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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
More quotes by Edwidge Danticat
In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
Edwidge Danticat
I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.
Edwidge Danticat
It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
Edwidge Danticat
I think all artists are looking for a subject or are sometimes unsure of their subject, but immigrant artists bring another culture to that and they bring also the place where the original culture meets the new culture.
Edwidge Danticat
Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people in our own lives.
Edwidge Danticat
It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.
Edwidge Danticat
Language is such a powerful thing. After the earthquake, I went to Haiti and people were talking about how [they] described this feeling of going through an earthquake. People really didn't have the vocabulary - before we had hurricanes. I'd talk with people and they'd say, We have to name it it has to have a name.
Edwidge Danticat
When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.
Edwidge Danticat
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
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.
Edwidge Danticat
The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.
Edwidge Danticat
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.
Edwidge Danticat
...women, brave as stars at dawn
Edwidge Danticat
No one will love you more than you love your pain.
Edwidge Danticat
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
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.
Edwidge Danticat
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
People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
Edwidge Danticat
To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
Edwidge Danticat
Write what haunts you. What keeps you up at night. What you are unable to get out of your mind. Sometimes they are the hardest things to write, but those are often the things that are worth investigating by you specifically. . .
Edwidge Danticat
