A novel about the aftermath of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake has been chosen by Maryland Humanities to be the 2024 One Maryland One Book selection.
“What Storm, What Thunder” by Myriam J.A. Chancy follows an NGO architect, a water-bottling executive, a drug trafficker, an immigrant cab driver, and others in scenes before, after, and during the earthquake. The chaos of the natural disaster upends everything they thought they knew. The book made the shortlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the longlist for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
The Selection Committee for the One Maryland One Book program includes teachers, scholars, librarians, writers, booksellers, and more. The theme of this year’s program is “Restorative Futures.” “What Storm, What Thunder” was chosen from nearly 250 titles submitted.
Sarah Weissman, communications specialist for Maryland Humanities, offered the following perspective on the timing and topic of their choice:
We recognize the coincidental and unfortunate timeliness of the selection given Haiti’s government crisis and hold more words from Chancy in mind: her goal was “to provoke readers to think about what challenges they might encounter should they experience a natural disaster themselves, one that might be further compounded by political precarity due to their class, race or other social demarcations.”
“The novel takes its title in part from an epigraph by Frederick Douglass,” Chancy explained, “himself from the Baltimore area, writing in his essay, ‘What to the Negro is the fourth of the July?’ in 1852: ‘For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.’ Of course, Douglass was not calling for disaster but for seismic change in America’s social order in ways that I believe the reality of the earthquake called for in the Haitian context in more recent years.”
“It is not lost on me that Maryland has been home to many people from what was once called Saint Domingue, from the period of the Haitian Revolution to Douglass’s appointment as US ambassador to Haiti from 1889-1890, to the more recent influx of Haitian emigrants,” Chancy added.
There will be a tour this summer, and a calendar of free public events, including an author tour, the details of which Maryland Humanities will make available online at the beginning of the summer.
“This year’s One Maryland One Book theme feels important and timely,” said Lindsey Baker, Maryland Humanities CEO. “I’m looking forward to seeing what resonates with Marylanders about What Storm, What Thunder and the amazing programming I know our partners will come up with.”
2023’s One Maryland One Book selection was “There There” by Cheyenne and Arapaho writer Tommy Orange. That novel weaves together the stories of 12 Native characters over multiple generations.
One Maryland One Book was created by Maryland Humanities to bring together a diverse range of communities across the state through a shared literary experience of reading the same book. It’s sponsored by The Institute of Museum and Library Services via the Maryland State Library Agency, The Library of Congress Center for the Book, and PNC Foundation.
