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And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.

Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Haiti
Occupied
Fact
United
Facts
States
Years

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There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.
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It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.
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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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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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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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There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, Cut their heads off, burn their houses.
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People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
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...women, brave as stars at dawn
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Write what haunts you. What keeps you up at night. What you are unable to get out of your mind. Sometimes they are the hardest things to write, but those are often the things that are worth investigating by you specifically. . .
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Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
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Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them.
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We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.
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It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
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In the 1980s, when people were just beginning to talk about AIDS, there were just a few categories of those who were at high risk: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. We were the only ones identified by nationality.
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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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Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people in our own lives.
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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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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.
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I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
Edwidge Danticat
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In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.
Edwidge Danticat