Hénock Trouillot's critical study of Jacques Roumain is a fascinating analysis of the illustrious Haitian writer. Despite Trouillot's noirist sympathies, which can be detected through his persistent admiration and praise for the Griots (Duvalier, Denis, Jacob, etc.), Dimensions et limites de Jacques Roumain is a mostly fair overview of the various writings of Roumain from his youthful anti-Occupation journalism to the mature talent of his final novel. Undoubtedly, Trouillot recognized the talent and ability of Roumain and his universalist outlook. However, Roumain's abilities as a novelist, poet, and ethnologue developed over time, and remained, in some aspects, embryonic or detached from what was actually happening on the ground in Haiti during the 1930s and 1940s. With the exception of the influence of Fernand Hibbert and Frederic Marcelin on Roumain's nouvelles, and Price-Mars writing the preface to his first roman, he seems to owe far more to his European education than Haiti.
Of course, some of Roumain's detachment was due to exile and perhaps his education in Europe, so one can see why Roumain was removed from the "Ethnological School" of Price-Mars, Denis, Duvalier, and others. Trouillot's sympathy for the Griots and explicitly indigenist Haitian authors makes him torn on the question of Roumain's adherence to indigenist and negritude literature. Roumain was too universal, and did not pursue with the requisite depth history, ethnology, and the specifically Haitian context of the racial question. And one can make the case Trouillot was correct in clearly delineating two distinct schools, one of Roumain and that of Price-Mars and the Griots in Haitian ethnology and indigénisme.
In spite of Roumain's shortcomings, and his early death depriving us of his future endeavors in literature, ethnology or Marxism, his legacy seems the most commemorated or celebrated today. With the exception of Price-Mars, the Griots became associated with the Duvalier regime and have, at best, a checkered legacy. They have may laid the foundations for the Bureau d'Ethnologie with more careful studies and historically-grounded research than Roumain, but Roumain, the Marxist universalist who rejected Vodou, authored the timeless novel of Haiti that artfully combined his descriptive ethnographic work and "symbolic realism" with his political vision of sacrifice for the collective. Thus, even though we tend to agree with Trouillot on the weakness of Roumain as a poet, particularly in the early years, and the sometimes superficial nature of his political and ethnographic works, there is undeniably something timeless in his universalist outlook and gradual development as a novelist.
