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The Power of Stories


The Power of Stories

"Families, as my suddenly silenced uncle used to say, expand like ripples in a pond... Family is not only made up of your living relatives. It is elders long buried and generations yet unborn, with stories as bridges and potential portals."

Edwidge Danticat, We're Alone

Edwidge Danticat's book We're Alone (Graywolf Press, 2024) is a collection of compelling stories that connect readers to the lives of those whose stories do not get told because of circumstances beyond their control. Literary inspired chapter titles such as: "Children of the Sea," "A Rainbow in the Sky," "By the Time You Read This," "This is My Body," and "Chronicles of a Death Foretold" attest to Danticat's powerfully rendered experiences depicting the lives and struggles of people in Haiti, Maimi, and New York.

As the narrator of the stories in We're Alone, Danticat crosses geographical boundaries and is both a participant and a witness.

The people described in We're Alone may have succumbed to the forceful pounding waters of devastating floods that have wiped away their homes and sometimes their entire village. They may be buried under tons of rocks and bricks, unable to move as they gasp for air after an earthquake.

They may have been deported or been victims of laws denying their birthright and citizenship after living for years in a country where they were born. They may have been detained in a prison barrack because they sought asylum and citizenship. They may have caught cholera, aids, tuberculosis or other infectious diseases and received no medication or aid.

We're Alone highlights the fact that people will be alone if their stories are not told and are not get passed on to their families, communities, and future generations. Danticat also connects readers to writers who tell stories. These include Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, and James Balwin. Her reference to Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road captures the motivation and her goal in writing We're Alone.

She recounts Hurston's desire to travel to many different places. After her mother Lucy dies. Zora Neale Hurston travels to places previously unknown to her and finds that "all that geography was within me. It only needed time to reveal it." Like Hurston, Danticat captures the geographical spaces contained within herself.

In "Children of the Sea," Danticat references her 1995 short story collection, Krik? Krak! which describes the story of a group of Haitian refugees trying to reach the United States by boat after a US-supported 1991 military coup d' état against Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

She also cites a Haitian proverb: "The sea does not hold dirt" and suggests that this saying may have been carried by the combined knowledge of indigenous ancestors who ate from the sea their whole lives and from those African ancestors who were forced to undergo the horrors of the Middle Passage and found ways to resist their entrapment on the seas. In "not holding dirt," the sea welcomed and cleansed those who jumped overboard.

The effects of global warning and the results of a dramatic rise in climate refugees are a theme throughout the stories in We're Alone. Danticat references the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings that by the year 2025, oceans will rise high enough to wipe out low lying cities like Miami and that hurricanes, extreme heat, droughts, floods, and wildfires will displace over a quarter billion people.

In "By the Time You Read This," Danticat refers to the impact of COVID on the Haitian community, the 1989 murder of Yusuf K. Hawkins, and the marches held after the attacks and murders of Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, and Sean Bell.

"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is a chapter that references Gabriel Garcia Márquez's novella where people know that a man will be killed and do nothing about it. As in Márquez's novella, Danticat chronicles a death foretold. The Haitian president Jovenel Moise is assassinated after he forecasts his own death. The assassination happens in 2021 and as of August 2025 there is still no elected president in Haiti.

We're Alone is an emotionally stirring testimony on the importance of family legacy, community, and storytelling in our lives. Resistance, persistence, and resilience are woven into each of Danticat's stories. She closes We're Alone with the words: "I too have been lost, but eventually, words, stories, find me. Once again, I have entered this body of water. I am no longer alone on the shore."

Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books and the winner of many literary awards and fellowships. She is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University.

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