We're Alone
Essays
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A collection of exceptional new essays by one of the most significant contemporary writers on the world stage
Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.
From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.
Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation—we’re alone now, we can talk. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist and essayist Danticat (Everything Inside) delivers a collection of piercing reflections on her native Haiti. In "A Rainbow in the Sky," Danticat describes the steep toll that increasingly severe hurricanes are taking on the country (after Hurricane Matthew hit in 2006, "there were reports of people having no food, water, or shelter and living in caves while eating potentially toxic plants") and laments the reluctance of wealthy nations to accept climate refugees. Other selections compare the xenophobia faced by Haitian expats in the U.S. and Dominican Republic and contrast the Croix-des-Bouquets commune's flourishing art scene with the Mawozo gang that operates out of the area. Danticat has a knack for cutting turns of phrase ("Family is whoever is left when everyone else is gone," she remarks in "Writing the Self and Others," which discusses her ambivalent feelings toward writing about her relatives). She also excels at weaving together personal narrative and history. For instance, she writes in "Children of the Sea" that "being human means having to keep beginning again," recounting how a "Haitian exile" teacher helped her adjust to living in New York City after she moved there at age 12, and describing how Haiti has rebounded after the 2010 earthquake and the 1991 coup against its first democratically elected president. Danticat remains at the height of her considerable talents.
