Trouillot's first book, published in 1977 as Ti difé boulé sou istoua Ayiti, appears here in English for the first time, the earliest work by the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot.

The subject is the generation of formerly enslaved people who fought in the revolution and the war of independence between 1791 and 1804. Trouillot places them at the center of the story, as the people who founded the modern Haitian state and seeded the culture that thrives in the country today. Against standard readings, he argues that two centuries of Haitian history look different once that generation is put first.