I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.

You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.

Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.

Part of it is eight years of a black president, and white America still lost their [minds] about that. Part of it is a Republican politics of vicious, vicious partisan [stuff] that has completely poisoned what we would call the political rhetorical sphere. All of these things come together in a perfect storm.

When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets.

I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration. We fundamentally have been a culture that's been put together from the explosions of other cultures. But it's hard for us to see. We have blinded ourselves to the reality of what our country is.

The Prisoner's Wife echoes Edwidge Danticat's Farming of the Bones in the urgency in which it reminds us of the possibility of love even amidst the ruins. This is a terrifying, heart-breaking and, ultimately, important book.