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[Photo Credit : Georges Seguin (Okki), CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
He was a young journalist in Haiti when the dictatorship claimed a friend. In 1976, realizing he could be next, he fled to Montreal. No grand plan. No guarantee. Just safety first—then figure out the rest. Canada became the place where an exile turned into an author. University of Ottawa+1
✨ A Spark Becomes a Voice
Montreal in the late ’70s didn’t hand him a literary career. He worked odd jobs—factory shifts, TV, whatever paid—while writing at night. Then in 1985 he dropped a title no one could ignore: Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired). Bold, funny, and razor-sharp about race, desire, and immigrant life in Quebec, it became a bestseller and was turned into a film. The exile had found his register: playful on the surface, serious underneath. Global News+1
“We write so we don’t disappear.”
He kept going—dozens of books, mixing memoir, autofiction, and Haitian memory with Montreal reality. He wrote like someone who refused to pick only one homeland.
🏛️ The Day Paris Called
On December 12, 2013, the nearly 400-year-old Académie française elected him to Seat 2—making him the first Canadian and the first Haitian to join the body that “guards” the French language. He was officially received in May 2015. Think about that arc: kid from Port-au-Prince → refugee in Montreal → one of the 40 “immortals” of the French language. That’s immigrant triumph in slow motion. Wikipedia+2Publishing Perspectives+2
Why did it matter? Because the Académie was mostly French-born, Paris-based writers—and suddenly a Haitian-Canadian, shaped by dictatorship and diaspora, was helping define the language. It was proof that French isn’t owned by one country anymore; it lives in Montreal, Dakar, Port-au-Prince…and in newcomers to Canada.
❤️ Building More Than a Career
Laferrière didn’t just write novels; he wrote a way to remember. Many of his books circle back to childhood in Petit-Goâve, his grandmother, Haitian radio, and the shock of exile—what he later called a long “fleuve d’encre,” a river of ink that keeps returning to its source. Recent interviews in 2022 show him still experimenting, even drawing his books after the 2010 Haiti earthquake—same memories, new mediums. Le Monde.fr
This is a great angle for your site: success doesn’t have to be a pivot to business—sometimes it’s a lifetime of cultural contribution that eventually gets recognized. Canada saw that and, like with your other stories, said: stay, build, and we’ll honour it.
🎯 Why his story inspires us?
- Exile → excellence: he didn’t choose to leave; he chose what to do after leaving. University of Ottawa
- One brave book → decades of work: that 1985 novel opened doors to film, to European readers, to the long career. Global News
- Global recognition from a Canadian base: elected to the Académie while living between Montreal and Paris—proof you can be Canadian and fully international. Wikipedia+1
