In their third novel, Miami natives and sisters Maika and Maritza Moulite have united to cook up an intriguing story highlighting their Haitian roots while serving up a raw and riveting look at class, capitalism and race with a grotesque twist.
From the golden fork and gilded pearls on the cover to the disturbingly detailed recipes inside its pages, “The Summer I Ate the Rich” is a novel dealing with wealth inequality and racist microaggressions against Haitian immigrants. It taps into the Haitian “zonbi” mythology – a person forced to labor even after death and flavors it with the slow-walking Western version of zombies.
The main character, Brielle, is a Haitian teenager living in Florida who loves cooking. She’s also a zonbi who craves raw meat and human blood. Brielle is focused on taking care of her ailing mother, who works for a billionaire family as a home aid. When her mom suddenly loses her job, Brielle steps in to serve up deliciously devious recipes that the super-rich can’t get enough of, not knowing that her secret ingredient is human flesh.
Because Brielle is Haitian and American, she is a zombie and a zonbi, twice as scary, and twice as determined to get revenge on the powerful elites she feels are responsible for her family’s pain.
The writing duo says the title for their latest novel sprang from the modified phrase typically attributed to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
Part fantasy, part reality, the inspiration for the novel came from their mother’s lived experience with chronic pain and the challenges she faced with getting her pain pump refilled.
While their mother clashed with her insurance company, the pump beeped every hour to remind her that her medication was running low, as though the excruciating pain she was in following a medical procedure for her lower back wasn’t enough for her to endure.
“Beeeep, Beep, Beep, Beep. Imagine hearing that sound every ten minutes, all day, every day,” the sisters write in their Author’s Note. “Beeeep, Beep, Beep, Beep. It feels like torture, right? “Well, we don’t have to imagine it because that’s exactly what our mom went through for weeks.”
It’s no coincidence that the book begins with Brielle feeling powerless to help her mother and resentful of the privileges enjoyed by the rich.
“Why is it that we’re forced to struggle with prayer while people like the Bankses get to live their lives of god-like access and privilege without uttering a single psalm,” the sisters write. “I have spent countless hours lamenting the fact that our whole existence has been to cater to the wealthy. What would we do if the tables were turned?”
“The Summer I Ate The Rich” is a story with liberal servings of Haitian mythology, revenge and a thought-provoking examination of who the real monsters are. Bon Appetit!
