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• Longer bio on Ms. Danticat
• Essence essay by Ms. Danticat
• Ms. Danticat's bibliography

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Tavis: Edwidge Danticat is a heralded young writer who's just published her eagerly awaited new novel. Previous books by the Haitian-born author received high acclaim, one as an Oprah Book Club selection--that'll put you on the best-seller list--and another as a national book award finalist. Her latest novel is called 'The Dew Breaker.' There you see the cover. Edwidge, nice to see you.

Edwidge Danticat: Nice to be here with you.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you. Let me just start by saying you have done it again.

Edwidge: With the Lord's help.

Tavis: Yeah. Ha ha ha! With the Lord's help and a lot of hard work, I suspect.

Edwidge: Absolutely.

Tavis: Are you at all surprised by how you have been received and, as I said earlier, heralded? I mean, you are like, you're like the next coming. You are being praised by everybody. I looked up one day and saw a major story on you in the L.A. Times, either the same day or the next day, a major story on you in the New York Times. I mean, coast-to-coast, people are talking about what a great writer you are. Are you really that good?

Edwidge: Um, I don't think I'm that good. I'm blessed and I think I've been lucky that people get what I'm trying to do, and I think it also ties in with a lot of things, timely things in terms of things that are happening in Haiti and people seeking deeper understanding, but I work hard. I work hard at my craft, but there are a lot of writers who work very hard, and you never know what makes it happen.

Tavis: When you say that you think people are getting what it is that you're trying to do, you know what the obvious question is. So what is it that you're trying to do?

Edwidge: I'm trying to, first, tell a very good story. I think that's what all writers try to do, try to put a story that someone will pick up a book and they won't be able to put it down. But I'm also trying to tell a deeper story about people we think we know, you know, through the newspapers, through the stuff you see, you know, in the headline news. So I'm trying to tell these stories in layers so that you get a good story whether you care about it or not, but that you grow closer to a situation, to a group of people that you have not encountered in other ways before.

Tavis: Given the subject matter of this book, you could not, as you have figured out by now, could not have picked a more propitious time for this book to come out, given that you are Haitian-born. What do you make--before I get into the book so much--what do you make of the timeliness of the book coming out around this upheaval in your native homeland?

Edwidge: Well, I wouldn't have picked the timeliness because then my--

Tavis: You would not have picked the timeliness?

Edwidge: I would not have picked that--

Tavis: Wow! That's fascinating.

Edwidge: I would have preferred, actually, you know, this year's the bicentennial of Haitian independence...

Tavis: 200th anniversary, yes.

Edwidge: 200th anniversary of the first black republic in this hemisphere. That's what I would have preferred to be celebrating...

Tavis: Right.

Edwidge: On my book tour as opposed to what's happening now. But I think, also, it gives me, given this opportunity, it also gives me the opportunity to talk about other things, you know, to talk about this part of our culture, the bicentennial, to talk about the celebratory things, you know, the art, the culture that those of us who are from there know very deeply, but that others don't know.

Tavis: Let's talk about that, since you have offered that, which I think is a good place to go now, because everybody is talking about the antithesis of what you want to be talking about, because we are talking about the departure, whether he was escorted or whether he was kidnapped--Mr. Aristide--and what's going on there now in our hemisphere. What is it about Haiti, you think, that most Americans don't know and ought to know? What is that conversation that we ought to be having in this year of the 200th anniversary of the independence of Haiti?

Edwidge: Well, starting at the very beginning, I think we ought to acknowledge that this is--we had a revolution 200 years ago, and it's timely in that this is the bicentennial of that. And also the other contributions that Haiti has made to the United States. For example, as a result of this revolution, you had the Louisiana Purchase. You know, when Napoleon was tired of fighting this battle, he decided to go no further, and because of that, you have the Louisiana Purchase, and you have Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, who was the first settler of Chicago who was a Haitian man. And Audubon, you know, everybody knows of the Audubon Society. Mr. Audubon was born in Les Cayes, Haiti. All these things are connected. Zora Neale Hurston wrote their eyes were watching God in Haiti. Langston Hughes, all these are great writers and intellectuals of a certain period, traveled to Haiti. Frederick Douglass was consul general to Haiti. And all these things I think that people who don't know that already connects us. There were fighters from Haiti, who came and fought in the American Revolution because they believed in freedom. And 3 times now, you know, Haiti's been occupied by the United States. I think most Americans don't know that we have these ties and think of what's happening as you see everything else on the TV screen that these are other people that are not connected to us, but actually our connection goes back 200 or more years already.

Tavis: How bothered are you, as a Haitian-born American--how bothered are you by the fact that so many Americans seem not to know that? They seem not to know about it. Quite frankly, they seem not to care about it. I saw a poll the other day that found, you know, just slightly above 50% of Americans, so slightly more than half of Americans, don't have a problem with President Bush's policy, or lack thereof, toward Haiti.

Edwidge: Because I don't think they know exactly. I think most Americans aren't aware what their tax money is being used to do. I mean, in the sense that, you know, this--we have a country, you know, that was starved and isolated, as it was before the revolution, to the point that they need us to come and cry for these types of intervention. We've had 3 interventions in the last 100 years by the United States in Haiti and occupation in the early part of the century that lasted 19 years. And it's even with what's happening in Iraq, you know, there's lessons that can be learned from that occupation, for this type of occupation and the aftermath, you know, what that occupation, the first occupation, gave us was this army that we're now trying to bring back, and there's this irony, even in this occupation, that a lot of the young men, you know, the young men who are deported from the United States are now in large numbers the same young men the Marines are chasing inside Haiti. So there's a kind of circularity to it that I think if, say, Mr. or Mrs. Middle America knew, that there was this very deep involvement of your government in these things, that maybe we wouldn't think that it's so separate from us.

Tavis: I could talk to you about Haiti for days. I suspect I'd be remiss and would certainly do a disservice to our audience of viewers if I didn't talk about this book that everybody's talking about, 'The Dew Breaker.' The title, 'The Dew Breaker.'

Edwidge: 'The Dew Breaker' is my translation of a Creole term, 'shouket laroze,' which is a person who shakes the dew, literally means "to shake the dew," but the figurative meaning of it was that a man or--usually a man, but there were women, too--who was in charge of a certain section. It was a legal authority of a certain small village and who controlled that village, you know, with force and sometimes, you know, by torturous means. And this person, the main character of the book, is a person who works in a military barracks who questions and tortures people, but he leaves this life and moves to Brooklyn to have a very quiet life, which haunts him in the presence of different people, who were his victims who he meets later on.

Tavis: Maybe it's just me, but my sense is that you have called upon more, or as much of your personal story, in 'The Dew Breaker,' as you have in any of your previous works.

Edwidge: Not so much. I mean, I don't want people to think that this is--

Tavis: It's not about you.

Edwidge: Yes, it's not about me. But I think as with everything else that I've written, I feel like I have to have a sort of real anchor, you know, something from which--for the imagination to flow. And certainly, this was that because it's set in a period that's right, sort of the end of my childhood in Haiti. When I came here, I was 12 and I left during this period, that the dictatorship was slowly winding to an end, so I do draw from the experiences, from sort of witnessing different things that do make it into the book.

Tavis: How do you decide whether or not, when it's time for you to do another project? How have you gone about the process historically, at least, of deciding whether or not you want to do fiction versus non-fiction? I ask that question of you because there's so much of your "fiction" work that really ain't "fiction," if you know what I mean.

Edwidge: I know exactly what you mean. Well, I feel, without sounding too mysterious about it, I feel that often that the stories choose you, you know, in that I think there are moments where if I'm lucky, I'm a vessel for somebody or for some story to come, you know? Alice Walker, at the end of 'The Color Purple,' says she thanks the characters for coming, and it is as simple and as beautiful and as mysterious as that sometimes, that they just come and I leave myself open and I just ask these stories and the characters to find me.

Tavis: I want to close our conversation by asking what you say to young writers, particularly to young people of color who want to be a vessel and want those stories to come, and so many people, obviously, want to be doing what it is you are doing, and I ask this question of you because you are young, you are acclaimed all across the country now, you're doing it successfully and a lot of people I suspect watching right now who want to be the next, if we can put it that way, Edwidge Danticat.

Edwidge: I always say to people I'm an accident of literacy in that there were no privileges, no assumptions made about my life that I would do anything like this, so I would--don't be discouraged, and if you want to do something, to do it, to write and writing is one of those things that the more you do it, if not easier, the less possible it seems, and to just write and be observant, be a witness in whatever community you live in, you know, give yourself that role, and maybe you can witness through your writing, but it's a kind of--to be open to that and let yourself accept the fact that you, like many of us, can be vessels for these stories, for these people whose voices are not so often heard.

Tavis: I guess the moral of the story is you, too, can be an "accident of literacy." I'm gonna use that phrase, but now, of course, I can't use it without attribution since the whole world has seen--knows that I got it from you. Anyway, the book is called 'The Dew Breaker.' It is the latest, wonderful piece of work by Edwidge Danticat. Edwidge, nice to see you.

Edwidge: Nice to see you, as always.

Tavis: Thanks for coming on. That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR, National Public Radio. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and keep the faith.