A review by octavia_cade
After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti by Edwidge Danticat
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
3.5
I often think of travel books as something written by a person who is visiting another country than their own, but that's not the case here. Danticat, who never got to experience the Jacmel carnival as a child (her uncle would take his family away on religious retreat every year to avoid it) goes home to see exactly what she was missing out on all for all those years. Quite a lot, as it turns out!
There's a lot of background detail here concerning the different types of floats, and the selection of the carnival queens, and all the other organisational details that are missed if you just turn up on the day. It's genuinely interesting stuff, though it does feel as if this organisational and historical context takes up 95% of the book. I would have liked for there to have been a longer account of Danticat's actual experiences during the carnival, because I've never been to one either! More time there, even if only by proxy, would have rounded this out a little more, I think.
There's a lot of background detail here concerning the different types of floats, and the selection of the carnival queens, and all the other organisational details that are missed if you just turn up on the day. It's genuinely interesting stuff, though it does feel as if this organisational and historical context takes up 95% of the book. I would have liked for there to have been a longer account of Danticat's actual experiences during the carnival, because I've never been to one either! More time there, even if only by proxy, would have rounded this out a little more, I think.