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I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it.
Edwidge Danticat
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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Place
Haiti
Ends
Suffers
Much
Neglect
Think
Extreme
Thinking
Extremes
People
Hear
Knowing
Suffering
More quotes by Edwidge Danticat
The way the media cycle works, the way the news works, and the way people's attention span works, is that we only learn that people exist when there is crisis.
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I don't know what will happen to the physical book and what it will mean for authors. I worry whether it will mean people can still make their careers this way. Will whatever comes next allow people to be able to own their ideas and be able to take time to develop them?
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We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.
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There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, Cut their heads off, burn their houses.
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People often think of Haiti as a place where you're not supposed to have any joy. I wanted to show that this is a place with joy.
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I'm not saying Cubans don't deserve asylum, but if it is a national security issue, there are people who are coming from Cuba on hijacked airplanes. Why isn't that a national security issue?
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I think all artists are looking for a subject or are sometimes unsure of their subject, but immigrant artists bring another culture to that and they bring also the place where the original culture meets the new culture.
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Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
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...women, brave as stars at dawn
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Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.
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And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.
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The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.
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When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.
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Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.
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I can't wait for both my daughters to be old enough to read all my books. I loved it every time I saw my parents acting like more than just my parents. And I'm looking forward to that with my daughters too. I am looking forward to having them discover me as someone completely other than their mother.
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People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
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I am very timid about speaking for the collective. I can say what I see, I can say what I've heard, I can say what I feel, but I can't speak for - no one can speak for - 10 million people, and it takes away something from them if you make yourself their voice.
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Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.
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My models were oral, were storytellers. Like my grandmothers and my aunts. It's true, a lot of people in my life were not literate in a formal sense, but they were storytellers. So I had this experience of just watching somebody spin a tale off the top of her head. I loved that.
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Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.
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