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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.

Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Friends
Interest
Someone
Interests
Policy
Nations

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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?
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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...women, brave as stars at dawn
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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 Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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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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Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.
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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I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
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When I meet people for the first time, I always put on my glasses because I feel like that's a little something extra between me and them. It's like the Laurence Dunbar poem We Wear the Mask.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
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.
Edwidge Danticat