Edwidge Danticat’s We’re Alone is a phenomenal collection of essays that speaks to Haitian identity (including neo-colonial underdevelopment, crime, and diaspora). However, I’m reluctant to pigeonhole Danticat as a “Haitian” writer; she’s more than a single identity, and I think that it would not be wrong to place her in the same tradition as Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall, and she speaks incredibly powerful words.

The essays here range from her experiences meeting the latter two women, and her reminisces of them in the wake of their passing (this might be read as an allusion to Nella Larsen, as well) to reportage of kidnappings by the Mawozo movement to soft reflections on writing, interrogations of the impact that (un)natural disasters have on Haiti, and analyses of Jovenal Moïse’s death.

Haiti strikes me as an incomparable place; yet, I can see the same dynamics at play in so many other countries across the Global South. We have to stop ourselves from looking at Haiti (and elsewhere) and saying “Wow, look at the poverty!” Instead, these spaces are structually designed to suffer in order for countries across the Global North to extract as much wealth as humanly possible. At the same time, Danticat reminds us that these issues are not limited to the Global South: she tells the narrowing story of a false-alarm shooting in a Florida mall (pranksters used the sounds of explosives on the loudspeakers) and the unbearable weight of brutality against black Americans.

As an American, all of these stories are mine to bear, and we cannot look away or deny that they take place. We must not disavow seeing oppression because it seems remote (it’s not), and Danticat’s writing serves as a witness for horrifying circumstances.