Hispaniola presents a lecture by Dr. Mario Chandler and Dr. Jay Lutz

Julia Alvarez writes A Wedding in Haiti in 2013. It describes her journey by pick-up truck with her husband across the northern reaches of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to attend the wedding of their Haitian friend Piti whom they have known since he was a teenager. Alvarez keeps her promise made years before to be present at Piti’s wedding and thereby engages in a trip which highlights the commonality and differences of the people in the two countries and, as it turns out, ends up making a second return trip after Haiti is struck by a massive earthquake in 2010. As the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat remarks:
An unlikely between two people, two families, and two countries shines at the center
of this book. We are privileged to witness it and become a part of this journey via Julia
Alvarez’s funny and reflective narrative of both pre- and post-earthquake Haiti.
Dr. Chandler and Dr. Lutz will present the itinerary of the journey in a presentation with images and photos drawn from their own travels. The Alvarez work is one of the texts for the course French and Spanish Crossroads being offered this semester at Oglethorpe University by the two professors. It is this course which has inspired the campus-wide Hispaniola event.