My summers in the Haitian mountains were what I missed most when I moved to Brooklyn in 1981. In New York, I would look for similarities between the skyscrapers and the mountains, which had loomed over my childhood summers, and for a likeness between the winter snow and the late summer hailstorms that had seemed so magical up in the mountains.

Eventually, I adjusted to life in New York, concentrating on my junior high school studies in an English as a Second Language program, and doing my best to adjust to life in the United States. However, I would never stop missing the Haitian mountain villages, which I have revisited many times as an adult, and have returned to in my imagination by writing Celiane Espérance’s story in this book.

I wrote this book to explore, from a young girl’s perspective, what it was like to move to the United States from Haiti after the turbulent period of the November 2000 Haitian presidential elections. I wanted to show, through the experiences of Celiane and Moy Espérance, how many young people who move to the United States from Haiti go through two kinds of migration: one from the rural areas to the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, then from Port-au-Prince to a major American city, in this case, New York.

Being from a family with rural origins, I have observed firsthand how many rural families, including mine, who even without cellular or home telephones, faxes, and emails, managed to remain in close contact with their loved ones abroad through cassettes, letters, or telephone calls, and scheduled for appointed times at telephone centers in the nearest towns. That Celiane and her mother and brother have such ease communicating with Victor in Brooklyn might have been startling when I was a child; however, it is less so now. It is also not so unusual for many “country” families to have better-off “city” relatives who make their transition to eventually living abroad much easier. What might seem odd is that even though the primary language of Haiti is Creole, this diary is written in English. However, I would like you to imagine that Celiane wrote these words in her native tongue and that I am merely her translator.