[music]
Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. The year I graduated from college, I discovered Edwidge Danticat. Her 1994 novel Breath, Eyes, Memory gripped my black girl becoming a woman self with a tender tenacity that still has not abated nearly 30 years later. During the past month, we hear at The Takeaway have reported on the assassination of Haiti's president, the precarious survival of Haiti's first.
Saturday's devastating earthquake, and now the soaking rains of tropical depression grace. Even as we worked to bring you these difficult stories of death and tragedy, I haven't been able to shake Danticat's voice from my own memory. Here's the award-winning author a full decade ago in 2011 during an interview with PBS.
Edwidge Danticat: I think when people are faced with the traumas, they are so overwhelming and then suddenly people feel like they know. They should have seen people at their most vulnerable, at their naked, bloody, under rubble, hungry, victims of coups. I think people get those glimpses and they feel like I know these people and they are those people, the people that we see on the CNN. Then they stop and they don't go further than that, but there's also this other Haiti that is so important to me to share, and sometimes it's as simple as the most ordinary things. Love, marriage, hate, conflict, and beauty.
[music]
Melissa Harris-Perry: It is my distinct pleasure and my great honor to welcome national book award finalist, MacArthur Genius award winner, and Haitian American writer, Edwidge Danticat, to The Takeaway. Ms. Danticat thank you for joining us.
Edwidge Danticat: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Melissa.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Tell me about the beauty that we need to understand.
Edwidge Danticat: I think first, we have to start with the beauty in tragedy given this past month and given what happened this past weekend. I was woken up like a lot of Haitian, Haitian-Americans, Haitian diaspora people on Saturday to the call of this earthquake, and I started thinking about the beauty of life, and then we started immediately seeing the images of other Haitians. Haitians are always each other's first responders and people digging in the rubble to find their neighbors, to rescue people, and then I started thinking of the wonderful--That region is a very special region for me. My husband is from there. My mother-in-law has a house there and a school there.
I was thinking of the beautiful sites that also will have perished with the structures and so much, but the beauty of the people right now this morning is really what is at the center of my heart, and of course, the suffering that's been happening the last two days, and even before that, but that is happening the last two days and will demand so much again of Haitian people.
Melissa Harris-Perry: How it is your family that's on the ground there in the region that was most affected by the earthquake.
Edwidge Danticat: Well, my mother-in-law is here with us, but the family that we have [unintelligible 00:03:44] thankfully is safe, but as you will hear from many people who have loved ones in the region, there's a lot of devastation. A lot of homes are down, and water is an urgent issue because the earthquake has stirred the water table so streams that people counting for clean water have been muddied. Last night was a very rainy night and people were not able to go back into the few homes that were still standing because they were either damaged or people now fear being under the concrete.
A lot of people were under tarp last night, or just were seeking shelter in the most precarious circumstances. We haven't yet seen all the images, but there were some flooding. I think a lot of us right now are just on pins and needles in the diaspora, there's some efforts being made to try to see how we can help as the diaspora because the Haitian diaspora is very connected at all times to the country, but we are afraid as we were four years ago with Hurricane Matthew, which struck that same region and left it even more vulnerable to this event as we were 10 years ago with the earthquake. Just a really afraid for our loved ones, but also motivated to see how we can actively contribute and what we can do next.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I don't think I'll ever forget you saying just a moment ago that Haitians are always one another's first responders. Talk to me about what that means. We've talked about a decade ago, the earthquake`, but I had forgotten about Matthew halfway in between all of this. What does that mean to be in diaspora, where you are always first responding both in the nation and then also in the diaspora to so many disasters?
Edwidge Danticat: Well, I think the people on the ground certainly are the immediate responders always because that's been required of them, and it's also in the spirit of Haitian culture, this culture of lakou which is we're living a communal way and this culture of kombit where you today you take care of me tomorrow I take care of you.
I think that extends to the diaspora, because before even beyond disaster response in the diaspora you have community groups where people who come from certain regions were building schools, clinics, and so forth. There was always that continuous connection to the diaspora that then I think goes to another level when something like this happens, because we all have family still back in Haiti, and that response extends in ordinary times but also becomes more urgent at times like this.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Can you also think through with us as an audience a bit about how Haiti has changed across your lifetime, how you experienced it as a child versus what you see now?
Edwidge Danticat: Well, Haiti, when I was born was in the middle of a 30-year dictatorship. I left Haiti as a young girl at 12 years old, but I have family members who remained like my uncle who remained in a historic, but sometimes very marginalized area of Port-au-Prince called Bel Air. That's where I grew up in would go back, and actually that area, my uncle's place there was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.
I think it's very important for people to remember as they're watching what is happening now in Haiti the history of Haiti. I think sometimes as Haitians, we feel like we can not stress that enough, that it was the first place in the world to abolish slavery and then was severely punished for that, and by having to pay an indemnity to France and then by the US occupation and all of these things and then the dictatorship that followed that have really made it impossible to build Haitian led and Haitian supported state that can really face moments like this.
I travel to that whole period from my birth to now with a generation of people or in the diaspora in different countries, who've had to leave Haiti, me and childhood others, and in adulthood. My parents always said in my house, and it wasn't the only Haitian house in which it was said, we may have left Haiti, but it has never left.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to remind our listeners. Maybe you can walk us through this a bit that when you said the first to abolish slavery, it can sound as though there was some outside force or perhaps the goodwill of enslavers that abolished it, but the intergenerational punishment for the abolition is because it was abolition through revolution.
Edwidge Danticat: Yes, absolutely, and it's in a way something Haiti has never been forgiven for, and how dare you basically you feel is being restated or remade in each event like this. Even as early as we are into this event, you have people who will say we have bad luck, or we can't catch a break, but there are very structural historical colonial imperialist reasons for all of that.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Less about luck and more about systemic inequality. Can you tell us for those of us who are not in Haitian diaspora, but who loved the nation even from afar, the ways that either in our public discourse or in our charitable giving or just in our historical narratives, what is it that we can do to be part of and allied to Haitian recovery?
Edwidge Danticat: I think the most important thing is to force to try to avoid the mistakes of the 2010 and fleeted promises that were made where it's often portrayed as though Haitians squandered aid that really was either never given any way that went back to donor countries, or that were mishandled by large organizations like the Red Cross, for example. I think it's important for people who love and want to support Haiti at this time to give to local Haitian-led or Haitian staffed organizations. If you have someone you know, and trust in the Haitian community, ask them who they support or who they have been supporting for many, many years.
It's also important we're in this very dangerous combination in Haiti right now of being on an active and dangerous faultline that may have people more active that we may have more earthquakes, at the same time that we're in the crosshairs of these hurricanes that are going more and more intense with climate change, so it's very important that I think people who are given or people who are contributing, look at organizations that are investing in long-term solutions, and solutions that take into that, for example, work with grassroots organizations in the area, the people who are going to be here, long after the rescuers and others leave, so people who are trying to rebuild.
The difference between this, I think, earthquake, and the one in Port-au-Prince, is that here you have this is happening and what Haitians called the [foreign language], even though there's some very big cities in the southern region, but this is the in the rural area, it's less populated, which means that we had fewer casualties, but also it has people with the majority of people are working the land.
This is one of some of the greenest areas of the country that where the food production is essential in this region. Those of us who really want to help Haiti have to think about long-term solutions and supporting organizations on the ground that are doing that work, not just today, but that will doing work that helps make the country just a little bit much less vulnerable and this really dangerous crosshairs between hurricanes and earthquakes.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Edwidge Danticat is an award-winning Haitian American writer. Thank you so much for joining The Takeaway today.
Edwidge Danticat: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:13:05] [END OF AUDIO]
Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.
