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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
States
Years
Haiti
Occupied
Fact
United
Facts

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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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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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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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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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I was able to not fold and go in a corner because I had my writing as therapy, but also as my tool for struggle.
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That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.
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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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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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We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.
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...women, brave as stars at dawn
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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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You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government, you have to travel to the city.
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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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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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It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
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Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up - with that heroic Delta force - people not realizing that they were always there but doing different things than what we see them doing at the moment.
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No one will love you more than you love your pain.
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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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