The Other Side of the Water
Episode 1

Reflections, with Edwidge Danticat 

The podcast series begins with a conversation between host Ellie Happel and nationally acclaimed and award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat. Danticat shares personal accounts from her childhood in Haiti, her experience emigrating to the U.S. in 1981, and her work and identity as an immigrant artist. Danticat arrived in the U.S. at a time when thousands of Haitians sought political asylum to escape the political persecution and extreme poverty of the Duvalier regime. The year 1981 also marked the beginning of the U.S. policy to detain immigrants arriving from Haiti and other parts of the world. The detention policy was widely challenged in a series of cases that culminated in Jean, the topic of episode two. 

Transcript

Edwidge Danticat: All immigrants are artists. Like we're all remaking something. We're all recreating, you know, a life. The art in this case is our life. You know, we're, we’re remaking our, our lives.

Ellie Happel: I'm Ellie Happel. Welcome to episode one of The Other Side of the Water: Immigration and the Promise of Racial Justice. There is no person better suited to set the stage for the series then author Edwidge Danticat. Edwidge immigrated to the United States from Haiti at age 12. She has published numerous novels and works of nonfiction that explore immigration, identity, and Haitian culture.

Her books have been finalists for the National Book Award and the American Book Award. Edwidge regularly writes about Haitian politics and immigration for the New Yorker magazine. Edwidge, welcome to the podcast. 

Edwidge Danticat: Thank you for having me.

The title of this series, The Other Side of the Water is a translation of the Creole phrase, lòt bo dlo. What does this phrase mean?

Edwidge Danticat: I first heard this phrase when I was very little because I was living in Haiti with my aunt and uncle and my parents were in New York. My dad had left Haiti for the United States when I was two years old, and my mom, when I was four, and whenever I would, we would talk about them, we would say that they were lòt bo dlo—on the other side of the waters. So it meant that someone had traveled, that they had crossed the physical waters, to go to another country, in my case, the United States, but it also meant that someone who had traveled forever, who had left this world altogether and who had passed away.

So it has this, um, this double meaning and both being about immigration and migration and travel, but also about death, which sadly in some cases, both things would have happened to a person who had migrated.

Ellie Happel: In your 2011 book Create Dangerously, you write about the duty of the immigrant to bear witness to the country and the tragedy or the hardship that you left behind. What are some of the positives that perhaps are overlooked or lost in the trauma of leaving family and the trauma of leaving place?

Edwidge Danticat: These days, it seems like when we talk about even the beauty of the immigration experience, it's so hard to even fathom right now in the time that we live in, because it's so horrible at this time. And there's so much horror in the immigration story, but the, the beauty of immigration is in a sense of possibility, right? And its potential for recreation or for being able to remake your life. And I think that's still the thing that guides immigration everywhere, right? That you decide like that you want to go somewhere else for better opportunities. And, you know, human beings have done that from the beginning of time.

And so that, that sense of that there's something better ahead. It's so strong and it's so powerful in the sense that so many people do it. Not for themselves always, but for the next generation. I've always found something very profound and incredible in that, that so much of the configuration from my parents and their migration was that I want better for my children. A couple of years ago when I was talking to someone about this, a friend of mine who had written about the connections also between art and immigration, she had said: immigrants are artists. All immigrants are artists, like we're all remaking something, we're all recreating a life. You know, the art in this case is our life. We are remaking our lives.

And there are parallels between art and immigration in the sense that there's the risk taking there's that, that element of having a blank canvas that you then recreate. So, yeah, that's the, I think that's the power and the beauty of it. It is also, especially these days, sadly, full of horrors, but the element of the dream of it, that someone can be in a whole different place and start imagining another life elsewhere and not always for them, but also for the next generation is something that I find very profound and powerful.

Ellie Happel: Like many immigrant families, Edwidge’s parents left Haiti first without their kids. Edwidge was in the care of her uncle Joseph and her aunt. Edwidge said that everyone knew that the day would come when her parents sent for her, that in a way, before she left, she was already of two worlds.

Edwidge Danticat: Being a child whose parents are in another country, there's always that expectation by other people, and also by yourself, that at some point your parents will you know, voye chache w, send for you. And I actually, not too long ago, I was in Haiti in a different rural area now where my mother-in-law lives. And there was a kid that everyone was calling dyaspora, you know, diaspora. And the kid had never left Haiti, but they were calling him that because his parents were in New York and he was just kind of waiting to go. And so he was it's as if he had already left.

So that was always the case for us too, that we thought like everyone thought, and it was like at any moment we could go and sure enough, that's kind of how it happened. I wasn't always up to date about what was going on with my case, with how my parents had filed what they were, you know, when it would be.

But one day you just, you know, we got a letter that you had this appointment at the U.S. Embassy with the Consulate and, you know, we had our appointment and all the physicals and, and suddenly we had our plane tickets came and we went to, to Brooklyn to be reunited with our parents.

And then I, I want to say too, that it wasn't that unusual; there were so many children in very similar situations, I think. And I've realized over the years, all over the Caribbean, because the parents’ migration didn't include childcare. And I imagine that, you know, there was not that kind of support system. You know, my parents certainly felt that they could work more if they, they knew that we were safely with relatives back home. So I was with my aunt and uncle for about eight years, and then all of a sudden I was in Brooklyn with my parents.

Ellie Happel: Edwidge, what do you remember about arriving in the United States? I know that soon after you arrived, you wrote a story about your first escalator ride. What else most struck you?

Edwidge Danticat: That blanket of lights as the plane is landing in New York City, you know, at JFK. Um, and I thought, wow, this, you know, just really felt big. And I have a friend who has described that transition when you're a child to the U.S. is kind of like space travel, right?

Especially at that particular time in the eighties of coming from Port-au-Prince without much of an idea, what life is like here, and then just landing in the middle of New York city. There's a Haitian poet, Assotto Saint, who wrote, he came when he was 14, a very similar story of his mother who was a nurse who traveled to the U.S. and left him. And he said, you know, I lost my childhood in the air between Port-au-Prince and New York city when I was 14 years old. And, um, it’s that simple thing you realize. And I remember being very conscious when I was looking down on all those lights and that my life had changed forever, you know, that I was going to be one of those dots of lights down below.

Ellie Happel: Edwidge fondly remembers her childhood and growing up in Haiti.

Edwidge Danticat: I grew up in a neighborhood in Haiti called Bel-Aire and Port-au-Prince, a poor neighborhood, but people were very close. Everybody had known each other for such a long time. They looked after other people's children. We were like a big family. I think one of the really beautiful aspects of a Haitian childhood, number one is that you, you feel like in your everyday life, like you're the child of everyone. That has its pitfalls, because that means we can also have your ears pulled by everyone, but people really would look out for you. And in terms of, you know, the freedom that this place would have once you left the city. And then you went to the countryside. And being able to just, roam, being able to collect a group of children and go places. I mean, it was sort of, um, Lord of the Rings without the horror. [Laughter] Because there was a freedom there that you didn't have in the city. We could run around, you woke up and could decide how you spent the day. And I would go with a bunch of my cousins.

So, we kind of had to entertain ourselves. We went swimming in the river, long walks, and climbed trees, that kind of thing. And, and I think being able to be absorbed by nature in that way. I felt most, I felt the most ownership of my environment.

I felt most connected to the country as a young girl when I was in the countryside, with the river. And, and I know it sounds nostalgic, but it was very beautiful. And at night also, because there were like no other types of entertainment, we told each other stories. You could look up and see the stars you could, you know, just, it was just a very tangible and access that you have to all the aw and wonder that you have when you're a child to the, very, to the physical beauty of the place.

Ellie Happel: Edwidge left Haiti towards the end of the near 30 year reign of the Duvalier dictatorship. Francois Duvalier, called Papa Doc, was elected president in 1957. He soon declared himself president for life and created a death squad, the Tontons Macoute, who indiscriminately killed his opponents. Many political dissidents were detained, tortured and murdered at the Fort Dimanche prison in Port-au-Prince.

It is said that Papa Doc was responsible for the murder of at least 30,000 Haitian people. He died of a heart attack in 1971, and his son, 19 year old Jean Claude Duvalier, took power. Baby doc, as he was called, was known as a playboy and for his extravagant lifestyle. The violence did not end under baby doc's rule.

CLIP 1: (available at https://youtu.be/NdWx0K8jIOs?t=350):

Jean Claude Duavlier… Jacques [name indecipherable], director of the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami, says it seems only the working hours have changed. The Tonton Macoute don't kill in the daytime any longer. “When Duvalier was in power, they don't care to kill people during the day time. Whenever I do want to kill someone they are still killed. But now they don't do this same thing, killing people in the daytime, at any time. But. It has been reported to us here that many people got killed in the night. People must understand that we have a kingdom in Haiti, even though they don't call it kingdom, it is a kingdom. And for Jean Claude to keep the power, he has to keep killing, killing, killing.

Ellie Happel: Baby Doc was overthrown in a popular uprising in 1986. Many have called Haiti under the Duvaliers a kleptocracy, or rule by thieves.

CLIP 2: (available at https://youtu.be/otwzvzzdZKU?t=16):

But many say there is corruption on a massive scale. Estimates are the government officials have slipped as much as half a billion dollars out of Haiti in the last 15 years.

Ellie Happel: The Duvalier father—son dictatorship enjoyed the backing of the United States government. Their anticommunist stance and the economic opportunities that they offered to U.S. businesses granted them this.

CLIP 3: (available at https://youtu.be/NdWx0K8jIOs?t=26):

We'll look at the two faces of Haiti. There is the public face. There is the government that is heavy handed and all powerful, and that takes care of its own. And takes good care of the Yankee tourist dollars, and those who spend them. The only ones not taken care of are the people. They are the other face of Haiti. “The Haitian government never cares for the people.”

Ellie Happel: Edwidge, I know you were a child during the end of the Francois Duvalier dictatorship and even still, you, you remained young through Baby Doc's dictatorship, but what do you remember about Haiti at that time?

Edwidge Danticat: I was born in 1969, so it was kind of on the cusp of father—son. And so I, for more of the Papa Doc, Francoise, what I know are the stories that were told by the people in my family. You know, of having, a cousin who, was here one day and was gone the next. “He had to go.” Or of neighbors who you wouldn't see, you know, who they are, you know, who we would see the children and that you didn't like, people would say, Oh, the parents are in Fort Dimanche, or the dad is in Fort Dimanche. It was often the men. So for, for Papa Doc, it was mostly, you know, these, these stories of horrors of the executions, sort of the iron fist that the dictatorship.

There was in the air, a kind of, sense of danger, like a sense, you had to be careful, right? You had to be careful what you said. You had to be careful what you, what you wear, even. There was this sense of like, danger about it. And like everything else, if you're a child and something is around you just, okay, that's just what life is. And I the adults in your life were always telling you, like, you have to be careful because you just don't want to be in that position of that person who had said or done the wrong thing and was disappeared

Ellie Happel: Under the Duvaliers, hundreds of thousands of Haitians fled Haiti to escape violence, to escape terror, and to resettle in the United States. Although many, if not most, of them indeed had well-founded fear of persecution, which is necessary to establish a claim for asylum, U.S. officials categorized migrants from Haiti as economic, rather than political refugees. The U.S. denied asylum to the overwhelming majority of Haitian asylum seekers. Migration from Haiti increased again in the 1980s when people continued to flee the repressive and mismanaged rule of Baby Doc.

Edwidge Danticat: It was really a culmination of 30 years of, um, not just a repressive regime, but a kind of economic degradation as a result of that regime. In the eighties especially, there was a lot of extravagance in the dictatorship itself, you know, that big weddings, fancy cars, trips, shopping trips to Europe and the rest. You had a combination of both the political repression, but also, like a really, a robbing of the resources. So it was both a combination of oppression, very destructive and robbing thinly, uh, type of economic policies.

 The combination there, those two together, made life unbearable. So the end of the dictatorship, people were just taking two boats by the thousands.

Ellie Happel: Immigration and Naturalization Services, INS, which today, at least in part, is ICE, detained thousands of Haitian asylum seekers in detention facilities around the country. One of those facilities was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Edwidge Danticat: As soon as I arrived in the United States—it was March, 1981—there was also an influx of people who were coming by boat. It was one of the things that we would see on the news every night, you know, was that this boat had come to Miami. It's still imprinted in my mind so clearly—these images of the sand covered bodies on the news. And there were people who, you know, who had washed up on the, on the shore.

And so my, my father, both my parents attended this church in Brooklyn. They were part of a program who received people who are released. And, um, and those who are not released, who are detained in the Brooklyn Navy yard complex at time, um, they would, the church members would visit on Sunday afternoon.

And I remember going into that complex with, with my dad and the, and the other church members and, and often the people who were there in detention would try to tell you the names of people they wanted them to contact on their behalf. And they would say, you know, this is my wife. She lives here and there. Phones weren't that common back then, you know? So they would just try to give indications of, to let people know first of all, there were a lot of people in detention at the Brooklyn Navy Yard at that time whose families had no idea they'd made it. So they, you know, they might've been from rural areas. So, they thought that they really wanted, um, their loved ones to know that they were alive. And then eventually some, when some were released, some were released to the custody of the, of that church. So there are a lot of people who came through that system also who eventually, you know, became cab drivers, you know, to see the evolution of the few who were able to make it out was, was like a powerful introduction to the different ways that you can come to America.

Ellie Happel: Edwidge, for those who are interested in learning more about the experiences of migration from Haiti or being a Haitian immigrant in the United States, which of your books do you most recommend?

Edwidge Danticat: Well, it's, it's a book that I wish frankly I did not have to write. It's a book called Brother, I’m Dying, which is a memoir. It's in part about my uncle's experience of leaving Haiti at 81 years old during a time where there was a lot of volatility in the country. My uncle had been coming to the U.S. for 30 years, but this time where he got to immigration in Miami, after his house had been taken over by a group in the neighborhood and he asked for asylum and he was arrested, he was taken no Krome detention center.

His medication was taken away and he died five days later, chained to a hospital bed in the prison ward of a Miami hospital. So Brother, I’m Dying is a memoir about my family's history, but also it was the writing of it was specifically prompted by that experience of going through that horror with my uncle, through the immigration system.

Ellie Happel: Edwidge and her family lived in a Haitian community in a Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

Edwidge Danticat: Because my parents always really migrated towards, uh, the Haitian community—I think that's not unusual for people, especially with the language—having the comfort of people who speak a similar language.

So I've always, like I, I realized at some point that I've mostly lived in Haitian communities. Right now I live in little Haiti. In Brooklyn at that time, the building that we lived in was owned by a group of Haitians, and so there was a recreation of a Haitian community, even in that building.

Ellie Happel: Haitians eat soup every year on January 1st to commemorate the day that Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed Haitian independence from France. After 13 years of uprising and revolt led by enslaved people, Haiti became the first Black Republic in the world and the only country where enslaved people overthrew their masters. The new country abolished colonialism and abolished slavery. Haitians say that enslaved people had not been allowed to drink, as they would say in Creole, the pumpkin and meat soup; it was reserved for French masters. As soon as they overthrew the masters, the soup became a symbol of Haitian independence and freedom. 

Edwidge Danticat: On January 1st, everybody exchanged soup. But around us was also a very vibrant Caribbean community, which you can see manifested in the stores. And, you know, and there was often when you walk down our stretch of Flatbush Avenue, which was East Flatbush, there was a lot of music blasting from the shops and, um, beauty shops, cloth shops, and, and on Church Avenue, of course, where you would have the Haitian ladies, um, selling Haitian spices and such on the street.

So there was a very vibrant Haitian community that we, that you saw through the churches, through all these different organizations, also a very vibrant Caribbean community around it

Ellie Happel: Edwidge's perspective on race and racism in America has been impacted by her introduction to the African American communities that were near where she grew up. It was through acts of police violence, that these communities became more visible to Edwidge and to her family.

 Edwidge Danticat: An African-American community, which I became more and more aware of sadly through really brutal acts of racism and like the murder, really the assassination, of Yusef Hawkins, who was a young man who went to Bensonhurst to buy a car and was killed by 30 white kids.

And then all these other, you know, Eleanor Bumpers. And then eventually these other cases that came into the community, like the case with Abner Louima, and how he was brutalized by police. And Patrick Dorismond who was murdered because he was mistaken for a drug dealer. So there is sometimes a perception in immigrant communities, especially in Haitian communities, like, you know, si w fè respè w—like if you respect yourself, like certain things won't happen to you. And I think that shield, you know, that notion that even for the elders in my family, was quickly dissolved by Amadou Diallo’s case, by Abner Louima, by Patrick Dorismond’s case, certainly

Ellie Happel: Edwidge, what possibility do you see in the Movement for Black Lives and the popular mobilization that we see today?

Edwidge Danticat: Older immigrants to see their stake and their involvement and how systemic racism affects them. This more direct involvement that it's not just, this is not just about them. And, and some Black immigrants have that attitude that, you know, this doesn't affect me. Like if I do this, like, you know, they still have like the respectability politics thing. You would hear a lot of Black immigrants speak that way. But I think more and more people are realizing the interconnections, that they are raising Black children in the United States. And also, I think the younger generation was raised with that awareness in the schools that we attended and the books that we read.

And we're just seeing more of our interconnections. So it's not unusual, for example, like, you know, when you go to the protest, you might be speaking to a young person and you say you're from Haiti and they draw for you this whole line between Haitian independence and Black empowerment.

There was a point in the past, you know, when Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston was going to Haiti, there's more this back and forth. Certainly, you know, Frederick Douglass being the first Consul to Haiti. But I see more in this generation of Black immigrants and African Americans, more of a full awareness that our destinies are tied.

Ellie Happel: In 1889 Frederick Douglass was appointed minister to Haiti. He served two years, and then he quit. Douglass gave a speech about Haiti at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Douglass said, "Haiti is Black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being Black."

Edwidge Danticat: And I've seen also organizations that, now are we utilizing, you know, more, there's more overlap in terms of speaking of how, when we talk about Black freedoms or Black lives matters, it's the negation of that is also reflected in the way that we treat Black immigrants.

And even in the way, the current president speaks about Black immigrants. Anti-Black immigration policy is also a reflection of not just the local, but the global racism that I have seen, but certainly all are, you know, all fates are tied together in this country.

Ellie Happel: Before we close, what is fundamental for us to know about Haiti? It's a big question.

Edwidge Danticat: I always start with where my parents started with me. And this was something that they, you know, these are the things that they told me to reinforce our pride. Of course, Haiti was the first Black Republic in the Western hemisphere and the first place really in the world where enslaved people overcame those who had previously owned them and formed their own republic. Of course, that's something as is often repeated that Haiti has never been forgiven—it's a type of history that people have tried to erase, but also, uh, punish Haiti for. And, and so that's that the first thing, and also that, that we have this really amazing culture, some wonderful art, great music.

And I know it sounds trite sometimes when you're trying to say these things, because it feels like you're like, I'm human too. Like you, you know, it's like that whole thing of trying to reaffirm our humanity and, in light of so much stigma and so much misinformation, but I, you know, I just want people to know, Haiti's a very complex place, like everywhere else, but it's also a beautiful place.

Ellie Happel: A huge thank you to Edwidge Danticat for joining us in this first episode of The Other Side of the Water. The next episode, which will air next week, explores the Jean v. Nelson decision in detail. Host Raymond Audain speaks with litigator and others involved in the case.

Ellie Happel: This episode was produced by Keecee DeVenny of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and edited by Zach McNees. The music featured on this episode is by the Haitian band Lakou Mizik. The song that opens the episode is called Sanba yo Prann Pale and is a collaboration between Lakou Mizik and the DJ Producer Joseph Ray. 

For more information about the Other Side of the Water podcast series and our conference, Immigration, Equal Protection, and the Promise of Racial Justice: The Legacy of Jean v. Nelson, please see our website, jeanvnelson35.org. Thank you for tuning in.

Hosts:

Raymond Audain
Senior Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Sarah Hamilton-Jiang
Legal Research Consultant

Ellie Happel
Haiti Project Director, Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law

Production:

Keecee DeVenny, Digital Media Associate, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Zach McNees, Editor/Mixer

Resources referenced in this episode:

Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist At Work, First Vintage Books, 2011.

Edwidge Danticat, Brother I’m Dying, Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Frederick Douglass, Lecture on Haiti at the Haitian Pavilion Dedication Ceremonies, 1893 Chicago World Fair (Jan. 2, 1893). 

Edwidge Danticat also recommended this book to listeners: Polyne, M, Dubois, L (ed.) & Glover, K (ed.) 2019, The Haiti Reader. Duke University Press.