Mystery Q & A: Edwidge Danticat
Dec 15, 2010Q&A
Edwidge Danticat
While konpa music and colorful Haitian paintings have long attracted attention on the world cultural stage, American readers will be pleased to discover that Haiti also has a rich and lively literary tradition. In Haiti Noir (see review), award-winning novelist Edwidge Danticat has collected 18 distinct voices that represent the flourishing contemporary scene in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora in France, Canada, and the United States. In an email interview with LJ, Danticat discussed the genesis of this anthology and how last January’s devastating earthquake affected her editorial choices.
In your introduction, you note that you had been working on this anthology for a year when the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010. Did this disaster cause you to reconsider your selections?
I was worried that after the earthquake some of the stories would become irrelevant or not ring true. That didn't happen. Great art transcends everything, and this certainly happened here. We decided, however, to add three of the earthquake-related stories as a way of reflecting the new Haitian landscape, and I am glad we got the wonderful and brilliant pieces that we did.
How did you find the earthquake-related stories that begin and end the book?
I wrote to some people who had not been able to submit stories before and asked them if they had written anything since the earthquake, and luckily they sent me those stories. It's hard to write fiction, after such a big disaster, that does not simply retell what we have seen on CNN and elsewhere, and these writers have done a great job of addressing this catastrophe in a way that is not simply reportage but art.
The stories here represent a marvelous mix of literary styles, ranging from gritty realism to hallucinatory and surreal. How do you think the noir theme influenced your writers' stylistic choices? Or was there a more Haitian sensibility at work?
It's a combination of both, I think. I was glad reading the other books in the series to see that noir did not only mean detective stories. We have many variations on the detective story here; however each writer defined noir for him- or herself and came up with something powerful. The stories are dark in that bad things happen in them. There is of course a Haitian sensibility because the stories are set in Haiti or in the Haitian diaspora. They are about both individuals and the larger society.
Too often Haiti has been stereotyped in American popular culture as a land of voodoo and zombies. The news media also focuses on its poverty and corrupt government. What would you like American readers to take from this anthology?
I want this to be a book that readers can't put down. I hope that they will then become hooked on Haitian literature and go out and find more work by our contributors and other Haitian writers. Haitian culture, Haitian arts, tell the most powerful and nuanced stories about Haitian people, and this is another opportunity for the world to see more complex stories about Haiti.
This volume is the perfect vehicle for championing lesser-known and promising Haitian writers. Who were your favorites
and why?
I am like a mother here. I can't play favorites. I admire each and every one of these writers and love their work. The younger writers are very gifted, and I can't wait to see what they do next. Many of the older writers have been publishing for years and are well known in Haiti. In some ways this book is a generational and cross-cultural conversation about Haitian stories. I think it's going to be as much of a revelation for the older writers, who may not know the work of younger ones, as for the younger writers, who may be unfamiliar with the work of the older writers. The reader is listening in on that conversation, and I find that very exciting.
A portion of the profits from the sale of this book will go to the Lambi Fund of Haiti (www.lambifund.org). Could you tell me more about this organization?
The Lambi Fund is a wonderful organization that's been working in Haiti for years. They work in the rural sector that people are finally realizing, as they talk about rebuilding the country, is at the heart of any kind of true long-term development, especially when it comes to agriculture, food security, disaster prevention, reforestation, and decentralization. They have been very creative and that is why we are thrilled to contribute to their efforts.—Wilda Williams, Library Journal
