Wucker — Why the Cocks Fight Full title: Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola

Wucker — Why the Cocks Fight Full title: Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola Author: Michele Wucker Published: 19, Hill and Wang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), New York ISBN: 0-8090-3719-X Summary Wucker's book is a work of narrative journalism grounded in extensive fieldwork on Hispaniola and among Haitian and Dominican diaspora communities in the United States. The central metaphor is the cockfight: two birds — Haiti and the Dominican Republic — enclosed together on one island, bred for aggression, owners manipulating the contest while deflecting their own anxieties onto the animals. The book examines why two nations sharing one island have such a deeply fractured relationship, arguing that the structural forces behind the conflict — economic inequality, US intervention, anti-Haitian ideology, labor exploitation, and migration — are more fundamental than the cultural and linguistic differences that surface explanations emphasize.