Description

Throughout the history of Western academia, there have been scholars who have interpreted and examined various aspects of human history and made it a point to universalize their own interpretations of different people’s histories and cultures. This type of scholarship tends to ignore the contributions and historical realities of other people. This case is especially true of the scholars who have interpreted the historiography around the Afrikan revolution in Ayiti, otherwise known as The Haitian Revolution. Kimoni Yaw Ajani’s, The Afrikan Revolution in Ayiti: Libète ou Lanmò, Freedom or Death is an Afrocentric re-examination and interpretation around the historiography of the Revolution in Ayiti and provides an in-depth study that highlights several significant Afrikan epistemological and cosmological aspects that led to freedom. These aspects include but are not limited to: the persistence of Afrikan complementary forces in Ayiti, Vodou/Vodun and Afrikan cosmology, Afrikan combat traditions such as Tire Machèt, and the numerous Afrikan languages, personalities, and roles that emerged from the growing numbers of Afrikans brought to Ayiti as a result of the European slave trade. Ajani calls for building communities on the best of Afrikan epistemological foundations and reclaiming Afrikan history.