On We're Alone

Edwidge Danticat’s We’re Alone is a phenomenal collection of essays that speaks to Haitian identity — neo-colonial underdevelopment, crime, diaspora — though I’m reluctant to pigeonhole her as a “Haitian” writer; she’s more than any single identity, and I’d place her in the same tradition as Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall, and she speaks incredibly powerful words. The essays range from her experiences meeting those two women and her reminiscences after their passing (which might be read as an allusion to Nella Larsen too), to reportage on the kidnappings by the Mawozo movement, to soft reflections on writing, to interrogations of the impact that (un)natural disasters have on Haiti, to analyses of Jovenel Moïse’s death. Haiti strikes me as an incomparable place, and yet I can see the same dynamics at play in so many countries across the Global South. We have to stop ourselves from looking at Haiti and saying, “Wow, look at the poverty” — these places are structurally designed to suffer so that the Global North can extract as much wealth as possible. And it isn’t limited to the Global South: Danticat tells the harrowing story of a false-alarm shooting in a Florida mall (pranksters had played the sound of explosives over the loudspeakers) and the unbearable weight of brutality against Black Americans. As an American, all of these stories are mine to bear, and we can’t look away or deny that they happen; we mustn’t disavow the sight of oppression just because it seems remote (it isn’t), and Danticat’s writing serves as a witness to horrifying circumstances.