Now I get why people love Roxane Gay! This short story collection contains 15 texts of varying length that all deal with Haiti and its people. In the Now I get why people love Roxane Gay! This short story collection contains 15 texts of varying length that all deal with Haiti and its people. In the acknowledgements, the author states: "I write about Haiti and the Haitian American experience from a place of great privilege but also a place of great pride" - and this pride shows in the texts themselves. Gay's stories radiate love for the country, its culture and the Haitian people, and the emotional impact derives from the empathy the reader cannot help but feel when reading about the joy and pain the characters experience.
What struck me the most is how Gay writes about the attachment people feel to their home and the longing for a better life somewhere else (in these cases: The U.S.). How must it feel to live in a country that others declare to be defined by its poverty? In a text that was obviously written when for some time not Haiti, but Nicaragua was the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Gay adresses Nicaraguans:
"You will hear these words until you are sick to your stomach, until you no longer recognize su tierra, until you start to believe the news stories are true, that nothing else matters, that sie no puedes comprar cosas que no necesitas, tu no existes, tu no cuentas, tu no mereces respeto."
(Currently, Haiti is again the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and has to deal with the destructive power of this label.) There are also wonderful texts about the Haitian immigrant experience, what it means to leave and how it feels to be perceived as a foreigner:
"For many years, we didn't realize our parents had accents, that their voices sounded different to unkind American ears. All we heard was home. Then the world intruded. It always does."
Full disclosure: I am generally not very knowledgeable about Haiti, but Gay gave me a sense of what this country is all about. I read the whole book in one setting and was basically glued to my kindle. So mission accomplished and thank you, Roxane Gay!...more
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