Frankétienne (born Franck Étienne on April 12, 1936, in
Ravine-Sèche,
Haiti) is a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist and intellectual.[1][2] He is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and
Haitian Creole,[3] and is "known as the father of Haitian letters".[4] As a painter, he is known for his colorful
abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters), and was named
UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010.[1][5]
Early life
Frankétienne was born in
Ravine-Sèche, a small village in Haiti. He was abandoned by his father, a rich American industrialist,[2][4] at a young age and was raised by his mother in the
Bel Air neighborhood of
Port-au-Prince, where she was a respected entrepreneur, owning her own business to support her eight children, managing to send him, who was the eldest, to school.[2]
He first began writing poetry around 1960. He published his first texts in 1964 and 1965. His first novel, Mûr a créver, was published in 1968. From 1977 onward he found success in theater.[6]
Douglas, Rachel (2009). Frankétienne and Rewriting: A Work in Progress. New York: Lexington Books.
ISBN978-0-739-12565-6.
Glover, Kaiama L. (2011). Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Post-Colonial Canon. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.
ISBN978-1-846-31499-5.
Oakley, Seanna Sumalee (2011). Common places the poetics of African Atlantic postromantics. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
ISBN978-9-042-03408-2.
Schutt-Ainé, Patricia; Staff of Librairie Au Service de la Culture (1994). Haiti: A Basic Reference Book. Miami, Florida: Librairie Au Service de la Culture. p. 103.
ISBN0-9638599-0-0.
Trudel, Benoît Jean-Marc (2009). L'énonciation non-rationnelle dans le roman francophone des Amériques: les stratégies socio-poétiques chez Jacques Ferron, Hubert Aquin, Édouard Glissant et Frankétienne. London, Ontario: School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, University of Western Ontario.