Edwidge Danticat on Haiti, Writing and Survival

Posted on 31. Mar, 2010 by Lonnie Isabel in Podcast

[audio:http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/60/files/2010/03/20100318_Reporters_Notebook_S01E01_small.mp3]

Haiti is the oldest and poorest democracy in the western hemisphere. It is also a black country with a history of U.S. interference in its chaotic and often disastrous politics. On Jan. 12, at 4:53 p.m. a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck southwest of Port-au-Prince. Since then almost 60 strong aftershocks have shaken the region. The numbers are staggering. By official tally, more than 222,000 people have died, about 300,000 people were injured and about 1.3 million people — 15 percent of the population — lost their homes.

The acclaimed novelist and memoir writer Edwidge Danticat was one of many Haitian Americans, who returned to her native country in the weeks following the disaster. She wrote about her cousin Maxo’s death and her family in Haiti for the New Yorker.

In this interview, Danticat joins us from WLRN’s studios in Miami. She talks about family, the novelist’s craft, and the resiliency of Haitians.

This podcast begins with the music of Charles Mingus. He wrote this piece, Haitian Fight Song, to commemorate the country’s slave revolt, which led to the establishment of Haiti as a free black state in 1804.

About Danticat
At age 12, Edwidge Danticat arrived in Brooklyn from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. She joined her parents who had emigrated when she was just a toddler. Danticat spoke only Creole at the time and Brooklyn was a tough adjustment for her. She took refuge in books and was a story teller from an early age. Folk tales and her family history helped shape her literary imagination.

Last year, Danticat was awarded a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Fellowship Program. Her works include a series of short stories, Krik? Krak!, novels, Breath, Eyes, Memory, The Farming of Bones,, and a memoir about her father and his brother, Brother, I’m Dying.