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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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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
American
Often
Form
America
Haiti
Always
Occupation
People
Complicated
Relationship
Came
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After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.
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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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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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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.
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There is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.
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And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.
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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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I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
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 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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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
There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, Cut their heads off, burn their houses.
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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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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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