about the author
Marie-Solange Benedict is a native of Haiti who first found refuge in 1962 in Liberia West Africa, attended Boarding School in England, and immigrated to the United States in 1968. She graduated from The Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn School of Nursing in New York, holds a B.A. in Political Science from Queens College, City University of New York, and a J.D. from John Marshall Law School, Atlanta, Georgia. She works and writes in Texas where she lives with her family.
child of a mountainous land
This is an account of one woman's childhood experiences under the Duvalier dictatorship shortly before leaving her native Haiti in 1962, at ten years old, and residing in Africa, Europe, and in the United States. The book chronicles the uprooting of a middle-class Haitian family from its home. It follows the struggles of the initial group of refugees who escape from the events that have conspired to dismantle a country and continue to push even more of its people into exile. This is also an immigrant's story of survival in a racist society and one woman's personal fight against the frustrations faced by Blacks in the United States.
At the age of twenty-eight years old, the author becomes a born again Christian. As her life with its personal disappointments unfolds in the Promise land of America, she finds the assurance, that God's love transcends the barriers of culture and racism.
reviews
"Child of a Mountainous Land" will not only provide you with insight into a little known sector of Haitian culture and history, but will urge you to examine how the events taking place around us in a broader sense, along with what may seem like the everyday minutiae come together to make us who we are. Definitely a must-read. Benedict writes beautifully and has gone through pain-staking lengths in keeping her work thorough, concise, and yet still very personal.
NATALIE C. HOLLY