Quote by Edwidge Danticat: “I write because I have to. I write because I have to make sense of my world.”

For some writers, the act of writing is not ambition or craft — it is survival. Making sense of trauma, violence, displacement, and loss through narrative is not just a literary exercise; it is how certain experiences become bearable and livable.

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed over 200,000 people and devastated Port-au-Prince. Danticat, who had already lost her uncle to US immigration detention in 2004, wrote extensively about the disaster and its aftermath, confronting again the question of what writing can do in the face of catastrophic loss.

Haitian-American novelist and essayist who writes about the Haitian diaspora, political violence, and the experience of displacement. Her debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory and her 2007 memoir Brother I'm Dying are considered essential works of Caribbean-American literature.