no longer the right person for the job. They knew he would protect them from outside invaders, but could he protect them from the worst impulses of humankind, from those individuals who were maybe fueled more by a drive for power than for justice, and from those who might do anything to get or stay in power (including him)? I think therein lies the rub in Christophe’s story.
What are some examples of “things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
I think, particularly, when I set out to write the story of Christophe’s life, the first thing I would have wanted to know is just how hard it was going to be. If only someone could have told me at the outset to follow and pull every, single thread all the way until its end and that just when you think you’ve figured it all out, there might be more: hidden threads, other strands, and that those also need to be pulled, no matter how flimsy. The next thing is to pay attention to the details that you don’t think are important and write them down anyway. Initially, for example, the name of the owner of that hotel is a thread I almost didn’t pull because it was such an outlandish name — I didn’t even know how to pronounce it! — and one that I had never heard of before. I couldn’t find that name in the indexes of any books on Saint-Domingue or the Revolution, just even as a person who lived and worked in the colony. And so, I almost just thought, no, this can’t be right, this can’t be the owner of the hotel. This is just going to lead me down a huge rabbit hole and waste my time. I’m going to do all this research on this person, and it’s going to turn out to be someone who has nothing to do with Christophe. And the day that I confirmed that this was the right person, I was so elated, but I also just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I almost missed it, like all the other researchers, maybe, who came across this name at some point, but didn’t think it was important, and so maybe they skipped over it? I would say another thing is that you have to find something in these stories and in this life you are unfolding that is new. When you are going down the path to study someone who has been studied a lot like Christophe — even though he’s not a household name now, he is someone whose story was written about a lot in the 19th and 20th centuries, whether in fictional portrayals or attempts to write his biography — you have to find new things to say. You have to find a part of the story that is both important and hasn’t yet been told. And for me part of doing that was in exploring Christophe’s life in Grenada and being able to link him to someone from the island who knew that Christophe was from there and confirmed it. Even though we had other great indicators of where he was born, most other writers doubted that Christophe was really from Grenada or they just said, ok, maybe he was from Grenada, but it’s not important. I really wanted to pull that thread of finding someone who knew him from that time and who was from the island himself, and that’s what I did. The final thing I would say is that any new biographer needs to understand the importance of the cast of characters or historical figures who surround their subject. It is remarkable to think about how important the lives of other people are when you are writing a biography. Even though I was researching Christophe’s life, I had to pull threads that involved his family, his friends, his allies, and his enemies, as far as I could, not to the same in-depth degree, of course. But, for example, his wife, whose last name you will see by reading the book, is not the one that most people present. Marie-Louise Coidavid, Christophe’s wife, in fact, had another last name that she used before she married him, which is not Coidavid. And again, it’s one of those stories where I could have missed this by thinking, nope, this must be a mistake, and instead I pulled that thread, and I found out that, no, the mistake was in not having that name attached to her in other writings about her life.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite quote is actually from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “That we would do we should do when we would, for this ‘would’ changes and hath abatements and delays as many as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents.” This quote really reminds me to fully live every day, and I think about it so much really, because I always want to be present for everything I do. I want to be present for my family, my friends, for my students, for my colleagues, for readers, for humankind. I want to be present for the world, even though it’s not the world I want it to be. I want to remain committed to justice and love and peace and equality, and I don’t want to let chances in life pass by simply out of worry for the future. This quote reminds me that we must always and only live in the now, not in the past, even as we learn from it, and not in the future, which is always uncertain and unpredictable. We have to take actions now that will matter and make an impact as best we can.
Is there a historical figure whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?
I think my answer might surprise you. I want to have lunch with Marie-Claire Heureuse, who was married to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the founder of independent Haiti. She appears a lot in The First and Last King of Haiti, principally because the Dessalines family and the Christophes were very good friends, and their children actually had the same nanny. Christophe really takes care of Marie Claire after Dessalines is assassinated too, and I just have so many questions for Marie Claire. How did she survive all of this? There are just so many things that I would want to know, and I would want to see if she was okay. She lived a long life after her husband’s death, but she always stayed in Haiti, unlike Christophe’s widow, Marie-Louise, who initially goes to England and then to Italy. I feel that Marie-Claire would have such an interesting perspective on all that befell Dessalines and all that befell Christophe, and she could tell us so much about the aftermath of both pivotal events in Haitian as much as in world history.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I have a website called LaGazetteroyale.com, where readers can read more than 100 newspapers (in full text or in pdf form) from the time of Christophe’s rule, first as president, and then into the period of the of his kingship, and they can access bibliographies and other historical information about his rule. Readers can also follow me on Instagram @fictionsofhaiti or find me on LinkedIn.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Marlene Daut Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.