Edwidge Danticat: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you think the Haitian diaspora is culturally stable? Or do you think it will, in essence, be absorbed and assimilated into a more narrowly Afro-American culture? I think because there’s often so much happening in Haiti, let’s say, that tie — what we would call the umbilical cord — is really married to Haiti. Even over several generations, the Haitians who I know — I don’t want to speak for everybody — remain very connected to Haiti, and want their children to know Haiti, and want that connection through language, through food, through music. No diaspora is fully stable. Of course, there’s integration, there’s assimilation. That happens with every immigrant community over the generations, certainly, for sure, but there’s a certain tie to Haiti that the diaspora has. There’re so many diaspora organizations, neighborhood organizations, where people support schools in the neighborhoods where they come from, where they support organizations. Part of it, I think, that tie, that connection is connected to the fact that Haiti is often in crisis, and people in the diaspora are often the first-line responders after people in Haiti. After Haitians in Haiti are Haitians in diaspora. Even within our families, if there’s an illness, and that sometimes extends to the larger community. Definitely, there’s integration, but we have a diaspora that goes back further than people know, yet that connection to Haiti throughout the generations has been made. Then, with these artists that you mentioned — Leyla McCalla — she’s a wonderful artist, born of Haitian parents, yet her music reflects that. Artists like Mélissa Laveaux. You mentioned Basquiat. I think that’s also a testament to a thread that runs through Haiti and the diaspora. Do you think there is, in fact, a natural language for Haitian literature? If you think of the earlier Haitian classics that you’ve had a hand in translating — they were written in French. Your work, of course, is written in English. It’s been slow to have been translated into Creole. Is it a fundamental fact about the future of Haitian literature that there’s not a natural language there?…

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