Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 Book

Mary Renda's Taking Haiti offers a cultural analysis of the invasion. It's certainly an interesting perspective to explore, as Renda examines the American occupation's impact on American culture: she argues that the plethora of military memoirs and travel writing from the era, for instance, directly led to America's fascination with voodoo and zombies. Similarly, it's fascinating to see how many American writers (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Eugene O'Neill, Orson Welles) drew inspiration from the period through plays, poems, novels and political activism. The book is less successful looking at the occupation itself, becoming too preoccupied in psychoanalysis of the "masculine" role playing of American Marines and officials confronted with a culture they neither respected nor understood. There may be value in such an approach, but really it seems too much like literary criticism or Fawn Brodie-esque psychobiography to seem applicable to real life. And again, there's little consideration of Haitian reactions to the occupation, leaving a gap in the research.