Science & Tech Quote by Edwidge Danticat

Gratitude is doing double duty here: Danticat celebrates the Internet as a liberator, then quietly reminds you how recently that liberation was unavailable. The line’s plainness is strategic. She doesn’t romanticize “information” as some abstract good; she points to access as a lived, uneven condition that can change within a single generation. “If you are interested you can find things” sounds casual, almost throwaway, but it smuggles in a whole politics of curiosity: knowledge isn’t just bestowed by institutions, it’s pursued, hunted, pieced together.

The subtext, though, is that access is not the same as justice. Danticat’s work often circles diaspora, memory, and the gaps created by authoritarian histories and migration. For people whose family stories are fragmented by borders or silences, being able to “find things” can mean locating an erased past, checking a claim, learning the context that schools or states omit. The “20 years ago” marker matters because it’s both personal and cultural: the pre-social web world of gatekeepers, scarce archives, and official narratives that were harder to challenge.

There’s also a subtle warning embedded in the optimism. The Internet can widen the circle of who gets to know, but it also shifts responsibility onto the individual: if you’re “interested,” you can learn; if you’re not, ignorance becomes a choice. Danticat’s intent lands in that tension - access as promise, and as burden.