If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.

There is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.

To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.

The people did not elect me. I speak with one voice that may echo other people, but I am part of a group of people. That's not distancing yourself from a community, that's also allowing the space for others to speak for themselves.

The Attorney General made another astonishing claim, that there were Pakistani terrorists possibly coming on these boats from Haiti. No one has ever seen a Pakistani coming on a boat from Haiti yet.

The whole military structure in Haiti that existed until the early 1990s was put in place by the American occupation. At the top there were Southern white officers, who led an army that crushed the indigenous resistance - the cacos. A high-ranking U.S. officer said when he arrived, "To think these niggers speak French!" Later, Haitian officers attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The threat from the U.S. is something that is always hanging over people's heads: If we don't behave, we'll have occupation again.

After the Dance was my first attempt at nonfiction. I'd never really participated in carnival, and I really wanted to go. It sounded like a wonderfully fun thing to do. And I wanted to write something happy about Haiti, something celebratory. And going to carnival gave me a chance to do that, because it is one of the instances in Haiti when people shed their class separation and come together.