Cover

Dedication

FOR NADIRA AND EZEKIEL DANTICAT

Introduction

It’s been twenty years since this book was published. I wrote it, as I mention in the afterword, to explore what it was like to move to the United States from Haiti as a young girl in the early 2000s, nineteen years after I had immigrated to this country myself. While I’d come to the United States during the latter years of a thirty-year dictatorship, Celiane Espérance left Haiti during the early period of Haiti’s nascent democracy, which was devastated by the twice ouster of Haiti’s first democratically elected president.

Having witnessed the incidents described in the book, which were based on actual events, Celiane became even more attentive to her surroundings and what they meant, not just to her family, but to her friends and neighbors. However, it is her own words that give her comfort through difficult moments, both in Haiti and the United States.

Like many generations of immigrants before them, Celiane and her family are filled with hopes and dreams for a better future. There is, of course, a lot of myself in Celiane and a lot of Celiane in me. I, too, am a loyal diary keeper, and I, too, am often worried about the state of the world, in both my birthplace and my adopted country.

I am now fifty-two years old—I was thirty-three when this book was published. I have two daughters, one of whom is Celiane’s age. My daughters have a very different life than I had, but my experiences as a young girl in Haiti, and as an immigrant in the United States, are also part of their story as Haitian Americans. My daughters travel often enough to Haiti to know that Celiane’s story could easily have been theirs, which is also the hope that I have for my readers—that they might see some version of themselves in Celiane.

Since this book was published, U.S. immigration has increasingly become mired in scapegoating and stigmatization. Children have risked life and limb to cross borders alone to come to this country, and when traveling with their parents, they have—in some cases—been separated from them. There are so many stories of immigrant children and families that remain untold, stories that desperately need to be told. My hope is also that this book will inspire others to tell their own stories. I believe that with each story we share, we become stronger, and with each story we read (or receive), we become just a little bit wiser. To quote a proverb that Celiane did not mention, but is one of my favorites, Piti piti zwazo fè nich. Little by little, the bird builds its nest. Let’s build a nest of stories together.

—Edwidge Danticat

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2000