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.

I think daily that the country’s future is being thrown to the wind.

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,...

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...

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

There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: ‘Ou...

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.

The women in your family have never lost touch with one another. Death is a path we take to meet on the other side.

Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up – with that heroic Delta force – people not realizing that they were always there but doing...

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...

Old age is not meant to be survived alone,” Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. “Death should come gently, slowly, like a man’s hand approaching your body. There can be...

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

Or even the state of Florida, where they are prepared to execute children. Umm, well, you hope that at least that there is something there to be claimed.

People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.

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

That’s whatever news topic, whatever political process any country is going through – whenever they are in the news, that’s when they exist. If you don’t see them they don’t exist.

No, women like you don’t write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness,...

People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don’t think that’s limited to Haiti.

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.

They are the people of creation. Their maker…gives them the sky to carry because they are so strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in...

People who want alternative information have to try so hard to find it.

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.

Perhaps there had been joy for them in finding that sugar could be made from blood.

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.

In fact that is the struggle that most Americans – As rich as this country is, most Americans are very limited in their interaction with the world, unless the world comes to us in a...

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.

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...

More and more people are able to access information – thank goodness we have the Internet and if you are interested you can find things. Which is different than even 20 years ago.

On some level, now, we are joining the larger world and realizing that we are connected with people in these very scary ways, sometimes. What happened recently in Spain affects us here and brings questions...

And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.

You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government, you have to...