WE'RE ALONE

The acclaimed author discusses influential authors, her native Haiti, and the challenges of life in America.

Danticat begins this short but powerful collection of essays by quoting Haitian-born poet Roland Chassagne. The cited work includes the phrase the author chose for her title. “We’re alone is the persistent chorus of the deserted, as in no one is coming to save us,” she writes. “Yet, we’re alone can also be a promise writers make to their readers, a reminder of this singular intimacy between us. At least we’re alone together.” In 1963, Chassagne was taken to dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier and disappeared. His experience encapsulates the two themes around which Danticat groups these essays, the first devoted to writers who have influenced her and the second focusing on Haiti. In these pieces, the author chronicles the memories conjured by a 2018 visit for the opening of a new library; her Miami speech in which she advocated for prolonged protected status for Haitians displaced by hurricanes; the influence on her life and writing of such authors as Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison, the last of whom “turned pain into flesh and brought spirits to life”; her terror upon arriving at a Miami shopping mall during a mass shooting that turned out to be a hoax; and the frightening activities of a Haiti gang known as 400 Mawozo, which kidnapped 17 missionaries in 2021. This collection, like many, has a grab bag quality to it; the pieces don’t cohere as well as they should. Still, the author offers an elegant commentary on injustice and the mixed feelings one’s home can engender. As Danticat writes, “things sometimes go differently than planned or hoped for, and though home can be a safe place, we shouldn’t always rush back there.”

Moving essays on Haiti, literature, and life’s vicissitudes.