Charis welcomes Myriam J. A. Chancy in conversation with Cindy Allman for a celebration of the paperback release of What Storm, What Thunder. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. This event is co-hosted by the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History.

At the end of a long, sweltering day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster—Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all.

Myriam J. A. Chancy, Ph.D. is a Guggenheim Fellow and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College.  She is the author of “What Storm, What  Thunder,” a novel on the 2010 Haiti earthquake (Harper Collins Canada/Tin House USA 2021) which has been named a Best Book of Fall 2021 by Time, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, The Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Good Housekeeping Parade, LitHub and Harper’s Bazaar among other accolades. Her Past novels include: “The Loneliness of Angels” winner of the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award, for Best Fiction 2010; “The Scorpion’s Claw;” and “Spirit of Haiti,” shortlisted in the Best First Book Category, Canada/Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Prize, 2004.

Cindy Allman is a Caribbean Girl Reading the World. A Jamaican living in Trinidad & Tobago, she is a Book Blogger, Book Club Host, Bookstagrammer and founder of the #ReadCaribbean initiative. She hopes to inspire you to read, read widely and read Caribbean.

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What Storm, What Thunder: Myriam J. A. Chancy in conversation with Cindy Allman