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It Seemed From The Media That We Were Being Told That All Haitians Had Aids. At The Time, I Had Just Come From Haiti. I Was Twelve Years Old, And The Building I Was Living In Had Primarily Haitians. A Lot Of People Got Fired From Their Jobs. At School, Sometimes In Gym Class, We'd Be Separated Because Teachers Were Worried About What Would Happen If We Bled. So There Was Really This Intense Discrimination.

When You Write, It’s Like Braiding Your Hair. Taking A Handful Of Coarse Unruly Strands And Attempting To Bring Them Unity. Your Fingers Have Still Not Perfected The Task. Some Of The Braids Are Long, Others Are Short. Some Are Thick, Others Are Thin. Some Are Heavy. Others Are Light. Like The Diverse Women Of Your Family. Those Whose Fables And Metaphors, Whose Similes And Soliloquies, Whose Diction And Je Ne Sais Quoi Daily Slip Into Your Survival Soup, By Way Of Their Fingers.

I Can't Wait For Both My Daughters To Be Old Enough To Read All My Books. I Loved It Every Time I Saw My Parents Acting Like More Than Just My Parents. And I'm Looking Forward To That With My Daughters Too. I Am Looking Forward To Having Them Discover Me As Someone Completely Other Than Their Mother.

We Need Literature Because We Wouldn’t Fully Know Ourselves Without It. We Need Good Literature To Be Fully Human.

The Way The Media Cycle Works, The Way The News Works, And The Way People's Attention Span Works, Is That We Only Learn That People Exist When There Is Crisis.