Sundays in May are for Miami Book Fair’s Haiti Book Festival
The rich, colorful heritage that is the Haitian diaspora is in the spotlight in May during Haitian Heritage Month.
Part of that celebration is the Little Haiti Book Festival. It’s celebrating its eighth anniversary — the past five in collaboration with the Miami Book Fair. Festival events are happening every Sunday in May.
“Our Festival is part of the Book Fair’s ReadCaribbean program as well as Sosyete Koukouy of Miami,” said MJ Fievre, program director for both the Little Haiti Book Festival and ReadCaribbean Program. “The Festival is their spring event, and then in the fall, they host a series of panels.”
Echoing that sentiment is Lissette Mendez, director of programs for the Miami Book Fair, who said, “We have partnered with Sosyete Koukouy once again to present the Little Haiti Book Festival, and we couldn’t be prouder about the variety of topics being covered this year.”
Fievre has written several books, shorts stories and poems and serves as translator. She was one of the presenters at the initial Haiti Book Festival as both an author and panelist.
“It really allowed me to mingle with other authors and expose me to other people in the Diaspora too,” Fievre said. “The Little Haiti Book Festival has always been a great, thrilling event because it’s all about Haiti, and of course being part of the Diaspora, I love that it helps me reconnect with my roots.”
Collaborating with the Miami Book Fair meant Little Haiti finally got the exposure that the widespread Book Fair audience offered. That audience included people from as far as Key West to the south and West Palm Beach to the north.
“Our organization and attendance grew as well,” Fievre said. That is until 2020 when the pandemic hit and “we were very fearful because of the uncertainty of when we would come back and could we survive.”
Coming together and taking the festival online was actually a great opportunity for them to grow their community.
“By using Facebook Live we’ve heard from a Haitian person living as far as New Zealand and from Georgia here in the United States as well. We hear from a remarkably diverse, far-reaching audience during these events,” Fievre said. Like most cultural organizations, the festival plans to continue online presentations next year to maintain and expand their audiences.
Providing such widespread exposure was important to the Miami Book Fair, Mendez said. “It’s a time for people of Haitian heritage all over the world to connect and take a deep dive into their culture for one hour a week, and for those of us who only speak English but want to learn more about Haiti, subtitles online make it easy.”
The Festival features a few select pre-recorded programs along with the live online events.
Since social media is a big part of this year’s event, it makes sense that one of the Sunday presentations during the Festival deal with the topic. On May 23, four presenters will discuss “Gray Areas: Human Relations and Critical Thinking in the Era of Social Media.”
The presentation will delve into how social media has helped Haiti, particularly points people that were able to be rescued after the 2010 earthquake thanks to social media, through Facebook and What’s App. Although phones were not working for many, those two means of communication truly helped save lives.
To close out the Festival on the 30th, there will be a full program for kids, including storytelling — a reminder that books and storytelling remain at the heart of the Book Fair’s mission.
Authors from Canada, Maryland, Washington D.C., and of course Haiti, will read to the kids using different types of Haitian Creole.
“We keep it at a level that’s great for the kids, and I know my niece always looks forward to these kid’s segments. Also, we offer subtitles so if they do not speak Haitian Creole, they can read along,” Fievre said.
The month-long festival is a true culmination of a decades-long goal by the Miami Book Fair “to include and represent all members of our community and with the support of the Green Family Foundation, we’ve been able to create programs that honor our Haitian family in Miami and beyond, Mendez said.
If you go
What: Haiti Book Festival
When: Sundays through May 30
Where: Online on the Miami Book Fair website
Information: Miami Book Fair or Sosyete Koukouy
About: ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news.