Widely celebrated upon its original publication in 1999, National Book Award–winning writer Bob Shacochis’s The Immaculate Invasion is a gritty, poetic, and revelatory look at the American intervention in Haiti in 1994.
In 1994, the United States embarked on Operation Uphold Democracy, a response to the overthrow of the democratically elected Haitian government by a brutal military coup. Bob Shacochis traveled to Haiti for Harper’s and was embedded—long before the idea became popular in Iraq—with a team of Special Forces commandos for eighteen months and came away with tremendous insight into Haiti, the character of American fighters, and what can happen when an intervention turns into a misadventure. With the eye for detail and narrative skills of a critically acclaimed, award-winning novelist, Shacochis captures the exploits and frustrations, the inner lives, and the heroic deeds of young Americans as they struggle to bring democracy to a country ravaged by tyranny. The Immaculate Invasion is required reading, essential for anyone who wants to understand what has happened in Haiti in the past and what will happen in the future.
Author(s): Bob Shacochis
Publisher: Grove Press
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 430
City: New York
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Glossary
Contents
Preface
Map of Haiti
Part One: The Day You See Me Fall Is Not the Day I Die
Vodou Rhythms
Repression Works
Cowboy Heaven
Talking Heads: Swing
Crackdown
Part Two: Our Work Is as Old as Our Country
The Great Voodoo War
Prelude to an Ass Whipping
The Way In
The Price Is Right
Talking Heads: Schrager
The Way In—Act Two
The Way In—Parallel Universe
Infil
Part Three: Liberation
Inside the Manifestation
Flamingo
Immaculate Invasion
Field Notes
Here's My Ass (Come Beat It If You Can)
Talking Heads: Miller
Inside the Manifestation—Act Two
Talking Heads: Miller
Through the Wire
Talking Heads: Jones
Whose Side When
Talking Heads: Schrager
Part Four: Operations Other Than War
The Imaginary Colonel
Field Notes
The Limbé Muddle
In Vitro Democratization
Field Notes
Unstable and Insecure
Preparations for the Second Coming
Field Notes
Le Borgne
Guerrillas in the Myths
Field Notes
Life with Commandos: You re Lucky I Don't Shoot You
The Chicken Takes Back the Egg
Part Five: Baby-sitting Ogoun Feraille
Field Notes
Soldiers (New and Used)
Field Notes
Crimes of the Century
Volunteers and Granola Munchers
Field Notes
Bitchfest
Santa Claus Absolved
Field Notes
How to Cook a Captain
Portaprens
Mission Sag
Field Notes
Ansanm, Ansanm, Nou Se Lavalas (Together, Together, We Are the Flood)
Fictions
Ogoun Feraille, the God of War
Exfiltration
Part Six: Beyond the Mountain
Talking Heads: Master Sergeant Frank Norbury and Captain Garth Estadt, ODA 344
Hope
311 Redux—Wildebeests
The Poet of Savanette
Tet Caylé
The Legendary Whatever
Limbé, Finé
Madonna and Child in Hell
Happy Anniversary
It Always Ends This Way
Epilogue
Talking Heads: General Dick Potter
Sandys Slide
Big Eaters
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Index
