ABSTRACT
Displacement and dispossession dominate Leonora Sansay's narrative and inform real-life Haitian refugees' lack of social cohesion resulting from economic disruption, geographic displacement, and the Revolution's extreme political polarization. Sansay's Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo effectively underscores America's sociopolitical contradictions, which are exposed in the new nation's attachments to enslavement, gender disparity, and class distinction. For abolitionists in the United States, the Haitian Revolution was inspirational, but for those who sought to safeguard slavery, the implications of racial equality seemed catastrophic. Secret History effectively facilitates the unbodied, clandestine places Sansay experienced in her own life—her emotional pain, domestic trauma, loneliness, and grief. Secret History functions as an elaborate masque, in which Sansay filters her perceptions of trauma through the performances of others—Mary and Clara—and essentially repositions herself as a spectator, rather than a performer in Haiti.
