dence. According to Ako, Hill’s Haitian hero is
“an individual who hardly breaks his word...
someone who knows how to repay past acts of
kindness” (Ako, 194). Hill humanizes and deifies
his defiant general. He presents him as a man
anointed by God to emancipate his people. Hill
underscores Louverture’s democratic principles as
a warrior. In an early scene, Louverture asserts the
true motivation for his battle against the French.
He declares that “It is not, then, to make one race
supreme / that we must fight, but to make all men
free.” Hill’s protagonist is a powerful humanist, one
whose war on French colonizers is in fact a
metaphor for his fight to achieve universal, rather
than local, West Indian, freedom.
Bibliography
Ako, Edward O. “Leslie Pinckney Hill’s Toussaint Louver-
ture.” Phylon48, no. 3 (1987): 190–195.
James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture
and the San Domingo Revolution.New York: Vintage
Books, 1963.
Ros, Martin. Night of Fire: The Black Napoleon and the
Battle for Haiti.New York: Sarpedon, 1994.
Trelling, Ursula(Ursala Trelling)
The pseudonym that REGINA ANDREWS, play-
wright, COLUMBIAUNIVERSITYgraduate, and NEW
YORKPUBLICLIBRARYlibrarian, used during the
Harlem Renaissance. Andrews’s plays, such as
CLIMBING JACOB’S LADDER (1931) and Under-
ground(1932), appeared under the pseudonym.
Tremaine, Paul
The pseudonym that poet and playwright GEOR-
GIADOUGLASJOHNSONused on occasion. Much
of the work that she attributed to Paul Tremaine
was and remains unpublished.
Tri-Arts Club
Based at the Harlem branch of the YOUNG
WOMEN’SCHRISTIANASSOCIATION, the Tri-Arts
Club was one of several small drama troupes estab-
lished during the Harlem Renaissance era. Accord-
ing to historian Bruce Kellner, members included
John Wilson, Lillian Mattison, Marie Santos, and
Ruppert Marks. The Tri-Arts Club was established
in 1923 and seems to have disbanded within a year.
The club received critical attention when
THEOPHILUSLEWIS, drama critic for THEMESSEN-
GER,evaluated its efforts. The group, which was
short-lived, appears to have produced only three
plays. None of the works was devoted to African-
American issues. Each catered instead to generic
popular themes of the day.Tropic DeathEric Walrond(1926)
A riveting collection of short stories by ERICWAL-
ROND. Published in 1926, the volume is regarded
as Walrond’s most significant and influential work.
The volume, published by BONI&LIVERIGHT,in-
cludes 10 works that grapple with issues specific to
the West Indies and Caribbean. As scholar Louis
Parascandola suggests, however, Walrond’s title
raises the specter of deadly forces at work in the
paradise that the writer explores.
The collection begins with “Drought,” a gritty
story about an impoverished Barbadian family, pre-
viously published in the NEWYORKAGE.The pro-
tagonist, Coggins Rum, is fighting to preserve
himself, a battle underscored by the narrator’s de-
scription of him as a “black, animate dot” upon the
“broad road” that leads to work. Coggins has an
exacting life as a laborer, one that constantly
threatens to reduce him to nothingness. The story
begins with a series of disembodied references
about the men as they pause for an 11 o’clock
break: “Throats parched, grim, sun-crazed blacks
cutting stone on the white burning hillside...
Hunger—pricks at stomachs inured to brackish
coffee and cassava pone... Helter-skelter dark,
brilliant black faces of West Indian peasants moved
along, in pain... dissipating into the sun-stuffed
void the radiant forces of the incline” (19). These
stark images reveal the overwhelming nature of
the work and also dispel immediately any illusion
that the islands are idyllic places. Walrond uses
this story to begin his forceful treatise on the na-
ture of death in the tropics.
“The Palm Porch” is a multifaceted meditation
on the invasive effects of the Panama Canal con-
struction, sexuality and controversial morality, and
the degree to which family life can be corrupted in
the modern day. Like “Drought,” it, too, focuses onTropic Death 527