People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.

More and more people are able to access information - thank goodness we have the Internet and if you are interested you can find things. Which is different than even 20 years ago.

We still have our people working in the cane fields in the Dominican Republic. People are still repatriated all the time from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Some tell of being taken off buses because they looked Haitian, and their families have been in the Dominican Republic for generations. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic still can't go to school and are forced to work in the sugarcane fields.

There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libéré?' Are you free, my daughter?" My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips. Now," she said, "you will know how to answer.

For the majority of the people it is a difficult place to live. That's a reality that we can't ignore. But there is also great beauty to it.

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.

We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.