People who want alternative information have to try so hard to find it.

That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art; it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

This was a "bad" example for U.S. slaves. Haiti was subjected to an embargo from the United States, which, along with many other countries, refused to recognize this new republic.

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.

I think it's hard for an outsider to capture the flavor of a community and all its nuances, so ultimately Haitian-Americans need to start sharing intimate accounts of their stories.

Here, though, there is nothing. Nothing at all. The sky seems empty even when I am looking at the moon and stars.