Haiti: A Literature That’s Been Lost
From the beautiful mountain ranges to the two major lakes, Lake Azeul and Lake Miragoane with nothing but dirt roads in between. Haiti’s coastline is the second longest in the Caribbean and its also the size of Maryland (“Haiti 2”). Haiti dominates one-third of the island Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic (“Haiti 2”). The world should appreciate Haiti because of their wonderful literature, culture and impact on the world.
Authors Of Haiti
Being as famous as she now is, most people wouldn’t have known Edwidge Danticat was born into a poor family, like many Haitians. Her relatives raised her when her parents migrated to the US. (Antell) While living in Haiti, she remembers story telling as her favorite pastime. (Antell) She spoke Haitian Creole, which is a language that is based off French and African languages. (Antell) Danticat began writing as a teenager and she kept journals with her writing in them (Antell). But, during high school, the journals she had been writing in she gave up for a high school publication that would become her later novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (Antell). Later on, when she returned to Brooklyn, to live with her parents, She got her first two books published in 1994 and 1995. The critics loved her after all of this. (Antell) She is still well known today for all of her work.
While all Danticat wanted to accomplish was writing; Her parents wanted her to be a nurse. (Antell) Her books were known across the country and even in Haiti. Danticat’s most well known book; Krik?Krack! is filled with stories she was told when she was young in Haiti. She placed the characters as if her stories were in historic settings that represented violent and politica...
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...en though it is only the size of Maryland (“Haiti 2”). It makes Haiti a wonderful a wonderful place to visit!
Works Cited
Antell, Karen. “Edwidge Danticat.”
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“Haitian Creole.” Britannica School
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
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HOCHSCHILD, ADAM. “Haiti’s Tragic
History.” NY TIMES N.p., 29 Dec.
2011. Web. 12. May 2014
“Vodou” Encyclopædia Britannica
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Sandra Benitez, birth name Sandy Ables, was born in Washington D.C. March 26, 1941. Due to her father’s job as a diplomat, she lived most of her childhood in Mexico and El Salvador. During Benitez teenage years, she lived with her family in the United States where she assimilated into American culture. In 1979 she decided to leave her job and began to attend a creative writing class. “Her first novel, a murder mystery set in Missouri, was never published. She brought the novel to a writer’s conference, where she was told it was terrible”. (“About”, Benitez) This led her to become the person she is now and focus on writing of her Latina heritage. In 1993 Benitez had published her first novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, where she received the Minnesota Book Award and the Barnes and Noble Discover Award.
She continued publishing short stories and was later deemed as the “master of the short story” in the Dominican Republic. She’d become well known for her Afro-Dominican context, which at the time was an uncharted territory within Dominican literature.
The Dominican Republic is a country appealing to the Haitians, because that is the nearest to them and can have better quality of life. But, in recent years we have seen a massive immigration from Haiti to Dominican Republic. These leads us to ask, what are the reasons which the people of Haiti are fleeing their country. These factors are: to escape of the poverty, deficiency of basic services and lack of jobs. Due to the scarcity of resources, lack of access to basic services and lack of job opportunities, many haitian families have been used as a defense mechanism traditional your transfer to the Dominican Republic to have access to health care services, public schools or work in the agricultural
In Danticat’s first story “The Children Of The Sea,” she explains how the main character, a teenage girl begins to lose her innocence after being exposed to the amount of war and death in Haiti. The readers begin to see
Haiti is located in the Caribbean; it occupies the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Haitians migrated to the U.S. due to regime change. In Florida, over 700,000 Haitians live there (Background on Haiti & Haitian Health Culture). Many Haitian-Americans share both cultures. There are similarities and differences between the American and Haitian culture. The two cultures have different foods, holidays and economy.
Several of the problems that Haiti faces today have their genesis in the country’s colonial history. The country was like a toy being fought over by spoiled children. The first of these children arrived in the early sixteenth century in the form of Spanish settlers in search of gold. They enslaved the native Taino population and, poisoned by avarice, nearly eradicated the indigenous work force. Thousands of African slaves were brought in to take their place. Eventually, the Spanish left the island to grab their share of newly discovered treasure in other lands. Tiring of their toy, the Spanish
Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike repetition, emotional truth and autobiographical underpinnings (Tahree, 2013). Oftentimes her work have been criticized for its anger and simplicity and praised for its keen observation of character, wit and lyrical quality. But according to Ms. Kincaid her writing, which are mostly autobiographical, was an act of saving her life by being able to express herself in words. She used her life experiences and placed them on paper as a way to make sense of her past. Her experience of growing up in a strict single-parent West-Indian home was the motivation for many of her writings. The knowledge we garnered at an early age influenced the choice we make throughout our life and this is no more evident than in the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.
The author of the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat, can be seen in the protagonist of the novel, which is Sophie Caco. She was born in Haiti like Edwidge Danticat and her parents migrated and settled in Brooklyn,
Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969. Her parents separately moved to the United States in the next several years, and then Danticat followed them there at the age of 12. Danticat grew up speaking French and Creole and she spoke no English upon moving to the United States. However, after only two years, she began writing in English and now is an accomplished writer of English short stories and novels. Her work has been translated into several languages including Korean, Italian, German, Spanish and Swedish. Her first published writing in English became the inspiration for her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory. She has also published a collection of short stories, Krik? Krak! , and an additional novel The Farming of the Bones. Her own life experiences have provided background and inspiration for her writing. Danticat's short stories and novels focus on
As a Haitian immigrant, my parents and I would spend our family vacations in our hometown of Port-au- Prince, Haiti. I would enjoy participating in family activities such as card games, cooking, and just the quality time that we spent together. We could play these games and laugh amongst each other for hours, without a care in the world merely telling jokes and listening to the elder parables. Amongst my family I felt untouchable. Like a tree in the wind, my only cares were that of the breeze and the beauty of my foundation. In the sway of the wind I was overcome with a sense of peace.
Why are these background informations useful? Because these informations provide us some important basic knowledges of Haiti. As a country mainly composed of ex-slaves, Haiti is mainly composed of people of African origin. However, why is Haiti so poor compared to its other black majority neighbors such as Saint Kitts and Neves and Barbados? Because Haiti did not attain its independence through peaceful means. Haitian revolt against the French, and they indeed won, against Napoleon Bonaparte[2].
The Dominican Republic is a nation located in the Caribbean Sea and shares the land with Haiti, and the whole island is called Hispaniola as it was named when Christopher Columbus discovered it during his first voyage in the year 1492. The country has proved to be one of the leading Caribbean countries with accessible healthcare to its citizens and even expats. However, the country has a multinational population with low-to-medium incomes and multi-level access to healthcare based on income. Despite this, improvements to healthcare system can lead to better medical outcomes to all the citizens and even to the suffering citizens of the Haiti. Because the Dominican Republic is an immediate neighbor to struggling Haiti, it is the moral obligation of the Dominican to provide Haitians with access to healthcare.
In the article, “Haiti doesn’t need your old T-shirts,” Charles Kenny explains why donating old clothes or food to countries in need doesn’t help those countries, but rather hurts their own economy. Charles Kenny is a developmental economist and has written a plethora of journal and magazine articles, books, and blog posts. Kenny is able to inform and influence his audience by including examples of the problem, people of authority, and a solution to the problem he writes about in his article.
Majority of the the island’s geographical location is mountainous, which consist of Guaniguanco chain, the largest system Sierra Maestra, Pinar del Rio, and the Escambrey (everyculture.com). Havana is the capital of Cuba which is located at the island’s western third of the northern coast. It used to be one of the world’s busiest cities in the past, its architecture and extraordinary infrastructural designs are evidences of its grand. Today, Havana is still regarded as one of the world’s favored venue for rendering special events. (cubaheritage.com)
After establishing this sad and bitter tone, Danticat moves to a more rejoiceful tone when she reminisces about the times when her grandmother would tell her stories: “My grandmother was an old country woman who always felt displaced in the City of Port-au-Prince—where we lived—and had nothing but her patched-up quilts and her stories to console her. She was the one who told me about Anacaona” (137). Danticat then shifts to a more neutral tone when she recalls her grandmother’s peaceful death with her eyes open. She took her grandmother’s death calmly because death was so frequent in Haiti. She further explains, “I have such a strong feeling that death is not the end, that the people we bury are going off to live somewhere else” (138).