"On some level, now, we are joining the larger world and realizing that we are connected with people in these very scary ways, sometimes. What happened recently in Spain affects us here and brings questions up. It is too bad that people have to be shaken up in that way"
About this Quote
The line trembles with the uneasy discovery that “global” isn’t an abstract buzzword; it’s a nervous system. Danticat frames connection as something you don’t get to romanticize. “Joining the larger world” sounds like a graduation speech until she snaps it into place with “very scary ways.” That pivot is the engine of the quote: intimacy at planetary scale comes with shared vulnerability, not just shared playlists and newsfeeds.
Her diction is deliberately modest - “on some level,” “sometimes” - which reads less like hedging than like moral restraint. She isn’t exploiting tragedy for certainty. Instead, she maps how violence travels: an event “in Spain” doesn’t merely inform “us here,” it “affects” and “brings questions up.” That phrasing matters. The questions are unnamed, but you can feel them: What obligations follow from interdependence? Whose suffering gets counted as relevant? How quickly do we retreat into borders - emotional or national - once the shock fades?
The final sentence lands like a quiet rebuke. “Too bad” is almost painfully plain, refusing the language of spectacle. She’s pointing at a grim pedagogy: people often recognize their ties to strangers only when fear makes the lesson unforgettable. Coming from a novelist whose work traces migration, diaspora, and political violence, the context is a writer insisting that empathy shouldn’t require a siren. The subtext is an indictment of our default insulation - and a plea to build solidarity before catastrophe forces the connection into view.
Her diction is deliberately modest - “on some level,” “sometimes” - which reads less like hedging than like moral restraint. She isn’t exploiting tragedy for certainty. Instead, she maps how violence travels: an event “in Spain” doesn’t merely inform “us here,” it “affects” and “brings questions up.” That phrasing matters. The questions are unnamed, but you can feel them: What obligations follow from interdependence? Whose suffering gets counted as relevant? How quickly do we retreat into borders - emotional or national - once the shock fades?
The final sentence lands like a quiet rebuke. “Too bad” is almost painfully plain, refusing the language of spectacle. She’s pointing at a grim pedagogy: people often recognize their ties to strangers only when fear makes the lesson unforgettable. Coming from a novelist whose work traces migration, diaspora, and political violence, the context is a writer insisting that empathy shouldn’t require a siren. The subtext is an indictment of our default insulation - and a plea to build solidarity before catastrophe forces the connection into view.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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