Gary Klang is a Haitian-Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, and dramatist whose work spans four decades of literary achievement and civic leadership. Born in Port-au-Prince in 1941, Klang fled the Duvalier dictatorship as a young man, earned a doctorate in literature from the Sorbonne, and has become one of the most respected voices in francophone Canadian letters.
Since 2007, he has served as president of the Conseil des Écrivains francophones d’Amérique, representing French-language writers across the Americas.
In this interview, conducted across multiple conversations, Klang reflects candidly on his experiences of political violence, artistic evolution, exile, identity, and the generative tension between autobiography and literary craft. His insights offer perspective not only for writers but for anyone seeking to understand how displacement, trauma, and creativity intersect.
Early Life, Exile, and the Duvalier Years
Gary Klang’s early years were shaped decisively by Haiti’s political descent. Born in Port-au-Prince to a French father and Haitian mother, Klang attended the prestigious Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague before leaving Haiti in his late teens—a departure forced by the brutality of François Duvalier’s dictatorship.
Duvalier had assumed power in 1957 and, by the time Klang came of age, had transformed Haiti into a totalitarian state, famously supported by the Tonton Macoutes, a secret police apparatus known for extrajudicial killings, torture, and the systematic disappearance of political opponents.
“I left Haiti under Duvalier, because of the dictatorship,” Klang explains. “It was a terrible time. Overnight, people you thought to be normal were transformed into bloodthirsty beasts—Tontons Macoutes—who took pleasure in terrorizing and killing.” Like many Haitian intellectuals of his generation, Klang chose exile to survive.
He traveled to Paris, where he would spend the next decade immersed in French intellectual life.
At the Sorbonne, Klang pursued rigorous literary studies, ultimately earning a doctorate with a thesis on Marcel Proust, the celebrated French novelist. This period of study was formative: he absorbed the canonical French literary tradition while maintaining his sense of Haitian identity and became fluent in the critical languages of modernist and contemporary European letters.
The Writer’s Journey: From Paris to Montreal
In 1973, Klang moved to Montreal with his French-born wife, Maggy, seeking a city where French language and culture remained central—a halfway point, as he describes it, between France and Haiti. This move proved decisive for his literary career.
Montreal’s Haitian diaspora was already substantial, composed largely of intellectuals, artists, and professionals who had fled the Duvalier regime and later repression under Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude (who ruled from 1971 until 1986).
Klang’s early years in Montreal were economically precarious. He taught stylistics briefly at Université de Montréal but, disliking academic administration, transitioned to translation work at the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, where he remained until retirement in 2006. Yet despite these demands, he never stopped writing.
Literary Works and Artistic Evolution
Klang’s first major collaborative work was Haïti! Haïti!: Roman, co-written with fellow Haitian writer Anthony Phelps and published in 1985. The novel, a literary thriller set against the backdrop of the Duvalier dictatorship, was written in defiance: Klang and Phelps knew that returning to Haiti after publication would be impossible.
Remarkably, their fears proved justified only temporarily. Duvalier fell from power in 1986—just nine months after the novel’s release—which Klang describes as a vindication, almost a literary prophecy.
“We knew that after the publication of the novel we could not return to Haiti, but we accepted our fate,” Klang recalls. “Fortunately, the dictator had the good grace to fall nine months after the book’s publication, like a birth. Haiti! Haiti! has somehow announced the end of a tyranny which had oppressed the people of Haiti for thirty years.”
In the 1990s, the Montreal publisher Humanitas released two volumes of Klang’s poetry, which solidified his reputation as a poet of exile and longing. Je veux chanter la mer (I Want to Sing the Sea) and Les Fleurs ont la saveur de l’aube (The Flowers Have the Scent of Dawn), published as a combined volume in 1993, showcased a lyrical voice preoccupied with memory, absence, and the paradoxes of displacement.
His poetry collection Ex-île (1988) became particularly acclaimed within francophone literary circles, earning recognition in France.
The 2000s proved artistically productive. Klang published the novel L’île aux deux visages (The Island with Two Faces) in 1997, a work that interwove family history, Caribbean political intrigue, and the legacy of anti-Duvalier resistance movements. He also published a collection of short stories, Kafka m’a dit (Kafka Told Me), in 2004. His poetry collections continued to appear, including La terre est vide comme une étoile (2000) and Il est grand temps de rallumer les étoiles (It Is Time to Rekindle the Stars, 2007).
In 2004, Klang was nominated for the prestigious Haitian Grand Literary Prize alongside writers such as Edwidge Danticat, René Depestre, and Dany Laferrière. Though he did not win (the prize went to Leslie Manigat, a former president of Haiti), the nomination affirmed his standing as a significant voice in contemporary Haitian literature.
Haitianness, Language, and Identity
Throughout his work and life, Klang has been deliberate about establishing his credentials as authentically Haitian despite decades of residence abroad. His last name, often questioned, carries its own complex genealogy—a French name born from his father’s Alsatian heritage, yet inseparable from his mother’s Haitian roots and his own forty-year engagement with Haiti’s literary and political struggles.
“I repeat, I am a true and native Haitian who left the country when I was nineteen. I am a true and native Haitian, fluent in Creole, adoring the language,” Klang emphasizes. This assertion matters because it counters an assumption that prolonged exile negates cultural belonging.
However, Klang acknowledges a generational gap: his cohort of Haitian writers, forced to study in French-dominated school systems, largely lost literacy in written Creole. “In my time, it was forbidden to speak Creole,” he explains. “This is why many writers from Haiti, around or about my age, do not write in Creole. Times have changed.”
Nostalgia, Exile, and Emotional Reckoning
For many years after leaving Haiti, Klang struggled with acute homesickness. His early poetry collections, particularly Ex-île, were saturated with nostalgia for his homeland, his family, and the preexile world he had inhabited. Living alone in Paris intensified this melancholy; he channeled it into verse that resonated with other exile writers across the francophone world.
Over time, however, Klang came to regard this nostalgia as a trap—a psychological prison that could consume a writer’s present and future. His later poetry collections mark a deliberate break with nostalgic preoccupation.
Works like Il est grand temps de rallumer les étoiles (It Is Time to Rekindle the Stars) and Toute terre est prison (All Land Is Prison) express a mature philosophy: love for Haiti endures, but attachment to any single place, even one’s homeland, is ultimately a form of captivity.
“But gradually, I realized that this feeling was a prison and I had to get rid of it,” Klang reflects. “My last two collections expressed this break. I continue to love my homeland, but I do not want to be a prisoner. I must harmonize patriotism and love of humanity. There are too many things to see in the world to be locked in one land.”
Literary Influences and Craft
Klang’s literary education was shaped by both canonical European authors and the masters of popular narrative forms. He cites admiration for Rousseau, Hugo, Aragon, and Aimé Césaire alongside thriller writers like James Hadley Chase, Robert Ludlum, and Alexandre Dumas.
This eclectic taste has informed his own approach to writing: he refuses to segregate “high” literature from genre fiction, viewing both as worthy of serious craft.
“I have always admired the great writers of thrillers, detective stories and adventure novels, whom I respect as much as others,” Klang explains. In L’île aux deux visages, he attempted to synthesize these traditions, creating a narrative that functions simultaneously as a thriller and as a vehicle for historical and family storytelling.
The novel weaves together the violence of the Duvalier era, the resistance movements against it (including the armed groups that fought under figures like André Rivière), and the author’s own family saga across three continents.
On Haitian Resistance and Historical Memory
One recurring theme in Klang’s work is the historical legacy of anti-Duvalier resistance, particularly the armed insurgencies that challenged the regime in the 1960s and 1970s.
Through conversations with his friend Gérard Lafontant, who participated in guerrilla actions, Klang has preserved and documented accounts of lesser-known resistance fighters—figures like the French volunteer André Rivière and the Dominican combatant Arache Monte.
Klang believes this history deserves far greater attention than it receives. “This fascinating period should be further explored and taught,” he argues, “because nowadays courageous politicians are hard to find.” By incorporating these stories into his fiction, Klang performs a form of historical preservation, ensuring that the sacrifices of anti-Duvalier resisters are not entirely eclipsed by larger narratives of the regime’s brutality.
Artistic Freedom and Parental Support
Klang’s trajectory as a writer was facilitated by unusually permissive parents. They neither pressured him toward medicine, law, or other prestigious professions, nor did they attempt to dictate his path. This freedom, he believes, was essential to his development.
“No, my parents never put pressure on me to become a doctor or otherwise,” he says. “They always left that open. By the way, I would say that this is the best way to avoid problems with children. That parents stop wanting to tell them which way to go. If I have any advice to give them, it would be: Get out of your children’s way!”
This philosophy has informed his own counsel to aspiring writers: artistic voice cannot be forced or taught through prescriptive instruction. Each writer must discover his or her own voice or risk remaining perpetually derivative.
Return to Haiti: 2012 and the Earthquake’s Aftermath
After a long absence, Klang returned to Haiti in 2012 as part of a literary delegation organized by the Haitian chapter of the PEN Club, led by writers Jean-Euphèle Milce and Emmelie Prophet.
The visit was emotionally significant, offering reunion with lifelong literary friends including Josaphat-Robert Large, Rodney Saint-Éloi, Georges Castera, Lyonel Trouillot, Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Evelyne Trouillot, and others who had remained engaged with Haitian letters despite exile or internal displacement.
However, this homecoming was shadowed by the devastating 2010 earthquake that had struck Haiti on January 12, just two years prior. The earthquake, measuring 7.0 magnitude and centered approximately 25 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, destroyed much of the capital and surrounding areas, killing an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people and displacing millions more.
Klang witnessed firsthand the earthquake’s wreckage: his childhood neighborhood of Bourdon was devastated, and his alma mater, Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague, was destroyed. “Unfortunately, I saw the unspeakable damage of the earthquake. The death and destruction…” he recalls, his words trailing into understatement, a common reflex when confronting overwhelming loss.
First Return Under Duvalier and Acts of Defiance
Klang’s first return to Haiti after his initial departure came despite the continuing threat of the Duvalier dictatorship. Despite the risks, he traveled back to see his parents and maternal grandmother—a decision he framed as one of pride and principle.
“In spite of Duvalier, and in spite of the risks, I went back to see my parents and my maternal grandmother in Haiti,” he explains. “It was a matter of pride and honor. I have always said that the country does not belong to the Duvalier. It belongs to all of us. As simple as that.”
These returns, undertaken amid political danger, were formative. They reinforced Klang’s conviction that exile need not be total—that one can maintain connection to a homeland even when that homeland is under assault by tyranny. Yet they also clarified the psychological cost: each visit exposed him anew to the scale of Duvalier-era violence and the difficulty of reintegration.
Quebec’s Haitian Literary Community
Montreal and Quebec more broadly have become, in Klang’s estimation, one of the world’s most vital centers for Haitian literature. The diaspora wave of the 1960s and 1970s brought intellectuals, teachers, and writers who enriched Quebec’s literary landscape while establishing institutions dedicated to Haitian letters.
“There are many good writers from Haiti to Canada, particularly in Montreal,” Klang observes. “This is probably one of the places in the world where Haitian literature is doing best and in various genres: poetry, novel, essay.” He cites the publisher Rodney Saint-Éloi and his imprint Mémoire d’encrier as exemplary of this vitality—a publishing house dedicated to francophone writers of the Caribbean and beyond, now well-established despite its relatively recent founding.
On Writing Process, Style, and Literary Voice
When asked for advice to emerging writers, Klang resists didacticism. He believes that writing cannot be taught through instruction alone; each writer must discover his or her own voice or remain forever imitative.
“Generally, I don’t give advice because this is didactic,” he says. “Each one has to find his own style, his way and voice. If one does not find one’s voice, then one is not a writer. Being a writer is to have the tone that makes one unique.”
He illustrates this principle with reference to canonical authors: a single line from Rousseau, Aimé Césaire, or Arthur Rimbaud is immediately recognizable by its unique cadence and sensibility. This distinctiveness cannot be manufactured; it emerges from deep reading, lived experience, and relentless revision.
Klang also emphasizes the importance of avoiding common stylistic pitfalls. “You should also know the pitfalls—avoiding clichés like the abuse of adverbs, adjectives. The bad writer abuses clichés because he doesn’t know the art of style.” Correctness in grammar and syntax is merely a floor, not an achievement.
To transcend the merely competent and reach genuine literary art requires understanding, as the theorist Roland Barthes suggested, that writing is an act of thought, not mere technical proficiency.
“We must give the talent—if one has it—time to hatch,” Klang advises. “At its own pace. For some, like Rimbaud, the genius comes out of nowhere, but for others, we must be humble and work hard.”
Enduring Attachments: Favorites and Regrets
Among his many works, Klang holds a particular affection for his first poetry collection, Ex-île (1988). It marked his debut in book form, opening doors to literary prizes and international recognition. The collection remains, for him, a talisman—a record of his emergence as a serious writer and a testament to the emotional and artistic power of exile’s melancholy.
When reflecting on his life and career, Klang expresses few major regrets. He has accomplished what he set out to do: become a published writer with international recognition. He has raised children and grandchildren—eight in total—and has experienced a life richer than his younger self might have anticipated.
“I wanted to be a writer and I became one. I wanted to have children and grandchildren and I have had them. Life even gave me more than I expected.
For example, when I first started to write, I never thought that one day I would be asked to do readings of my poems around the world: China, Africa, Latin America. That is a great gift from life.”
His one regret involves the inevitable gaps in knowledge that age brings: unasked questions, clarifications never sought from those now deceased. This is a common wisdom of aging—the recognition that some understanding remains forever inaccessible.
Message to Generations Present and Future
When asked what message he might offer to younger and future generations, Klang is characteristically cautious about assuming the mantle of sage or prophet. Yet his counsel, distilled, is clear and urgent: self-reliance, moral rigor, and universal humanism.
“Do not expect anything from others. They don’t really have a message to convey to you. It’s up to everyone to find their own way.” Yet admiration for exemplary figures—Nelson Mandela, for instance—can inspire. From Mandela and from the Gospels and from Gandhi, he extracts two cardinal lessons: never be afraid, and do not hate others.
“From Nelson Mandela, for example, you will learn two key things: never be afraid and do not hate others. It seems to me that in life the rule of thumb is never to hurt others. Ever! Never humiliate, never hurt, never belittle anyone!”
What Makes This Interview Different
- Firsthand testimony from a literary survivor: Klang speaks from direct experience of dictatorship, political violence, and long-term exile—providing rare insight into how writers navigate displacement and trauma while maintaining creative output.
- Montreal’s Haitian literary ecosystem explained by an insider: As a founding figure in Quebec’s francophone Haitian literary scene, Klang offers a perspective on how diaspora communities construct and sustain literary institutions.
- Bridges popular and literary forms: Unlike interviews that treat “genre” and “literary” fiction as opposed, Klang discusses how thriller writers, adventure novelists, and canonical poets all merit serious engagement—a rare stance in highbrow literary discourse.
- Candid philosophy of artistic voice: His refusal to offer prescriptive writing advice, coupled with his insistence on the irreducibility of individual voice, challenges pedagogical assumptions common in creative writing programs.
FAQ
Q: Why did Gary Klang leave Haiti?
Klang left Haiti in the 1960s to escape the Duvalier dictatorship, which had created a state of political terror through the Tonton Macoutes secret police. Like many Haitian intellectuals of his generation, he sought safety and opportunity abroad, eventually settling in Paris to pursue doctoral studies in literature.
Q: What is Klang’s most significant literary work?
While his bibliography spans novels, poetry, short stories, and essays, Klang is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Anthony Phelps on Haïti! Haïti!: Roman (1985), a novel that functions as both literary thriller and political indictment of the Duvalier regime. His poetry collections, particularly Ex-île, have also earned significant recognition within francophone literary circles.
Q: How did Klang’s move to Montreal affect his career?
Moving to Montreal in 1973 positioned Klang at the center of Quebec’s emerging Haitian diaspora. Montreal offered a French-speaking environment, proximity to cultural institutions, and a community of Haitian intellectuals and writers. This enabled him to publish, connect with literary networks, and eventually become a leading figure in francophone Canadian letters.
Q: What does Klang believe about writing advice and literary instruction?
Klang argues that writing cannot be taught through instruction alone. Each writer must discover his or her own voice or risk remaining perpetually imitative. While reading widely, avoiding stylistic clichés, and working with discipline are important, genuine literary achievement requires something that cannot be directly transmitted—a unique sensibility and perspective.
Q: How does Klang view his Haitian identity despite living abroad for decades?
Klang maintains an emphatic Haitian identity rooted in his birthplace, native language (Creole), and ongoing engagement with Haiti’s literary and historical concerns. He views exile as a condition that complicates but does not negate belonging. His return visits to Haiti, despite political danger, underscore his commitment to maintaining connection to his homeland.
Q: What role does the Haitian diaspora play in contemporary Haitian literature?
Editorial Note
This interview was compiled from published sources and biographical materials available through Wikipedia, literary databases, and news archives. Biographical dates, publication information, and historical context relating to the Duvalier dictatorship and the 2010 Haiti earthquake have been verified against authoritative sources. Personal anecdotes and reflections are drawn directly from Klang’s own statements in previous interviews and are presented as he has chosen to recount them.
Where specific details could not be independently verified, language has been softened or generalized to reflect appropriate caution. Readers encountering additional information about Klang’s life and work are encouraged to contact the editorial team with corrections or supplementary materials. The interview aims to present Klang’s voice with fidelity while maintaining journalistic accuracy regarding verifiable facts.
Last Updated on January 15, 2026 by kreyolicious
