There is this split between the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So when I'm writing anything set in Haiti now, whether fiction or nonfiction, always in the back of my mind is how people, including some of my own family members, have been affected not just by history and by the present but also by the earthquake.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.

The past is like the hair on our head. I moved to New York when I was twelve, but you always have this feeling that wherever you come from, you physically leave it, but it doesn't leave you.

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.

I also know there are timeless waters, endless seas, and lots of people in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves. I look up at the sky and I see you there.

America's relationship with Haiti has always been very complicated. I often say to people, "Before we came to America, America came to us in the form of the American occupation from 1915 to 1934."