Jung reads Haitian fiction and poetry written between 1968 and 2010 for what it reveals about manhood under authoritarian rule. Works by Marie Vieux Chauvet, Rene Depestre, Franketienne and others supply the evidence.

The historical anchor is the Duvalier period. From 1957 to 1986 Francois and then Jean-Claude Duvalier governed through fear and terror, and Jung contends that this apparatus generated its own dominant model of manhood, built on domination and sustained by pushing rival versions of masculinity to the margins. The regime, on this reading, fed on the very people it depended upon, an appetite Jung describes as self-devouring.

The larger question is whether repression that severe can produce other ways of being a man. Literature written under and about the dictatorship, Jung argues, does more than talk back to the official script; it also opens ground on which the period's damage can be worked through.