>> Hello.

I'm Dr. Ben Vinson III, the 18th president of Howard University.

And it is my pleasure to welcome you to this program, one of many we plan to bring to you as part of the At Howard series.

Howard University has the distinct pleasure of being the only HBCU to hold the license of a public television station across the country.

This special relationship allows WHUT to have unique access to the breadth and depth of academic content that is being produced on our campus, from stimulating lecture series and panel discussions on a wide range of topics to one on one conversations with captains of industry and international leaders of business, politics and the arts.

From time to time, we will broadcast some of that content in the form of full programs to short excerpts that we believe will surely stimulate and engage you.

So sit back and enjoy.

We're proud to share with you some of what makes Howard University so special.

>> Welcome to Session 3 of the International Black Writers Festival, Day 2.

I am very excited to welcome you to this next conversation.

The celebrated author that we're gonna have a pleasure to listen to the conversation is Edwidge Danticat.

[ Cheers and applause ] Edwidge Danticat is a celebrated Haitian American author known for her novels and short stories that explore themes of immigration, identity, and the Haitian diaspora.

She gained acclaim with her debut novel, "Breath, Eyes, Memory," an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Her other notable works include "Krik?

Krak!"

"The Farming of Bones," and "Brother, I'm Dying," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Danticat's latest book, "We're Alone," is a collection of eight essays addressing intimate and historical topics, such as her personal journey, Haiti's history, parenting, and migration.

Danticat has received a MacArthur genius grant and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and is a passionate advocate for human rights, particularly for Haitian refugees and immigrants.

[ Applause ] The facilitator of this discussion will be by Howard's own Dr. Carole Boyce Davies.

Carole Boyce Davies is chair of the English department at Howard University and the H.T.

Rhodes Professor Emerita at Cornell University.

She is the author of "Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones" and "Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject."

Her works explore African, Caribbean and African diaspora literature.

Boyce Davies has published over 100 essays and edited several critical collections, including "Moving Beyond Boundaries" and "The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora."

A member of UNESCO's General History of Africa Scientific Committee, she edited the Global Blackness Forum and recently published "Black Women's Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power."

Please welcome Dr. Boyce Davies.

[ Applause ] >> Hi, everybody.

I'm so pleased -- I'm pleased to be here in this capacity.

And you'll see why, as we begin to talk about this.

But I have to give -- I want to say this before I start.

And Ben is here.

Thank you.

He's right there.

I want to say that I'm at Howard because of this righteous festival, and Ben knows.

I was invited here three years ago for the first revision of this festival, and just coming back to H.U., which is a university that I cherish and love, I felt this was a good time to think about how I could give back.

And an opportunity came, and I accepted it, and I'm happy to be here.

Yes.

[ Cheers and applause ] So basically, so you know, I always told people I would never be chair of an English department.

I can't understand how this happened.

Essentially -- In fact, at Binghamton, they had asked me to be the chair, and I said, I am for abolishing the English department.

And of course, I didn't get a vote, so...

So I want you to know that we are working on a name change.

It has already been voted by the department, so it's going to be the Department of Literature and Writing as soon as it goes through the formal process.

So the other nice thing I'm really proud of is that this is Howard University, the home of all the illustrious writers -- Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, right?

Everybody that you want -- Ta-Nehisi Coates.

And yet we don't have a strong creative writing program.

But this year we started, and we do.

I want to recognize those new faculty that we hired.

[ Indistinct name ] please stand up.

[ Cheers and applause ] Is Sufiya still here, Sufiya Abdur-Rahman?

She was here earlier.

There she is.

Right.

Creative nonfiction, we have two faculty members in that area.

Nina Angela Mercer is the Eleanor Traylor postdoctoral fellow.

[ Cheers and applause ] And we also have others in the audience like Patricia Elam Walker.

So basically, I was telling them coming from Cornell, where they boast about their creative writing program, we actually have more people here that could really deliver a creative writing program, and we are going to do it.

And going forward, this is the plan.

So when you're going out, there's a brochure that we have that outlines a lot of the material, that will tell you who is here and what they plan to do.

And this will circulate, as well, online, so you'll get a copy of it in the next day or so.

So just letting you know what we're planning to do going forward.

We want this to be the place, and it is, really, that you should come to for any kind of study of African literatures globally defined.

So we have a number of specializations that are being redesigned, a specialization in African literature.

We already have a Caribbean Lit minor.

We're going to have all sorts of other specializations numbering six without excluding the dominant, European dominant literatures from our framework, because we look at them in terms of the post-colonial context.

So I'm really happy to begin our discussion with my dear friend and colleague, Edwidge Danticat.

[ Applause ] >> I was gonna say I love how you got so much business done.

>> In one year, in one year.

I was told when I was at FIU, which you know, by the person who was the president when I left, that when you go to a new department, all the things you want to do, you need to do it that first year, because the second year, people look at you like, really?

>> That's amazing.

I'm excited for the creative writing.

>> So at least you set it in motion, and hopefully it will unfold.

What can you do?

Right.

Okay.

So I am really happy to talk to Edwidge Danticat here.

And I want to tell her welcome to Howard University, please.

>> Thank you.

Thank you.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> And I have about 10 questions.

But I want to say, first of all, I've been fortunate to have followed your writing trajectory at several critical points.

So, but I want to start, and I warned you just before we came on the stage, can we start with that very recent racist malignment of the Haitian community and by extension, black people in general, given Haiti's iconic meaning in the black world?

What is your instinctive response as a writer and thinker, as a Haitian American, as a black woman?

How do you feel when you hear those kinds of comments, and how do you respond normally?

And what would you tell our audience?

>> Well, I wrote an op ed in The Washington Post that came out last week that summarizes a little bit of how I feel, because I grew up, you know, I came here at age 12 in 1981 in the era of AIDS.

And at that time, Haitians, we were the only one identified by nationality of being high risk for AIDS, so that meant like beatdowns after school, being called names, and -- But at that time, I didn't even realize -- You know, I was 12.

I'd just arrived.

I didn't realize how far like that anti-Haitian hate went back, like to Thomas Jefferson during the Haitian Revolution, calling us the cannibals of the terrible republic, to the US, you know, during the US occupation with these Marines, you know, who went when they wrote memoirs after they came out of Haiti, first of all, they were astounded that there were like N-words -- Like, one of them said it like the Secretary of State of the US during the US occupation said, "To think, N-words speaking French."

Like, they were astounded by that.

And then they wrote these memoirs with titles like, you know, "Cannibal Cousins," which then became movies like "I Walked With a Zombie."

Like, that whole notion of zombies, like, came out of, you know, the US occupation of Haiti.

So I didn't know all that then when I was 12 and suffering that.

But it goes back such a long way.

And I think now we have like a terrible brew of, you know, the xenophobia and the racism in which, like, Haitians are being made to stand for, like, for global anti-blackness, right, like and -- and, exactly, anti-immigration.

And so one of the things that I pulled in the essay, we were together this summer at a conference devoted to Toni Morrison and Aime Cesaire.

And one of the things I remembered from Ms. Morrison was this quote like the source -- the function, the very serious -- I'm paraphrasing -- function of racism is distraction.

Like, you know, and she said that it keeps you from doing your work, 'cause if somebody says you have no language, then you spend years trying to prove you have a language.

And in this case, this distraction is working, frankly, right?

'Cause we're not talking about cat ladies, we're talking about cat eaters.

We're not talking about, you know, a dismal performance in a debate.

We're talking about this invasion.

And it's working so well for those races that they're trying it now in Pennsylvania.

There's a small town in Pennsylvania, Charleroi, where they're saying again, like, you know, Trump has been saying, "Oh, yeah, they're ruining your town."

So they're trying it in all these different places.

I think it's just important for us to recognize what's happening and to not fall for it, and also to not fall into this thing where we then get on board and like, then start, you know, like, I had to ask friends like, don't send me your cat memes.

I already have Cat in my name.

Like, I'm like, I told -- like don't send me the dog -- Like, it hurts.

It does hurt.

But we also have to recognize it for what it is.

>> I didn't think of that ending, the cat name.

Wow.

You know, I have known you and your work throughout your career.

This is so amazing.

It dates me, of course, and us, right?

But first, as a young writer, when you were on the road at Binghamton, I met you there.

And you had just written "Breath, Eyes, Memory."

I remember you had written as an autograph in my book, "From my memory to yours."

My students then were blown away by your youth.

You were like maybe 25 or something.

First of all, as I, a young black prof teaching black women writers, we were really pleased to show students what they were capable of being and doing and becoming.

So tell me first about that memory and about youth and how you see that period and that classic "Breath, Eyes, Memory" now.

It's like a first baby or first something, right?

>> Yeah, I mean, it's like a first baby in the sense that, I mean, first novels teach you to write, because you don't -- I didn't really know what I was doing.

I'd read novels in school, but I just I knew I wanted to write one, and I was writing it piecemeal.

I was writing it, and I don't recommend this to students.

But every time I had like a very unrelated exam, the night before, I would get a strike of inspiration.

You know, it was like productive procrastination, writing that novel was for me.

And so, so when it was done, you know, I submitted it to this publisher, Soho Press in New York.

And she told me that she says the only reason she read it was that when she came across my name, she couldn't figure out how to address my rejection letter, whether she should address it to Miss or Mister.

We didn't have pronouns, but yeah.

And so, and then she said she started reading it, and that's why.

And then she wrote me, she said it's not there yet but keep going.

So that encouraged me.

And I remember when, you know, it was a small press, Soho Press.

And she called me after I had submitted it.

Then that encouraged me to go get an MFA, and I wrote it as my thesis.

And then I sent her the thesis, and she said, well, we want to publish it.

And I was so naive that I said, "How much do I pay you?"

which blew the negotiations.

And she said, "We pay you, but it's a small amount."

So, but then it -- but I, you know, at that point, you were just so happy to be published.

And when I look back on it now, I mean, it's just, it's hard to believe that 30 years, 30-plus years has gone by, because you look the same.

So that's a little confusing.

>> Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Well, you know, but memory, though.

And do you see that young woman, and what do you see?

And I see your daughter is beautifully 18 and related ages, right?

>> Yeah, I mean, I -- When I see -- I was so scared, doing that whole -- And thank God.

I think back now, I'm like, thank God there was no social media, because also the flip side of the book getting published was getting -- I got heat.

I got a lot of heat for it, because there's a situation in the book where it's like virginity is hyper treasured.

And people, you know, sometimes I would reach -- again in this environment where people make us like, there's already terrible things being said about us.

And now you come with this thing like mothers test their daughters for virginity.

And so there were a lot of people who were actually quite angry with me about that.

And I didn't realize.

I was like, you know, I would always say, like it says novel on the cover.

And I again, I didn't realize that people didn't really take one at their word for that.

So this idea of how, you know, writers, you know, you stand.

And I don't think that's asked of like white European writers, but often like writers like us are asked to, you know, your story is meant to represent everybody's story.

So that was the flip side of that.

And I actually, I mean, I could feel what people were saying, I understood it, but it was a little bit intimidating.

And I think if there was an environment like we have now where people were like constantly at me about it, like, it would have been harder to, like, continue.

>> Right.

I remember seeing you in Haiti and you said something like when you were in Haiti, they can have you on your knees because if you're not speaking Creole, if you're not saying exactly what people want to hear, that it becomes quite a thing.

>> Yeah, that's where you're accountable, because it's like, I mean, yeah, when I -- in the beginning of that, like everything, not just the books but like things you write in the press, things you say in the press were so like -- People like took so -- I carried so much weight.

But I think, I mean, one of the things that's changed, like I look back at that young woman now, I think there was a kind of -- You know, this book is called "We're Alone."

There was a kind of like, I wasn't alone.

I had a community.

I had always lived in Haitian communities, but they weren't many of us writing out there, right?

So this week, for example, with these accusations, there have been so many different -- you know, had Roxane Gay in The New Yorker.

You had people in their local paper.

So then it was -- There's more of a chorus now, and there's more room for different voices.

Yeah, Myriam Chancy.

>> Right.

So another major period was our joint Miami period.

So I was, after Binghamton, I was hired to direct the African New World Studies program in Miami, at Florida International University.

And Joanne Hyppolite is in the audience.

Hi, Joanne.

I didn't recognize.

>> Oh, Joanne.

>> Right?

>> Hello.

>> She is at the National Museum, but then she ran the Florida Museum, Florida Historical Museum, right?

>> And also an author, right?

One of those voices that joined the chorus.

>> Exactly.

So how joyful we were as a community, right, Joanne, to have you.

And we had just created, when I was at FIU, the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture.

And ironically, there's a conference on Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery taking place, which took place last week in Havana and this week here.

So we created the Eric Williams Lecture with a guest speaker, George Lamming.

Now, when I was at Howard here, he was probably the first major writer I encountered and, as you know, blown totally away with his shocking, beautiful hair and this man with all this elegance.

So George Lamming was the speaker who had to cancel at the last minute, because I think there was a hurricane impending or something, and he couldn't fly.

So I called Edwidge and asked if she would definitely speak in his honor or favor.

And she said, well, you know, this is quite an honor, but he was my teacher, so I will do it.

And graciously she said yes and gave an amazing reading with a scholar from University of Virginia named Robert Fatton, who the historians may know.

I always remember him because he spoke about what he calls Haiti's predatory leadership.

And I thought he was being so hard on the leaders then.

But I think in some ways, his position is validated by the various incarnations of that kind of predatory leadership.

But you said then that Lamming taught you about pace, and you said he taught you, 'cause you had written very quickly, and he taught you how to slow everything down.

And I know there are writers here, potential writers as well.

What was the lesson then that you can share that Lamming gave you, that you can share with our writers in the audience or writers- to-be in the audience, and particularly, what has George Lamming meant to you and to Caribbean literature?

If you can do those two things, I'll be so happy.

>> I mean, I remember, there's that -- the short essay book, I'm forgetting the title, by Lamming was the first thing that I read by him, but I was, uh, I was in an MFA program at Brown University, and Brown has a very sort of experimental program, and, um, and I looked forward to, in the summer, I'd heard about this Caribbean writers workshop at the University of Miami.

So that was before, like before, while I was still writing "Breath, Eyes, Memory".

And I remember going there, and it -- was there was George Lamming, you know, great iconic Caribbean writer with this big head of hair.

And we had this -- The way the workshop was, was he was sitting at the head of the table in two lines of us.

And there were two, I think, in my group, a Haitian writer who lives in Italy, [Indistinct name], was in one of the fiction classes with me and I would, at that time, I just was, I think I was coming also from the -- And it's, some of it you see in"Krik?

Krak!".

I was writing some of the stories in "Krik?

Krak!

", and I was coming at, like, an oral, like a very oral tradition.

And I didn't -- Like, my thing was like, I don't want to bore a reader, like, I just want to get to the story.

So my stories were basically like, this happens...and they die.

And so, [Laughs] and so he was he, you know.

And I remember he would read through.

He would write through, like, beats, like, he would write notes where it's like, take a beat there.

And he said, you know, stories are like peaks and valleys, right?

It's not all peak.

It's not all valley.

You have to kind of give the reader a break, right?

You have to let the story breathe.

And so he said, "You have good things here, but you have to slow down."

And I still had, like, I think that impatience of youth, in terms of stories.

And it's something that, over the years, like, you could see if you compare, like, the stories in "Krik?

Krak!"

to, like, the stories and everything inside, like -- And I realized what he wanted, like, he closed that by saying, trust the reader, trust the reader.

And what he meant to me was to see, um, George, writers like George Lamming, um, and Olive Senior, and Kamau Brathwaite, who was also teaching in that, it was interesting to, like, to see them out of the Caribbean.

It made someone like me seem possible.

Like, that you could, like... Paule Marshall did, too, in a very big way to be kind of like to have -- Paule Marshall had more, like, more life that's more like mine, like a bridge life, right.

Like, um... but that they would come and that they were, like, that we could talk to them.

First of all, it was amazing.

The first actually real writer I saw in person when I was a student at Barnard was Jamaica Kincaid.

And she was so fabulous at that time, you know, the whole, like, with the hair, like.

Yeah.

Before.

Yeah.

She was -- And I just remember, like, seeing a writer whose work, like, especially Lamming, who's traveled such a long journey, and then to see them in person, sitting around talking to a bunch of young writers.

To me, that meant the world.

>> Right, and I'm glad you mentioned Paule Marshall, because we had given her as well, an award called Caribbean Real Award.

And I know she was another major influence on you, particularly that she's situated Brooklyn, New York, as a place out of which a Caribbean American identity was shaped.

And I have a former student who you know well, who is a filmmaker, who is making a film on Caroline's wedding.

Uh, Haitian American as well.

So how is Brooklyn Caribbean American community and all of that, um, in terms of location, one of those spaces that you see as fruitful with Marshall and in your own work as well?

>> Well, I mean, Brooklyn -- that was the first, like, the place where I landed at 12 years old.

And I remember it was in a building in a cul-de-sac called Westbury Court.

And there were a lot of, you know, like, Haitian families in the building, but also other Caribbean families and African American families.

But on Sunday, the Haitian families would take turns after church, like, having these Sunday dinners in each other's homes.

So just, I mean, it was difficult.

Again, it was that time of the 1981 with Aids, and a lot of people in that building lost their job during that whole era of that accusation.

But there was a sense of community there.

And for, you know, for the longest time I thought, you know, Brooklyn felt like a microcosm of the world.

Because even when, you know, in high school, I did -- we took classes at the community college and dual enrollment.

I remember going to Kingsborough.

You have that experience where you go on the bus, and then gradually you leave your neighborhood and you see, like, you go through Bay Ridge and it just starts changing.

So I mean, to even to be able to see that.

But, Marshall, you know, I wrote a little bit of this in a foreword.

I was asked to write for "Brown Girl, Brownstones".

I remember reading that and thinking, that's exactly, like, that's what my parents were were doing, like, trying to buy a house.

Like, I -- Those conversations felt so familiar to me.

And of course, her idea of the kitchen, um, the poets in the kitchen and the way she felt about these conversations that seemed very casual, um, but we're so poetic.

>> Amazing.

And ironically, those houses end up being very, very valuable down there.

Millions.

>> Yes.

Yeah.

>> Oh, my God, Miami still.

That much maligned Haitian community.

And you captured it so well in terms of my "Brother, I'm Dying", but also the Brooklyn Haitian, uh, Miami connection.

It's a memoir of sorts, but the documentation of family and the U.S. continued inability to deal with the problems it creates, right.

So in other words, Cuba is a problem for the U.S. because there's an embargo for 75 years and people can't do all the developmental projects they had in mind and so on.

And then they worry about Cubans coming through the passage and so on.

In other words, that's just one example.

But Haiti is another example, isn't it?

And by the time your uncle comes to the United States, he is treated in such a horrible, xenophobic way, um, which is a shade of that same way that the president treated Haitians recently, and all of us, I would argue.

Um, what are your thoughts on that continued, um, anti-immigration, anti-immigrant U.S. position, when the U.S. is a nation of immigrants?

>> I mean, I think, like, during the last Trump time, they even removed that from some of the sites, like, the U.S. is a nation of immigrants.

Like, they removed that, uh, that language.

But, um, no, I -- People never go to, like, the root causes, right, of migration and a lot of things -- I mean, there's many reasons, um, why, including, um, again, like, the predatory nature of leadership that Fatton, um, talked about, but one of the, like, the more immediate reasons driving migration and, you know, is the dumping of like, U.S.-made weapons.

Right.

And so you have these armed groups with, like, guns that cost thousands and thousands of dollars coming from the U.S. That's, I mean, like, there's many issues at play, but the immigration, um, part...

This year, there was the 50th anniversary of the first, um, people who came by boat to Florida.

Um, and there were many celebrations, including one service.

Um, it was last, like, last year, but one of the services I, uh, that kicked off was, uh, at an African American church in Miami that had housed, um, Haitian arrivals like 50 years ago.

And they had, you know, the son of the preacher was there.

So there was that [Indistinct].

But in that conversation as the 50 years, um, you know, you get to reflect about Guantanamo.

Guantanamo, as you know it now, was made Guantanamo to house Haitian asylum seekers who were coming by boat.

And they were held in these, you know, behind barbed wires.

And at that time, you know, the people who were HIV positive couldn't -- they went on strike.

And, um, that whole -- the whole way, like, the detention, a lot of the detention system mechanism, like, of that is now in the U.S. was built around Haitian asylum seekers.

Um, after -- And then a lot of those people who ended up on Guantanamo went there after a coup d'état that years later was in The New York Times .

It's not a conspiracy, it was backed by the CIA.

So that sort of, like, that circularity, it's like a... like Jean Dominique in the film "The Agronomist", uh, who was a very famous radio journalist in Haiti, used to say, it's like, you know... And I think Audre Lorde say something similar, like, asking the arsonist to put out the fire, you know?

>> Right.

It's interesting, but you're one of the first people I read a story you wrote, and I can't remember where you talked about gangs.

And I didn't really have a sense of gangs in Haiti, um, until this recent version of these barbecue and so on.

Uh, and my friends in Miami have so many stories about that, but in one of your stories, you have a kidnapping that...I think is the one called [Indistinct].

It's the very first one.

Um, that is a kind of trick played on a woman who is working very hard as a nurse provider, caretaker of somebody.

So I think what you try to do, as well as provide that internal critique as well as the external critique.

Is it harder to do that, you think?

Because often when we, particularly for black women writers, when we do that internal critique, we get a lot of pushback from others, um, saying that we're bringing out the dirty linen and all that.

What do you think about that?

>> I mean, I think certainly the internal critique is necessary.

And it's been like, you know, I just watched this, um, this film that will be out soon by a young filmmaker, Etant Dupain, called "The Fight for Haiti", and he...the whole film, the film starts out being centered around, um, this campaign around this PetroCaribe money that -- So there's money, um, borrowed from Venezuela and this oil, um, you know, buy oil from...buy, you know, fuel from Venezuela at a certain price.

And then you use the... at very low interest.

And they were, like, the government at that time, the party that was supposed to use the money to develop, you know, for development, but they wasted, it was squandered.

And so there was a whole movement around that.

And so the film goes through that and goes to this moment of, you know, of the armed groups, but also starts to examine, at the end, they do go into -- It's interesting to see young people also going into internal, you know, critiques of race and class and colorism in ways that, you know, so that's -- I think that conversation is also being had.

I, um, perhaps, you know, in fiction, you can, it's kind of like, um, when I was a kid and you would go to a health fair and someone was acting out some principle, I feel, I think like in fiction, you could show scenarios in which these things are happening in a way that models real life.

But this issue of armed groups, too, um, and Haiti, I think, in the Caribbean.

And I saw it in the neighborhood where my uncle lived, um, because a lot -- It started a lot with people who were deported from prisons in the U.S. And if they didn't have community ties, sometimes they started grouping together.

And so when my uncle lived in the neighborhood, like, when I would go back, there was, like, that's the -- it started out like bars.

That was the bars.

That was like the base.

And a lot of the -- they spoke English.

My uncle had this school and he sometimes hired some of them to teach English too.

So you saw that developing, and in other places in the Caribbean, they were dealt with brutally, right.

But a lot of, like, these armed groups started with people who were in Latin America too.

Yeah.

>> That's another of those problems created by the U.S. and then shipped abroad.

It was really amazing.

Um, the other relationship that is really good internal critique, and we don't see too much of it, but I went to a funeral in Haiti for a friend of ours who, you know, he's an artist.

And the entire -- I think I was the darkest person there.

So there's a whole Haitian, biracial, so-called mulatto -- they call themselves mulatto -- um, which really blows your mind.

I'm like, wow.

And they live a way that nobody else lives.

I mean, the level of staff and people serving them and all of that is beyond.

Has anybody really written a lot about talking about that aspect of the internal critique?

And I know you've done it with the DR because I was quite -- I was so impressed with the fact that when the diaspora asked what was going there and they asked what people were really upset and which refused to go to the DR, um, because of the racism of the DR against, um, Haitians.

And you've written well about that in "The Farming of Bones".

So I know it's both ways, because in the DR, they have all these regulations of what Haitians born after, I think 1926, um -- >> '29.

>> '29, okay.

And then you have the internal version of that where you have a whole class, um, wealthy and racially defined very specifically as well.

How can we understand that for an audience here like this audience?

>> I mean, I think probably this audience understands it better, um, than other audiences, right?

Because sometimes when you remove other things, right, then you have these, like, you have colorism, you have some internal, um, you know, tensions class.

And, um, but there are writers -- I think some -- actually older writers, as you know, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, I think who's, uh, I think she deals with it very well, but from another era, of course, in her novel, uh, "Amour, Colére et Folie" "Love, Anger, Madness", and I think -- I think older Haitian literature probably addresses, like, colorism, um, more than perhaps the contemporary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But also I think we -- Just like where you're saying it's so, sometimes so different, like, I mean, I -- we went someplace together that one time in Haiti and I was, like, I was as confused as you were.

I was like, this exists here, you know?

So, um, so that wasn't -- Like, I didn't have access to that, like, I didn't know it.

>> You know what it was?

Jemima Pierre.

Do you know Jemima Pierre?

Um, "Predicament of Blackness".

We went to a reception sponsored by somebody who is married to a famous plastic surgeon in, um, Miami, but has an amazing house in, um, Port-au-Prince.

And Jemima and Edwidge said to me that if we were here before, we probably be working in a house.

If, you know, if we hadn't come back as scholars and writers, we'd be working here, like, oh, God, this is not good.

Anyway, I taught a class at Cornell completely on your word.

You should be pleased to know that the students were so engaged that I had a Nigerian student -- Nigerians, if you are in the house, you'd understand -- who came to tell me that after your class, after that class, he wanted to be a jazz musician and he wanted to change his major, knowing the Nigerian -- >> Did you get a letter from his parents?

>> ...knowing the Nigerian community at home and abroad.

I studied in Nigeria.

I told him he could do both.

You could do both.

In my introduction then I said I wanted to tell him that, you know, tell you that your publications and your work have so inspired many that they saw the possibility of creativity in many different ways.

So you almost had a pre-med student leaving to become... >> We're going to be cursed by their parents.

>> I know, right?

I know.

But we cannot close without talking about Howard and Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison.

I know Toni Morrison's place in our joint frameworks are so significant and so stellar.

She loved everything about your work.

For Howard, she is our department and our university's preeminent product.

But she was really critical of the Eurocentric orientation of such departments as the one we are in.

I mean, at Howard, if not an HBCU.

But you talked at the recent conference in Martinique, as did I on Morrison's activation of an African diaspora framework in a lot of her work, knowing continental and African diaspora writers.

Tell us, as we close out this part about Toni Morrison's impact on you and your engagement.

And of course, we have A.J.

Verdelle, "Miss Chloe" back there who wrote about her close relationship with Toni Morrison.

So I'd love for us to close on that really powerful point about Morrison's impact on all of us.

>> I mean, what a beautiful way to close.

Um, I feel, you know, having read "Miss Chloe", similarly to A.J.

-- A.J., you know, spent much more time with Miss Morrison.

But I, like, of course, every time I saw her I was in awe.

And then I would always be like...

I would always be amazed.

I was like, she likes me.

[ Laughter ] And, um, and was always...was -- I think what the most moving thing was, like, the kindness and, like, the consideration, for example, when she was, you know -- I've told that story, um, when she was invited to the Louvre and, um, and I remember her assistant, Rene Boatman, called me and said, "Miss Morrison would like you to join her at the at the Louvre."

And I had, you know, I had such a, like, a big imposter syndrome case, like, um... And I was like, "You sure she means me?"

And then I was like, "I don't think I can do it."

And I actually said no.

I was like, "No."

And then the next day she calls.

And she was like, um, "What would --" She was like, "What do you need?"

And then I had a newborn.

I had -- I said, "I have a newborn."

And she's like, "Well, she's going to grow."

And then, "It's in six months".

And so -- And I had pneumonia.

I said, "I have pneumonia."

It's like, "You're going to get better".

And sure enough, like... And then we -- she had a setup where she's, like, my mother and my mother-in-law to watch my daughter so we could go to the programs.

Even though the first night at the reception, she told my mother and my mother-in-law, who she knew had come to help with the baby, she's like, "You all should go out on the town."

And like, "Don't babys--" Like, "Go out on the town."

She was just always, um, for reasons that I didn't fully comprehend, very kind to me.

And I think that that, um, I always -- I always keep that in mind in the sense that, like, the continuity of that, like, when you are seen by people, like, by people who've come before you in that way.

So that's a, I mean, I know you feel her.

It's, like, such a special presence in this place.

But that was an extra layer to her that I think both A.J.

and I benefited from, like, this idea that someone can be more than, like, someone you read on the page, like, more than a presence at events.

But that also could have, uh, a beautiful soul.

>> That's so beautiful.

So I wanted to ask you, I hope you don't mind, just read a little bit for us, maybe a paragraph or two, because we can't close without hearing your voice.

And I think our audience will be very gratified.

>> Okay, so I'll read, like, at the end of this book.

It's called "We're Alone", but we're not really alone, just so you know.

So this is a bit about the essay.

So during the pandemic, my daughter was taking an essay, um, writing class, and I got very envious and jumped on the Zooms with her.

Um, but I think it says a lot about some beautiful things about the essay.

It's very short.

"During the summer of 2020, my daughter, Mira, took a writing class online taught by the writer Erica N. Cardwell.

The class was called Writing the Self.

Mira and I were both won over by the course description.

'Imagine the essay is a body of water far flung and teeming into the distance, and you, the writer, are alone on shore.

Will you enter the water?

And if so, how will you swim?

Or will you stand on shore as the water splashes against your ankles?'

I wish I could take this class, I told Mira.

What I meant was that I wished I could have taken this class when I was 15.

I have read most of the assigned essays and revisited some, which I read aloud to Mira.

We read 'When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision' by the poet Adrienne Rich, where she told us that writing is renaming.

We then read Audre Lorde's 'Poetry Is Not a Luxury', where Lorde reminds us there are no new pains.

We have felt them all already.

And on August 30, 1979, interview between the two women, Lorde cites her chorale poem 'Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices', which is about the frequent silence around the lives and deaths of murdered Black women and girls.

'How much of this truth can I bear?'

she wrote.

'How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded?

How much of this pain can I use?'"

[ Applause ] >> Thank you.

And you have been treated to an amazing encounter with Edwidge Danticat.

From my experience, these are the more memorable experiences beyond taking the various classes we take.

But encountering the real life writer, and you just have had that experience.

>> This program was brought to you by WHUT and made possible by contributions from viewers like you.

For more information on this program or any other program, please visit our website at WHUT.org.

Thank you.