Overview:
Marlène L. Daut, Haitian American author and Yale University professor and longtime scholar of Haitian history, has received the 2025 Haiti Book Prize for her book on Henry Christophe. The award recognizes her continued contributions to Haitian studies and efforts to center Haitian voices in historical scholarship.
NEWYORK. — Marlène L. Daut, a professor of French and Black studies at Yale University, has won the 2025 Haiti Book Prize for her latest book on Haitian history, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported.
The Haitian Studies Association awarded the prize for The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, published this year by Alfred A. Knopf. The book examines the life and rule of Henry Christophe, one of Haiti’s most influential post-independence leaders, using letters, newspapers, and writings from the early 19th century.
Cover of “The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe” by Marlene Daut via Marlenedaut.com
In announcing the award, HSA said Daut’s work offers new insights into the Haitian Revolution, Haiti’s early political life and the ideas that shaped the country after the revolution. The book also looks at how Black thinkers of the time debated power, leadership, and freedom in a newly independent nation.
“This book offers new ways to understand Haiti’s early political life and the thinkers who shaped it.”
Daut is not new to this recognition. She previously won the Haiti Book Prize in 2019 for Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism, a study of one of the late King Christophe’s key advisers. Her 2023 book, Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution, later received the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
At Yale, Daut teaches courses on Haitian, Caribbean, African American, and French colonial history and literature. Her work focuses on correcting how Haiti’s past has been written and taught, especially in academic spaces that have long ignored Haitian voices.
The Haitian American scholar reveals her journey from a California upbringing deep into Haitian history, unearthing “Haitianists” along the way, meeting the complex “First and Last King of Haiti” in archives across continents and, now, looking into her own family’s roots.
In a recent interview with The Haitian Times, Daut said Haitian scholars and writers must play a central role in telling Haiti’s history, rather than allowing it to be shaped primarily by foreign perspectives. Her work, which focuses on Haitian intellectuals and political thinkers, is widely used in university classrooms and frequently cited in discussions about the Haitian Revolution and Haiti’s global influence.
Daut earned her undergraduate degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame. Through her writing and teaching, she continues to play a significant role in expanding how Haiti’s history is studied and understood in the United States and beyond.
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