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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.

Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Disappear
Streets
Consciousness
Moments
Country
Coup
People
Coups
Disappears
Frustration

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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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.
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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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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.
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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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We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.
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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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If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.
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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.
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I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
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I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like a hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to
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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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Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.
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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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In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
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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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...women, brave as stars at dawn
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It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
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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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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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The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.
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