In Haitians in Michigan, Michael Largey chronicles the challenges facing Haitian immigrants and their U.S.-born children as they seek to maintain their cultural identity in the United States. Beginning with a useful outline of Haitian political history, Largey explains how Haiti and the United States have become linked by a shared history of commerce and colonialism.
Largey brings to life the political aspirations and expressions of Haitians in Michigan in a historical and ethnographic examination of Michigan's three principal Haitian enclaves, in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Lansing. As Largey makes clear, Haitian-American civic, religious, and cultural organizations in these cities offer spaces for the creation of a culture that is uniquely Haitian and American.
Haitians in Michigan demonstrates the rich contributions of a people whose long and difficult struggle for self-determination brought them into a historical convergence with the United States. Largey shows how much the United States-and Michigan in particular-has benefited from this convergence.
