This compilation of essays and poetry brings together Haitian Americans of different generations and backgrounds, linking the voices for whom English is a first language and others whose dreams will always be in French and Kreyòl. Community activists, scholars, visual artists, and filmmakers join renowned journalists, poets, novelists, and memoirists to produce a poignant portrayal of lives in transition.

In five sections—Childhood, Migration, Half/First Generation, Return, and Future—the thirty-three contributors to this anthology write movingly, often hauntingly, of their lives in Haiti and the United States. Their dyaspora, much like a butterfly’s fluctuating path, is a shifting landscape in which there is much travel between two worlds, between their place of origin and their adopted land

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Reviews

“This rich collection of writings will appeal to the growing number of Haitian-Americans and others interested in the question of the migrants’s sense of identity.”—Publishers Weekly

“Danticat…has assembled a potent and piercing collection of essays and poems that articulate the frustrations and sorrows of Haitians who are now outsiders both in Haiti and in their places of refuge.” Donna Seaman, American Library Association.

“A volume that movingly describes the various facets of the Haitian migration experience . . ..”
—Afro-Hispanic Review

“An assembly of writings by writers of Haitian descent—the first of its kind . . . An astonishing, stirring addition not only to the heretofore thin canon of Haitian-American literature but to American literature. Period.” —Research in African Literatures

“Varied, colorful, and interesting . . . Whether [the writers] are discussing childhood memories, interracial relationships, or returning home, their comments are always illuminating.” 
—Library Journal