Edwidge Danticat Quotes
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I think daily that the country's future is being thrown to the wind.
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People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
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Life's hard in Haiti right now. And the hardest thing is that the future does not lie with one person.
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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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I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.
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Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.
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There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libéré?' Are you free, my daughter?" My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips. Now," she said, "you will know how to answer.
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I'm not saying Cubans don't deserve asylum, but if it is a national security issue, there are people who are coming from Cuba on hijacked airplanes. Why isn't that a national security issue?
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I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts.
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Art is a luxury but also a necessity.
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That's whatever news topic, whatever political process any country is going through - whenever they are in the news, that's when they exist. If you don't see them they don't exist.
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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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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.
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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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The past is like the hair on our head. I moved to New York when I was twelve, but you always have this feeling that wherever you come from, you physically leave it, but it doesn't leave you.
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You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice.
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So at least the people who have another voice and people who are interested in other things can have a place to put their information and be heard.
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I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.
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I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
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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.
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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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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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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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The people did not elect me. I speak with one voice that may echo other people, but I am part of a group of people. That's not distancing yourself from a community, that's also allowing the space for others to speak for themselves.