Suzanne Simon Baptiste Louverture: Writing Micro-Biography in the Case of the Missing Wife

My paper investigates the life and historical significance of Suzanne Simon Baptiste Louverture, the wife of Haitian Revolutionary Toussaint Louverture. What does an interpretation of her life teach us about the role of Blackness and Black women during and after the Haitian Revolution? In my attempts to combine the specificity of micro-history (that understands the limits of what we can know, and who matters) with the necessary expanse of biography (which concerns itself with the notion of the impact of “great [white] man theory” of telling history of the nineteenth century), I suggest that biographies about women like Suzanne are not only possible, but fruitful avenues of historical investigation. While not always in her own voice, we have documents that attempt to tell a story of Suzanne, sometimes as an object to be moved about, as a nuisance to be managed, or a problem to be solved. Yet, the paradox between her indelibility and erasure are compelling avenues to find Suzanne and Black women like her. By uncovering her life story, I highlight a particular perspective of colonial history where colonial power meets up against resistance, re-centered in the body of a Black woman as a historical figure in her own right.