“The whole reason I started writing this book is because of this image I have of this fourteen-year-old girl, a poor, black, Dominican girl, half-Haitian—one of the Island’s damnés—saving the world. It’s a book is about this girl’s search for—yes—love in a world that has made it its solemn duty to guarantee that poor raced “conventionally unattractive” girls like her are never loved.”
– apparently the novel junot diaz is working on is going to be the best book ever written, again (via isabelthespy)
The immigrant experience has got to be the most otherworldly, mind-bending phenomena that can happen to a human. Enter the immigrant woman’s experience and what we have is a space opera super heroine. If I could actually name some of them, I’d say they’ve got nothing on my mama.
In Haiti, and many other places in the world, there isn’t a word for feminism. Whatever ideas surrounding women’s lib are simply stuff women must do in order to exist in any given third world country. And there are the proverbial “a better life for my children” and “to help support my family back home” as to why some women leave their native lands in order to pursue the American dream. So upon entry into this planet where strange customs abound, there is a constant fight to preserve cultural identity, memory, and ultimately, the body.
