I think that Julia Alvarez was deceiving herself if she thought that her relationship with Piti and his family was one of friendship. For one thing, a real friendship requires some degree of commonality. There was absolutely none between Alvarez and Piti. A friendship also requires equality. She and this Haitian family can't possibly be equals for an entire boatload of reasons. I see her as a Lady Bountiful who wants to be honorable toward her employee, but there is this unbridgeable chasm of hi More...

3.5 stars
The title's a little misleading. I thought the part about Haiti after the earthquake was more interesting than the events surrounding the wedding.

Overall, it was a good book. I definitely would not have read this book if I previously had known how it was written. Up until the final night's reading, I thought this book was cleverly written. Perhaps it was simply too much for me to read so much in one sitting, yet the book itself was not as good as I had thought it was. Personally, I would not recommend this book to anyone. However, if my friend suddenly began reading it, I would encourage them to continue. I had mixed feelings about this b More...

A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez was a sweet chronicle that provided an intimate, personal view of life in Haiti, beyond the images of its poverty that is often focused on in the media. Detailing the various events along the journey of the author and her companions, I was taken along with them to relive with them every little experience that comes from real life traveling in Haiti, further colored by the many photos of what Alvarez described. It introduced and immersed me into the lives of va More...

I really enjoyed this book for several reasons. One, it was relatively short and a light read, something I appreciate due to time constraints. Also, through out the book I was exposed to situations which seemed almost strange to me. For example, the hotel that the two main characters show up to towards the beginning of the book. Through the way they described it, the hotel seemed to have been almost hazardous. In the United States such a hotel would surely be shut down due to infringements of se More...

• This was a quick enjoyable read.
• While this was an ok read for me, I did think the author wrote with honesty and a caring heart.
• Not many surprises for me as I know much about the history about each of the countries and the history between the countries – and have often gone off the beaten paths on the various islands. But it is an informative book for those who often do not see this side of Haiti.
• This travelogue us-moir as the author calls – says it is not a me-moir as also about three ma More...

This book never really gelled for me. I felt like Alvarez was trying to connect all these various threads of ideas about her aging parents, the troubles of Haiti, the hardship for the people there and traveling in a third world country but the narrative just came off as trying too hard. Also none of her characters (which are real-life people) felt like fully developed people with personalities to me. The whole experience was like reading someone's stream-of-consciousness travel journal. Perhaps More...

Lately Haiti has been calling on my life. I suppose that is why I plucked this off the shelf. It's time had come.
Again, my rating of the book has a personal vector, and if I had no connections to Haiti, perhaps this would rate 4 Stars. Which would be a shame, since Julia Alvarez is such a watchful guide through two journeys from the coffee plantation/literacy center she and her husband maintain in the Dominican Republic while living in Vermont. Crossing from the DR to Haiti has usually been a tr More...

When I first started this book, I thought it would be somewhat of a travelogue. Having been to the DR and seeing the animosity between the Haitian and Dominicans, I thought it would be a quick and interesting read.
The author makes a trip to Haiti to attend the wedding of Hatian man (Piti) she befriended as a child. And then a subsequent trip after the earthquake. I've read reviews that have called her out for being snobbish and for painting Haiti as a poor country and Haitians as merely survivor More...

I had ideas about what a book titled, "A Wedding in Haiti," might involve. I was wrong. That being said, I enjoyed the book for what it is...an author's nonfiction narrative detailing a couple of trips to Haiti from the Dominican Republic. One of the trips involved her attendance at a rural Haitian wedding, hence the title. The other trip was six months after the 2010 earthquake.
The book might be the author's journal entries woven into a tale. But we probably wouldn't buy a book titled, "A Jour More...

It was definitely not what I was expecting. For some reason, I thought that this was a work of fiction, however, it was actually a non fictional narrative; It's the story of Julia Alvarez going to Haiti to attend the wedding of one of her workers, and returning after the earthquake. It was a pretty easy read, and I finished it in a couple of days..I had it in my amazon wishlist for a few months, and I noticed that this week it was $1.99 for the kindle version, so I snatched it up. Let's just say More...

I've read one of her other books (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) and really enjoyed it and when I saw that this one was also a real story of her life, I was interested. This is a journey into Haiti to attend a wedding and then again six months after the horrific earthquake she takes another trek across Haiti. She walks so many lines of culture and experience since her family fled the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo dictatorship and emigrated to the US but her parents eventually m More...

Loved it! Fascinating read on many levels - relationships, family, travel,
politics, natural disasters, history, etc. Read it basically over one day as
I could not put it down!

After finishing this last night, I woke up to a front page picture in the NYTimes of the tent camps (Golgotha etc)and suffering in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. The author and her husband, Bill travel between the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti twice in this short memoir; first to attend her friend Piti's wedding and then after the earthquake, to help him take his new wife, Eseline and their baby, Ludy, back for a visit with family. It's a quiet tale of friendship and caring, and observ More...

i found this book poorly written also i began to not care about their adventure.

"A Wedding in Haiti" is a very long story that continues to unravel even when you think you finished. I found this book very long and although it was interesting it was a hard read. The story was simple and easy to understand but it was almost too simple and predictable that half way into the book I was ready just to give up on reading it. It had two different stories which I was not expecting. The first part of the book was about the author's travel to a wedding for her "son's" wedding. It was More...

A lovely story about a promise kept, A Wedding in Haiti tells the story of a friendship Julia Alvarez and her husband have with a very young boy they first meet while he is flying a kite in the Dominican Republic, his name is Piti. Piti is Haitian and he has come to the Dominican Republic, for better opportunities, he soon begins working at the coffee plantation that was established by Julia Alvarez and her husband. Fast forward several years, a letter arrives from the Dominican Republic to the More...

First, I have to say that I despaired when I saw this book. I've been meaning to write about a Haitian wedding for a long time -- have tried 2 - 3 times -- and always had it in the back of my mind. Never could find a good way "in" to the story, though.

Julia Alvarez uses one of the approaches I'd considered, and she does it really well. I can see, by reading this book, that mine wouldn't have been as good...but then again, maybe the real way in would have come to me.

Who knows?

This is the story of More...

I'm a fan of Alvarez's fiction, but was disappointed by this tedious travelogue/memoir. It is centered around two trips taken because of a man, Piti, who works on the coffee plantation that Alvarez and her husband own, yet we barely get to know this man. Apparently Alvarez and her husband are his godparents--a fact casually tossed into the narrative partway through the story about the wedding. Well, we know precious little about this beloved employee. Instead Alvarez fixates on narrating the det More...

I really enjoyed this book. Alvarez's recount of traveling to norhteastern Haiti from the Dominican Republic with her husband and several Haitians was very affirming of Haitian resiliance and as well as documenting the lack of infrastructure and poverty of the Haitian countryside. The story doesn't focus on this, but rather it is the context of her story of going to the wedding of her Haitian "son", Piti, a young man she and her husband have been close to for many years. I identified with her be More...

On the surface, this is a simple book--Julia and Bill travel to Haiti for Piti's wedding. But it's much more than that; it's a portrait of a complex country most of us will never visit. It's told without hyperbole but in honest language and stories, providing depth and complexities that can't be captured in 60 seconds on the evening news.

The book is divided into two sections--the trip for Piti's wedding and the return to Haiti six months after the earthquake in 2010.

This one gets a five for Al More...

When I'm on vacation in the Caribbean, I always try to pack among my books at least one that is either set in the region or written by somebody who hails from there--preferably both. The first one I read, A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez, is a fairly straightforward work of non-fiction that moved me to tears twice in the first chapter when I test-drove it at home, so it was a clear choice for my suitcase. I'd read little Alvarez in the past--her first novel and one collection of poetry out of More...

I really enjoyed this book, though I suspect that my reason for liking it is kind of odd. At the end, I found myself more interested in Alvarez's journey for what I learned about her as a 60something educated woman negotiating the relationships that come with later middle age than I was in her description of Haiti. It was good to "see" Haiti and to know more about its troubles and its people and the aftermath of the earthquake, and that will affect choices I make in the future about charities to More...

A friendship between Alvarez and a young Haitian boy, Piti, leads to two memorable trips to Haiti. Several months before the devastating earthquake, Alvarez and her husband travel through small towns in northern Haiti for Piti's wedding. A year later, after the earthquake they return and also visit the capital, Port au Prince. This is an intense personal view of Haiti which gives the reader a picture of life behind the headlines.

Very thoughtful and interesting travel diary. I enjoyed learning more about Haiti and appreciated Alvarez's honest reflections on the power dynamics inherent in such travel. I am struck by the contrast between this and the other Alvarez book I just finished (Return to Sender). Both are engaging and about important topics, but the genre, style, perspective, and tone could not be more different. I'm impressed because she does both well and uses them to make relevant political arguments.

Well-done chronicle of being immersed in a situation about which you have shadows of understanding and into which you throw yourself-ignorance, clumsiness, fear, hope, and everything else. I like her light writing style. This was easy to read, even on my cellphone during a conference. Well, not in the conference room, but settling down in my room with a glass of wine in the late evening.

Hum dee dum... this book should not be read if you are looking to learn about Haiti or Dominican Republic. Nor is it a book written in Alvarez's ficition style. This book is more of a travel memoir....explaining two trips Alvarez took from the DR to Haiti---for a wedding and then after the earthquake. She says things that are not always the most "educated"....but she also explains at the beginning of the book that she has only been accross the border once....a long time ago. It is nice to be giv More...

Jack Groper
11/4/12
E Block

T1 Outside Reading Book Review

In the book “A Wedding In Haiti” by Julia Alvarez, the difference of wedding cakes in Liberia and in the book, differ greatly. In the book, the wedding cake is taken very seriously because the “serving of the wedding cake, actually three cakes,” (p. 81) shows that they take wedding cake in Haiti very seriously if they get three cakes. Unlike in Liberia, where “Wedding cake is not traditional in Liberia, so not many of our guests ate it,” (ht More...

this memoir is perhaps alvarez's foray into travel writing. the first half of the book details her excursion to haiti for the wedding of one of the workers on her farm. i was a bit uncomfortable with this part of the book because it seemed like a written account of an encounter between the first and third world. it seems a little bit condescending. the second half of the book is about a visit to haiti with the same worker and his new family after the terrible earthquake of 2010. this part of the More...

An interesting read about Alvarez's travels in pre- and post-earthquake Haiti....and a look at the interdependence of families, coworkers, and countries. I enjoyed Alvarez's ability to bring both place and people to life with her writing. She includes pictures of her travels, but I did not need them as her writing elicits an easy understanding and visualization.

I normally don't share quotes in my reviews, but this passage struck me and I feel I should share (from p.280):

"...you do what you have More...