‘We’re Alone,’ but together, in Edwidge Danticat’s remarkable essays

Reading Edwidge Danticat’s We’re Alone is like sitting down to listen to an old friend. Personal, touching, rich in observations, smart, resonant, vibrant and complex, the eight essays that make up this collection open a door into Danticat’s past and present, her history and the history of Haiti, her relationship to worldly things and to the work of timeless writers. With clear, concise prose that delves into harsh topics without losing its sense of humor, Danticat once again proves that she is one of contemporary literature’s strongest, most graceful voices.

We’re Alone opens with a preface in which Danticat explains that, for her, writing essays is a quest for a very specific “kind of aloneness/togetherness, as well as something akin to what the Haitian American anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse has labeled rasanblaj, which she defines as “assembly, compilation, enlisting, regrouping (of people, spirits, things, ideas).” That aloneness/togetherness is present in every essay. We all experience things differently, but the way Danticat talks about love, loss, migration, grief and injustice, to name a few, makes them feel patently universal.

This short collection has no throwaways, but some standouts merit individual attention.

“They Are Waiting in the Hills: Traveling with Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison” is, despite its long title, a wonderfully paced essay in which Danticat shares some of her own travels and experiences throughout her career while simultaneously entering into a conversation, full of admiration, with the authors named in the title. Danticat is an accomplished writer, but this essay is all about her love of literature and the way the work of others have impacted her and sometimes worked as a lens through which she could start processing various experiences.

In “This Is My Body,” we’re right there with the author two days before Christmas of 2017 as she ditches her car, runs away from a shooter at a mall and hides behind a bush. The shooting turned out to be one of many hoaxes perpetrated that year so people could steal from stores during the ensuing chaos, but for Danticat, recounting the experience is an excuse to get the conversation started. From there, the piece morphs into an essay about parenting, her own mother’s death from cancer, and how she tried to parent even from beyond the grave by leaving Danticat and her brothers a tape with instructions for life, including what she wanted the author to wear at her funeral. From there, the essay moves — smoothly, always — into a discussion of hunger and, among other things, the ethics of force-feeding at Guantanamo and a recognition of how the “grace of the young Parkland survivors, their eloquence, their efforts to include less privileged youth — among them young people of color whose communities are chronically and disproportionately affected by gun violence — has been especially eye opening.”

“By the Time You Read This” is another marvel that seamlessly weaves together past and present while exploring the death of George Floyd, recounting the racism Danticat observed while riding New York City Transit buses, and then touches on the massive migration of African Americans from rural areas in the South to cities in the North of the United States.

Danticat masterfully moves from one topic or idea to the next with the powerful fluidity of a raging river.

The rest of the essays share the same shapeshifting nature. However, they do so while also containing at least one of the cohesive elements that make the book feel like a whole; history, family, racism, Haiti, migration, literature, etc. Danticat masterfully moves from one topic or idea to the next with the powerful fluidity of a raging river. From every Haitian being suspected of having AIDS to memories of the “ruthless Duvalier dictatorship,” every essay here contains at least a slice of history. From a discussion of temporary protected status for Haitians that turns into a conversation about rainbows to the many excerpts of poems and names that celebrate Black excellence throughout the collection — Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou — this collection shows exactly where Danticat fits, and just how much her work is in conversation with that of other giants.

We’re Alone accomplishes a lot, but perhaps the most important thing it does is that it manages to feel like an invitation from the opening pages. Yes, this is Danticat talking about racism and injustice while digging deep and showing us just how ugly humanity can be, but it’s also a collection full of hope and a celebration of writing. Ultimately, this is more than a collection of essays; this is an invitation. “You’re alone and I’m alone,” says Danticat in one way or another in every essay, “but if you join me, we can be alone together.” This beautiful invitation is one I encourage you to accept.