A Sun to Be Sewn A Novel

An NPR Book of the Day

In this modern fable full of poetry, desire, and blood, a creative young Haitian girl struggles against seemingly impossible odds to escape the cruel reality of her Port-au-Prince slum.

“You’ll be alone in the great night.” That’s what Papa has always prophesied to her. Papa, who isn’t her real father—he disappeared when she was born. Since then, her mother has been forced to walk the streets to provide for herself and her daughter, while Papa robs and murders for the local gang leader, to ensure his access to ganja and alcohol, but also for the sheer pleasure of it.
    Often finding herself alone within the four walls of a hovel in a Haitian shantytown with corrugated iron for a roof, the young girl tirelessly tries to compose a letter that will capture what is in her heart and soul. She is consumed with love for a classmate, the daughter of her teacher, and searches for words to faithfully express her feelings and her dreams.
    In a poetic language that encompasses poverty and idealism, she observes the violence, the shortcomings, and the addictions of the adults around her. Her passion makes her resilient, nurturing her character and helping her to invent a better fate than the one to which she seemed doomed.

Jean D’Amérique, born in Haiti in 1994, is a poet, playwright, and novelist. He received the Prix de Poésie de la Vocation for his poetry collection Nul chemin dans la peau que saignante étreinte and the Prix Jean-Jacques Lerrant des Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre for his play Cathédrale des cochons. His first novel, Soleil à coudre, was published in 2021.
 
Thierry Kehou is a writer and literary translator based in Brooklyn, New York. His translation of Francis Bebey’s novella Three Little Shoeshiners received support from the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference and was long-listed for the 2020 John Dryden Translation Competition. Kehou holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark and a BA in Individualized Study from New York University’s Gallatin School. He is a founding member and board member of Lampblack.