When The Mapou Sings: Review
Nadine Pinede has been a treasured member of our community for a while so I rejoiced when I read her debut novel, WHEN THE MAPOU SINGS. It’s a soul-searing, eye-opening look at Haitian adolescence set in the 1930’s.
Sixteen-year-old Lucille wants to open a school where girls can learn about their heritage and draw on their culture to shape their education. She herself loves the the mountains and the forests of her nation and she sings the songs of the Mapou, the sacred trees on her beloved island. But one day, her best friend vanishes without a trace and in a dream—a gift from the Mapou— Lucille realizes her only hope is to face her village’s section chief, the local officer. Doing this puts her life and her family’s lives at risk.
Lucille is forced to flee home and takes up a post as a servant of a wealthy Haitian woman from society’s elite in Port-au-Prince. There, she falls in love with her employer’s son. When their relationship is found out, she is sent away and finds work in another city, where she works for a visiting American writer and academic conducting fieldwork in Haiti. Lucille’s new employer studies vodou and works on the novel that will become Their Eyes Were Watching God. And soon, Lucille must fight to save both their lives - even at the risk of losing everything she cares about, including what first set her on the path away from home - the chance of rescuing her best friend.
This powerful and fast-paced novel reads like a thriller, and is yet lyrical - a winning combination.
Nadine Pinede is the daughter of Haitian immigrants who were forced to leave their homeland because of a dictatorship. When the Mapou Sings is dedicated to her mother, who was a storyteller. Nadine wrote essays and journalistic pieces until the Haitian Earthquake of 2010. In the aftermath of this catastrophe, she turned to poetry. When the Mapou Sings is her debut novel.
Padma Venkatraman is the founder of Diverse Verse and the author of the verse novels Safe Harbor, and A Time To Dance, as well as the prose novels THE BRIDGE HOME, BORN BEHIND BARS, ISLAND’S END and CLIMBING THE STAIRS which have together secured over 20 starred reviews and grossed over a 1/4 million in sales. You can find out more about her at www.padmavenkatraman.com and more about safe harbor here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647197/safe-harbor-by-padma-venkatraman/
