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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
Thinking
Extremes
People
Hear
Knowing
Suffering
Place
Haiti
Ends
Suffers
Much
Neglect
Think
Extreme

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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We live now in a global culture where anything that happens in a place that's 90 minutes from your shores really affects you.
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In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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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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America's relationship with Haiti has always been very complicated. I often say to people, Before we came to America, America came to us in the form of the American occupation from 1915 to 1934.
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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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If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.
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People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
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I very much love a physical book myself. I think people who have had this experience of also seeing a book come together, from sitting down and writing the first word, to holding the binding in your hand, we have a deeper sentimental attachment to it than others might.
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It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.
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Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
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I see the sharp inequality between how Haitian and Cuban refugees are treated in Florida. Both groups come here because their lives are equally desperate. But on arrival, the Haitians are incarcerated, and some are immediately repatriated, whereas Cubans get to stay and are eligible for citizenship.
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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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No one will love you more than you love your pain.
Edwidge Danticat
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I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.
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We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.
Edwidge Danticat
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There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, Cut their heads off, burn their houses.
Edwidge Danticat
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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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When you are working on something, you have to believe that people will still be reading when you're done!
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All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.
Edwidge Danticat