First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

filed in What Gets Me Through the Day

A Crash Course in Haiti

January 19, 2010 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

After last week’s devastating earthquake, I’ve been cramming to get re-aquainted with Haiti’s history, so as not to fall prey to spouting pundits who are probably just boning up as well. I’ve also been reading some wonderful short fiction by acclaimed Haitian-born writer, Edwidge Danticat.

Danticat immigrated to New York when she was 12, which was when she started learning English and by 25, her first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory was published. In 1994, she was hailed by the New York Times as 30 artists under 30 “likely to change the culture for the next 30 years,” Oprah selected Breath, Eyes, Memory for her book club, and last year, Danticat (who is 41 today) received the prestigious MacArthur “genius” award. Here’s an excerpt from Crabs, a piece Danticat wrote about her childhood for The New Yorker in 2008:      

For a miracle to occur again this time, my uncle told my cousins and me, all we needed to do was pray. And no one, when hungry, could pray louder or longer than I could. Mostly, I prayed out of terror. What if my parents and my aunt and uncle died unexpectedly, leaving me to scavenge through garbage heaps for food? But I also prayed with hope, because things had always worked out in the past. This, my uncle liked to say, was because we had exercised our faith. Our faith had moved mountains.

Update: Edwidge Canticat writes an elegy for Maxo, her cousin who died in the earthquake in Haiti

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