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.
I’m just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
The greatest gift anyone can give to a writer is time.
The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.
Once you’re involved in the work, it’s really just you and the characters and the words.
The Attorney General made another astonishing claim, that there were Pakistani terrorists possibly coming on these boats from Haiti. No one has ever seen a Pakistani coming on a boat from Haiti yet.
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?
We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.
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.
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.
I would hate for people to generalize about every Haitian from something that one Haitian did, or a group of Haitians did.
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.”
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.
I don’t know what will happen to the physical book and what it will mean for authors. I worry whether it will mean people can still make their careers this way. Will whatever comes next allow people to be able to own their ideas and be able to take time to develop them?
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.
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.
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.
Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.
When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.
We are not meant to be in this country. We did not want to come. We were forced to flee or die. Americans perceive desperate brown masses swarming at their golden shores, wildly inventing claims of persecution for the opportunity to flourish in this prosperous land. The view from beneath the bridge is somewhat different: reluctant refugees with an aching love of their forsaken homeland, of a homeland that has forsaken them, refugees who desire nothing more than to be home again.