The Fire This Time

In Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (2022), Régine Jean-Charles evokes revolutionary figures such as Sanité Bélair and Victoria Montou, who fought in the Haitian Revolution. She also revisits the legacy of Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière, who was said to have fought back a siege by the French army during the Revolution. Remembering these women is critical, not only because of the ideals they represented—liberation, justice, and power—but also because of their embrace of armed self-defense. Remembering them serves to locate the scope, ethics, and praxis of revolutionary Haitian feminism and lays the groundwork for solidarity with other decolonial movements, from Turtle Island to Palestine. This review essay asks, What might it mean to extend Jean-Charles’s celebration of revolutionary fighters Bélair, Montou, and Lamartinière into the present?