Edwidge Danticat
Image via Wikipedia In April, I went to a presentation at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland by Edwidge Danticat and Manno Charlemagne. Danticat is an award winning novelist who was born in Haiti. Her novels include The Farming of Bones , Krik Krak , and Breath, Eyes, Memory . Charlemagne is a Haitian political activist, singer, and songwriter whose beautiful music has a healing affect. Their presence helped put a face on the tragedy of the earthquake which killed 200,000 people on January 12, and made plain the hope and strength alive within the Haitian people. Haiti, a former French colony located on the island of Hispanola where slaves worked the fields of profitable sugarcane plantations, received its independence officially in 1804. Many of its citizens have remained poverty stricken and the country has been controlled by dictatorships. Breath Eyes Memory is an eloquently written contemporary coming of age n...