Top 12 Edwidge Danticat Quotes

To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.

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.

In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.

Or even the state of Florida, where they are prepared to execute children. Umm, well, you hope that at least that there is something there to be claimed.

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.

I think daily that the country’s future is being thrown to the wind.

In fact that is the struggle that most Americans – As rich as this country is, most Americans are very limited in their interaction with the world, unless the world comes to us in a very shocking way.

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.

And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.

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.

Especially moments when things are very difficult and complicated for me and I am still trying to grasp what is happening and I am still trying to understand and to reach family back home.

Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up – with that heroic Delta force – people not realizing that they were always there but doing different things than what we see them doing at the moment.