Jacques Stéphen Alexis, 1922-1961. Haitian novelist, essayist, activist, and neurologist.

Jacques Stéphen Alexis, 1922-1961. Haitian novelist, essayist, activist, and neurologist.

Alexis, Jacques Stéphen, 1922-1961.

April 22, 1922, Jacques Stéphen Alexis is born in Gonaïve, Haiti to Lydia Nuñez and Stéphen Alexis during the American occupation of Haiti (1915-1934).
1926, Alexis starts his elementary education at the Collège Stanislas de Paris, France when his father Stéphen Alexis is appointed Haitian ambassador to France. He returns with his family to Haiti in 1929 and completes his elementary education.
1930s Négritude, a literary, and political movement affirming the African cultural heritage takes shape in Parisian gatherings at Le Salon de Clamart amongst African, American, and Caribbean diaspora intellectuals. Négritude leaders include sisters Paulette, and Jeanne Nardal – founding members of the Revue du Monde Noir (1931-1932) - Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon Damas to name a few who also founded L’Étudiant Noir (1934). The intellectual exchanges are inspired by the 1804 Haitian revolution, Pan-Africanism, and the Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes who travels to Haiti in 1931.
1934 United States occupation of Haiti ends (1915-1934).
1937 Massacre of Haitian civilians living in the Dominican Republic under the presidency of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1930-1961).
1939 World War II onset.
1940 Alexis graduates from high school from the Institution Saint Louis de Gonzague, a private catholic school of the Brothers of Christian Education in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and begins to study medicine at the Faculté de Médecine in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. At 18, he starts to contribute to journals such as Le Caducée and later to Cahiers d’Haiti.
1942 Jacques Stéphen Alexis meets Jacques Roumain (1907-1944), Haitian author of the classic novel, Masters of the Dew (translated by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook in 1947) and director of the Bureau d’Ethnologie (Office of Ethnology).
Alexis also meets Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989) during the latter’s visit to Haiti between September and October of that year. Both Roumain and Guillén were intent on reifying the African cultural heritage of their respective countries, a focus of great interest to the young Jacques Stéphen Alexis.
1943, Alexis and his classmate, soon to be famous poet René Depestre, attend a lecture by Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), renown Cuban author of El reino de este mundo /The Kingdom of This World (1949) during his visit to Haiti. Carpentier’ s novel is inspired by the Haitian revolution under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture and exemplifies his interest in African culture within the Caribbean.
1945 Alexis and Depestre publish the journal, La Ruche, a weekly student newspaper expressing the social foment of the times. The December 7th issue headlines: Here We Are! and the Rise of a Generation reflect the vision of embolden young intellectuals. The front-page headline also includes a warm and laudatory welcome to the leader of French surréalisme, André Breton who visits Haiti in December of that year.
1945 World War II ends
1946 Alexis and Depestre lead a successful student strike against then Haitian president, Élie Lescot (1941 – 1946) who goes into exile. At the time, Lescot is known for his controversial agreement with the United States for the failed cultivation of the nonnative cryptostegia grandiflora vine in Haiti to produce rubber at the expense of displaced Haitian farmers working to produce food crops.
1946 Alexis travels to Paris to start medical school with a scholarship. He specializes in neurology at the Salpêtrière teaching Hospital. In Paris, he imbues himself in surrealist, existentialist, and négritude cultural circles.
1955 Compère Général Soleil / General Sun, My Brother /El compadre general Sol Alexis first novel is published in France by Gallimard with favorable reviews.
The work will be translated in Spanish in Havana, Cuba in 1947and translated in English in 1992 by Carrol G. Coates.
1956 Alexis’ lectures on the Marvelous Realism of the Haitians at the First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists at the Sorbonne in Paris.
1957 Les Arbres musiciens / The musician trees, is published in Collection "blanche”, «L’Imaginaire», Paris, Gallimard.
1957 François Duvalier, a former rural doctor becomes president of Haiti.

1958 Alexis founds the Parti d’Entente Populaire/Party of Popular Accord and helps in the organization of the Union Intersyndicale Haitienne/Union of Haitian Trade Unions.



1959 L’Espace d’un cillement / In the Flicker of an Eyelid is published.
1960 Romancéro aux étoiles, Collection "blanche", «L'Imaginaire», Paris, Gallimard, a collection of “marvelous” short stories is published.
1961 Alexis disappears in April of that year in Northern Haiti without leaving a trace.
1999 General Sun, My brother, translated in English by Carrol F. Coates, University Press of Virginia.
2002 In the Flicker of an Eyelid, translated by Edwidge Danticat & Carol F. Coates, University of Virginia Press.
2017 L’Étoile Absinthe, followed by La Balade du Léopard Solitaire, Paris, Zulma.
2018 Jacques Stéphen Alexis receives posthumously the first Jean d’Ormesson literary award for In the Flicker of an Eyelid in Paris.
« In this novel, In the Flicker of an Eyelid, the characters do not meet each other at just any street corner, on just any mountain slope, or on just any shore of our Caribbean. According to your own expression, they are the leaders at the head of the roped party on the mountain of Radiant Human Love… (J.S. Alexis, La belle amour humaine.”)

Letter to Jacques Soleil by Florence Alexis, Gallimard 1983 edition of L’espace d’un cillement.

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