Indigénisme

A radical movement in Haiti signalling a literary renaissance, provoked by the nationalist reaction against the American Occupation (1915-34). Iconoclastic in spirit, it demanded a rejection of European values and a celebration of Haiti's indigenous culture, or ‘I'âme haïtienne’. Its organ was La Revue indigène (1927-8), edited by Brouard and Thoby-Marcelin among others. Similar in thrust to the Harlem Renaissance and Afro-Cuban movements, its ideals are best represented by Émile Roumer's Poèmes d'Haiti et de France (1925). Ideologically it gave way to noirisme and Marxism in the 1930s.

[Michael Dash]