"To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence"
About this Quote
A date dropped into casual speech can be a quiet act of defiance. Danticat’s line sounds almost offhand - “to start with,” “for example” - yet it’s doing something pointed: insisting that Haitian history belongs in the room, on the syllabus of public memory, not as an exotic footnote but as a milestone with an anniversary that should carry weight.
The specificity of “this year, 2004” matters. Bicentennials are usually reserved for nations the West already knows how to celebrate. By naming Haiti’s 200th anniversary of independence, Danticat forces a confrontation with what often gets skipped: Haiti’s revolution wasn’t just another colonial break; it was the only successful slave revolt to found a modern state, a radical rearrangement of the global racial and economic order. The subtext is that ignorance here isn’t neutral - it’s produced. Haiti’s achievement has long been met with punishment (crippling debt, diplomatic isolation) and with narrative erasure, a kind of historical embargo that mirrors the political one.
The conversational scaffolding (“to start with,” “for example”) is a rhetorical strategy, too. It anticipates an audience that might not be listening, and it lowers the temperature so the fact can land without pleading. Danticat often writes from the hinge between diaspora life and national trauma; this line fits that mode: it’s memory as advocacy, an invitation that also reads like an indictment. If 2004 passes without notice, that absence tells you something about whose freedom counts as world history.
The specificity of “this year, 2004” matters. Bicentennials are usually reserved for nations the West already knows how to celebrate. By naming Haiti’s 200th anniversary of independence, Danticat forces a confrontation with what often gets skipped: Haiti’s revolution wasn’t just another colonial break; it was the only successful slave revolt to found a modern state, a radical rearrangement of the global racial and economic order. The subtext is that ignorance here isn’t neutral - it’s produced. Haiti’s achievement has long been met with punishment (crippling debt, diplomatic isolation) and with narrative erasure, a kind of historical embargo that mirrors the political one.
The conversational scaffolding (“to start with,” “for example”) is a rhetorical strategy, too. It anticipates an audience that might not be listening, and it lowers the temperature so the fact can land without pleading. Danticat often writes from the hinge between diaspora life and national trauma; this line fits that mode: it’s memory as advocacy, an invitation that also reads like an indictment. If 2004 passes without notice, that absence tells you something about whose freedom counts as world history.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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