Open the Door to Liberty!: A Biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Open the Door to Liberty!: A Biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture Elizabeth Bush Rockwell, Anne Open the Door to Liberty!: A Biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture; illus. by R. Gregory Christie. Houghton, 200964p ISBN 978-0-618-60570-5$18.00 R Gr. 5-7 While we dearly hope that all our middle-grade students are up on the American Revolution, it's probable that fewer would be able to relate that movement to the anti-monarchical uprising in France, and even fewer to the slave revolt in St. Domingue (now Haiti), whose leader Francois-Dominique Toussaint Breda was influenced by the political philosophy that inspired those other eighteenth-century cataclysms. Rockwell offers a simply written yet challenging biography of Toussaint, son of African slaves, who enjoyed a life of relative privilege denied to others of his status, witnessed failed slave revolts in his island home, obtained freedom at age thirty-three and prospered for many years on his own coffee farm, and only at the advanced age of forty-eight "led the first triumphant slave rebellion in history." Events leading to the uprising itself, condensed in the two opening chapters, are fairly straightforward and easy to follow, but the bulk of the title revolves around Toussaint's (now dubbed "L'Ouverture," or the "opening") far more convoluted attempts to build his war-torn island into a stable economy and an international [End Page 378] player, to ward off incursions by the British and Spanish, to keep his own generals at bay, and ultimately to resist Napoleon's designs to restore slavery to St. Domingue, a cause that ended in treachery and cost Toussaint his life. The brevity of the text and Christie's moving and sophisticated paintings—eerily realistic faces on stylized bodies—help bring the challenging political chaos within the reach of a young audience with limited background beyond U.S. history (Rockwell's closing notes acknowledge that even this account has simplified the events), making this a useful expansion on the information in Myers' Toussaint L'Ouverture, illustrated with Jacob Lawrence's historical sequence (BCCB 1/97). Children who patiently follow the labyrinthine career of this powerful, charismatic, and often enigmatic man will sense, however, that they've spent time in the company of one of history's great leaders. A "Cast of Characters" list and source information are included. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois