Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedEdwidge Danticat: evaluation
4 Nov 2020 Conversations with Tyler Edwidge Danticat on Haitian Art and Literature
“Yes. This one, I think, is about humility because we have this expression that we say when someone has died who has contributed a great deal to our culture: we say that a mapou has fallen.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Edwidge Danticat
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 4 Nov 2020
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…“When the mapou tree dies, goats would eat its leaves.” Yes. This one, I think, is about humility because we have this expression that we say when someone has died who has contributed a great deal to our culture: we say that a mapou has fallen. A mapou is a soft cotton tree, it’s a kind of sacred tree, and it’s also a big tree that lasts forever. It’s a regal institution, a mapou. What this one is saying, actually, the goat is a meager creature compared to a mapou, and there’s no way a goat would actually be able to access the leaves of a mapou, but when it dies, it falls. I’ve always heard that proverb as a way of encouraging humility, that all our leaves are vulnerable to the goat, if you will. [laughs] One more proverb, “Beyond the mountain is another mountain.”…
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