Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

Danticat, surely one of contemporary fiction's most sensitive conveyors of hope's bittersweet persistence in the midst of poverty and violence, is nursing an espresso in the cramped back patio of a cafe not far from the edge of Little Haiti. Half a block away is the pink corner house she shares with her husband, Faidherbe "Fedo" Boyer, and, for the moment, a small bustle of visitors: Boyer's mother, up from her small town in Haiti; Danticat's brother, down from New York, and his almost terrifyingly precocious 4-year-old daughter, for whose benefit the TV is tuned to a chirpy kiddie show and not to the latest news from the homeland, which in any case is sure to be bad. Mobs, ragtag looters and oozing corpses, each image, each streaming bulletin "almost like a deeply personal pain" for Danticat, who spent her childhood in the Bel Air section of Port-au-Prince and returns often to see friends and family. But now, "it seems like I'm watching another place. The things I'm seeing I don't even recognize."

-- From a profile of Edwidge Danticat by Margaria Fichtner, in yesterday's Miami Herald.

See also: Dylan Foley's review/profile in yesterday's NY Post, & Richard McCann's review in yesterday's Decateur Daily.