There are no shortcuts to happiness. Only the usual route will lead to it, and the lawful path is self-realization.
Yvon Milien
Five books across ethics, faith, memory and the political life of Haiti. Written over a lifetime spent between Port-au-Prince, New York and the classroom.
Haiti and the Fracture of Collective Consciousness
The companion volume to Politics, Gangs, and Vodou. On a country in constant movement without a settled direction — and what happens to a people’s shared sense of itself when the institutions meant to hold it together give way.
Haiti’s Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights
An account of the forces shaping Haiti’s present crisis: political power, armed groups, and the religious life that runs beneath both — written by someone who grew up inside the country he is describing.
Making Sense of Basic Common Sense
Essays on the ordinary practice of becoming whole, and on why common sense — the thing everyone claims to have — turns out to be the hardest thing to hold on to.
Ethics Philosophical Essays: Reduce Miseries and Stresses
There are no shortcuts to happiness. Drawing on many sources, these essays argue that the path through life’s difficulties runs through self-knowledge rather than around it.
Tuning into the Rocky Rhythm of Fire
Memoirs of a Haitian immigrant — on romance, hardship, and the development of inner strength. The book that sets out where the rest of the writing comes from.
Yvon Milien is a Haitian-born author, educator and philosopher. His books move between ethics, spiritual practice, memoir and the political history of Haiti — held together by a single question about how a person lives well under pressure.
He is also a classical guitarist, and the author of the French-language comic CACOS, first published in Haiti.
He lives and works in the New York area, where he continues to write and teach.
New writing, and word of each new book before it reaches the stores. No more than once a month.
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For speaking, interviews, translation and film or television rights enquiries, write to contact@yvonmilien.com.