I'm currently reading Edwidge Danticat's latest book--Create Dangerously--which (broadly speaking) is a collection of essays on writing (mostly) from the stance of exile, or immigrant. And, I am intrigued so far with what she says about writing as an immigrant, and with the questions she raises about a reader's experiences with any given text.
In one instance, she questions, as does her fellow Haitian writer Dany Laferrière, the existence of an "immigrant" reader. She writes, "I too sometimes wonder if in the intimate, both solitary and solidarity, union between writers and readers a border can really exist. Is there a border between Antigone's desire to bury her brother and the Haitian mother of 1964 who desperately wants to take her dead son's body out of the street to give him a proper burial, knowing that if she does this she too may die?"
In another instance she describes the challenges which the immigrant writer / artist (in America) faces as follows: "...the immigrant artist must quantify the price of the American dream in flesh and bone. All this while living with the more 'regular' fears of any other artist. Do I know enough about where I've come from? Will I ever know enough about where I am? Even if somebody has died for me to stay here, will I ever truly belong?"
And, of course, since the condition of Haiti is germane to her text, Danticat writes about her experiences with Haiti's latest natural disaster: "While I was 'at work' at 4:53 p.m., on January 12, 2010, the ground was shaking and killing more than two hundred thousand people in a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti. And even before the first aftershock, people were calling me asking, 'Edwidge, what are you going to do? When are you going back? Could you come on television or on the radio and tell us how you feel? Could you write us fifteen hundred words or less?' "
Maybe it is with the acknowledgement of this enormous duty she has as Haiti's "representative" (of sorts) that she puts immigrant writing (in general) in the following perspective: "Perhaps this is why the immigrant artist needs to feel that he or she is creating dangerously even though she is not scribbling on prison walls or counting the days until a fateful date with an executioner. Or a hurricane. Or an earthquake."
The immigrant writer (she reminds us) can be and can create--by choice or by others' choosing--a credible connection to his or her homeland for readers of all types and purposes.
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Note: I am also reading Myriam J. A. Chancy's Spirit of Haiti for the series. More on Danticat and Chancy later.
