Edwidge Danticat

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.

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.

In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when It's at its extreme. And that's what they end up knowing about it.

People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.

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.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money.

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away.

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

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.

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