Trouillot's first book, Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (1977), is the least familiar thing he published: written in Haitian Creole, never widely circulated, and long out of print. Past and Hebblethwaite, who are translating it into English for the first time, examine what it set in motion.

The book is a Marxist reading of colonial history through Haiti's own, and it treats the revolution of 1791 to 1803 as the key to interpreting and criticizing Haiti's more recent past. Rather than celebrate revolutionary heroes in the epic manner, Trouillot faults the Haitian generals for governing along European lines and puts the enslaved masses back at the center of events. Drawing on Haitian storytelling, proverbs, and song, he follows the rivalries, killings, and maneuvering that produced the Haitian state and shows how they shaped it afterward.

The essay closes with the translators considering why Trouillot waited so long to permit an English version.