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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
Came
American
Often
Form
America
Haiti
Always
Occupation
People
Complicated
Relationship
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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.
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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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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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In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
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It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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We've had fiction from the time of cave drawings. I think fiction, storytelling, and narrative in general will always exist in some form.
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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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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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Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.
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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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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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Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.
Edwidge Danticat
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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If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.
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