IDA FAUBERT was born in 1882 in Port-au-Prince, Haïti, and is considered a Caribbean—and especially Haitian—literary foremother. She was among the rare women writers whose work appeared under her own name in early 20th-century Haïtian literary publications.
An English-language volume of Faubert’s makes her work more widely accessible to students, scholars, and readers of Latin-American, African-diasporic, Caribbean and Haitian letters; and more generally available to readers of poetry and the poetry of women. Reared in Paris, Faubert neither easily fit socially-prescribed categories for women of color in France or Haiti, nor conformed to them—living and burning through France’s Belle Époque, world wars, and Haiti’s Indigenist revolt in art. Bicultural, biracial, privileged, and complex, Faubert was a deft writer and socialite who promoted and participated in the movements of Haitian writers and literature in Haiti and France. While her work is garnering growing critical attention, she is seen as one of Haiti’s great women poets.
DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES is a poet and academic. She served as the second Poet Laureate of Boston. She teaches at Lesley University.