Lang surveys writing in Haitian Kreyol from its disputed beginnings onward. How the language first formed is still argued over by linguists, but its role is not in doubt: it was the medium through which revolts of the enslaved were organized, and the ground on which Haitian culture was laid.

Substantial literary texts exist by the close of the nineteenth century, among them Oswald Durand's "Choucoune" and Georges Sylvain's Cric? Crac! In the 1930s and 1940s, advocates fought to have Kreyol recognized as the national language and given a standard spelling — a fight not settled until the IPN orthography became official in the 1980s.

Poetry in Kreyol had already revived from the 1950s, led by Feliks Moriso-Lewa, and at least two later generations of writers have followed him. In Franketyen, Lang argues, the language possesses one of the most compelling writers at work in world literature today.