[In the following interview, Shea and Danticat discuss various aspects of Danticat's work, including mother-daughter relationships and imagery.]

[Shea:] Mothers and daughters are a central theme in your work, certainly in Breath, Eyes, Memory and in many of the short stories. This bond seems to be the very essence of women's lives, yet it is rarely a happy one. In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Ifé has a troubled relationship with both of her daughters, Martine and Atie, as does Martine with Sophie. Only in “Caroline's Wedding” does there seem to be any peace—at least with a living mother. Are you suggesting that this most intense and defining of relationships is bound to be, at best, an uneasy one?

[Danticat:] Not at all. It's a complicated relationship even in ordinary relationships. Add to that separation, which, for me, is as strong a theme as the mother-daughter relationship. Sometimes it's forced separation, other times separation due to the problems that have to do with dictatorship; sometimes, it's abrupt separations, like death, often violent death. For me, the most fascinating thing is the absence and then recovery from that absence. People who grew up without their mothers for one reason or another and then find themselves reunited with them—this is a very strong theme in the lives of Haitian women my age who were separated from their mothers early on. Mine was immigration, but for others it was worse. It's not so much the relationships but the circumstances that shaped the fabric of the relationship. What interests me most is the separation and healing: recovering or not recovering: Becoming a woman and defining what that means in terms of a mother who may have been there in fragments, who was first a wonderful memory that represents absence.

“A Missing Piece” centers on a daughter whose mother died at the moment of birth and another character who is looking for a mother she believes has been killed. Are these also, then, kinds of separation?

Yes, because there are people who have mothers, but they have to share them with so many other strong circumstances, often just to survive. The absence then is inside. The mother might be there and not be there at the same time. In “The Missing Piece,” that sense of separation was there at the beginning for the one character. Often all we know about being women, we pick up from our mothers. What happens if the mother is not there? Then we mother ourselves, or we look for that in somebody else. I see this a lot, especially with very poor Haitian girls who not only have to mother themselves but might have to mother other children in the family if the mother is not there.

I heard Jamaica Kincaid interviewed the other day about her new novel [Autobiography of My Mother], and she said that the mother-daughter relationships in her work are often a metaphor for power. Then, she observed that it was “no accident” that under colonialism, one refers to “the mother country.” Does that idea apply to your work?

I can see the link. In Haiti, though, we don't have so much the feeling of “mother country.” Our occupation, if you will, ended early, and even though people have always felt the shadow of France so that they would go there for education, I've never, personally, felt us looking toward France as the mother country. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's much stronger for my friends who have grown up in the English-speaking Caribbean where England was such a powerful force in everyday life, or even my friends who grew up in Guadeloupe or Martinique. I've never felt that relationship as if Haiti has a mother country, but now I feel “motherland” because of having made this journey [to the U.S.]. People in America say, “my native land—my mother land is outside of where I am.” But this is very different from the mother country as a place where everyone is looking to as the model.

It's true that mother-daughter relationships are relationships of power, but I don't see that as a metaphor for mother country. I think it's an evolving relationship where sometimes the mothers see themselves mirrored. I'm not a mother yet, but I've observed that often, in the beginning, it's pure joy: the mother sees herself mirrored, and vicariously she is infusing her dreams into the daughter, especially in very difficult circumstances. Many of the mother's dreams are transported to the daughter who might do all the things she did not get to do. Suddenly, this person has a personality with different ideas. Then the mother, especially in a country like Haiti, feels powerless in the face of other influences. Our mothers—Haitian mothers or mothers of immigrant daughters who are growing up in this culture—often suffer because, in their daughters' eyes, they become an anachronism. I'm not sure if that happens to all mothers as time goes by, but the daughters say things that sound to their mothers like, “you foolish woman, you should know better.” They might feel diminished in that relationship then. If you're not a careful person, you might end up missing the wisdom that the mother has, the strength of that woman.

Martine tells Sophie [in Breath, Eyes, Memory] that she wants her to be her “very very good friend,” but that never seems possible. The sustaining friendships in your work are between women who are not blood-related—Louise and Atie, for instance. Can mothers and daughters be friends?

It's possible. In “Caroline's Wedding,” Grace is friends with her mother because she understands her mother's position. There are parts of Grace that are growing close to her mother; as she gets older, she realizes the pain that her mother has. Often, mothers and daughters are friends, but they can't have an intense conversation or disagree; they are friends in a way that is gleeful but not the same kind of relationship as with a friend you can have a fight with. It depends upon what the issues are in your family, whether there are a lot of barriers to overcome. When parents come from another country and are living in a place where their role is so different, then they have extra barriers to this friendship because you have not only generational problems but these cultural things. Then conflicts arise. A lot of parents want to live the way they did back home, but the children are living in a different time.

Grace understands both worlds because she had partly lived in the world her mother was from and then she lived in this world [the U.S.]. So, she is a bridge between Caroline, who is completely American, and the mother, who is completely Haitian: she's part of both. The friendship comes from understanding. As I've gotten older, I've gotten closer to my mother, and that comes from understanding things better.

I've heard critics as well as school kids comment on the color imagery in your work—daffodils and hibiscus, the name Caco meaning “a scarlet bird.” Can we assume the archetypal associations with color (like red for passion), or is the meaning more culturally determined?

Sometimes you gather different pieces of information, and then they all of a sudden join together and make this universe in your head. One of the things I remember reading somewhere a long time ago was about slave habitats. After people were transported from Africa to different parts of the islands, they had to build their own habitats. A lot of the places where they stayed were very small and built in a way to be dark because these were really places just to sleep in. Life was outside because they didn't have time to be in the place where they were living. When I think about that and look at places in the Caribbean—just the vast amount of colors—then I think of that darkness in contrast. I always imagine myself coming out of the dark into that color outside—the skies, the trees, the flowers. When you go to a place like Haiti, you are struck by color: everything is in technicolor!

So, the colors strike you a lot more because you're not used to seeing them, and I choose carefully so that they fit the scenery. But I also remember as a child hearing how flowers had a certain meaning—yellow friendship, red love—so they do act as sort of the normal symbol. They're such a strong visual draw, though, that I feel it's a shame not to use them. When I'm in Haiti and look at the hibiscus and the flamboyant, these are so strong for me. That's how they make their way into the story.

In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Martine tells Sophie about “The Marassa …two separate lovers [who] were the same person, duplicated in two.” Then, there is also this concept of “doubling,” which Sophie does when Martine tests her and that is thought common practice for politicians, according to vodou? Are these similar?

Marassa is actually part of the African tradition where there are twin deities. In the tradition of the Ibegi in Africa, twins are considered very special, in some cases to be very powerful. If one of the twins dies, the other will carry an effigy. Marassa in common language means twins. Often politicians, if they want to identify with someone, will say, “He and I are twins.” In Haiti, after Aristide came back, people were saying that he and Clinton were twins. Recently, they were saying that Aristide and Preval are twins. This is the same as saying that they are really close. I wanted to use all the connotations of twins in the story. Going back to the mother-daughter relationship, the idea is that two people are one, but not quite; they might look alike and talk alike but are, in essence, different people.

Doubling is a similar idea. I started thinking about this because I had often heard the story of our heroes, like Jean-Jacques Dessaline, who is considered the father of our independence. In the folkloric explanation, he was such a strong individual because he was really two people: one part of him could be at home and the other on the battlefield, or two of him could be on the battlefield at once. The idea is that someone is doubly a person but really one person—as opposed to the twins who are really two people.

So Sophie doubles during the testing to remove herself from a painful situation?

Sophie is saying, “I'll gain strength. This is my body, but I will go somewhere else. The core of me is somewhere else.” In her case, she thinks of pleasant things—she imagines being in Haiti. Sophie also thinks of doubling as an explanation for cruelty. How could these people who have wives and children they play with murder people? But with doubling they could have these two selves: the kind-hearted person and the evil side. Doubling acknowledges that people make separations within themselves to allow very painful experiences, but also the separation allows people to do very cruel things.

Words transform Atie in Breath, Eyes, Memory. Her learning to read and write seems to correspond to her growing sense of self, to use a cliché. Is the written word a mediating force?

I know many amazing and resourceful, incredible Haitian women, poor women who cannot read but who do extraordinary things—send kids to medical school, put all sorts of things together. Atie is one of them. When I was a girl in Haiti, I knew a woman about 50 who started learning to read; she always said that the fact that she didn't know how to read was a big mark against her, so she was determined to go to night school. There are a lot of people like Atie who are in literacy programs, and we don't know why or what drove them there. Her character represents women like that who, after a long day of doing many many things, show up with their books at school to learn. For Atie, I think learning to read was her chance to do something for herself, and she really fell in love with words.

A man was saying to me last night that he thought there was charm in the old ways and that people like Atie would not necessarily need to know how to read for the purpose of their lives. One of the things that I think many people do—and if you are in a position of power, this is really dangerous—is to romanticize the very poor people who live off the land, saying that they live these idyllic lives. Those are very dangerous arguments to keep people down.

In a New York Times article, you referred to your uncle in Haiti who had had a laryngectomy. You said, “I was the only person who could read his lips and understand what he was saying. Without me he would have had no voice.” That's such an extraordinary life-makes-art image! Did you think of yourself in those terms of being his voice?

My uncle, who was living in Haiti, came back to the States to have this operation, and when he returned, this man who is a minister all of a sudden couldn't speak. I could see his sadness. My uncle is one of the most amazing people I know, and he was so sad. I spent more time with him than other people, getting things for him, doing errands. I was ten. Slowly, I picked up what he was saying. He would move his lips, and I would figure it out. At first, he would write things down, but as he wrote them, he would also mouth them. I realized what he was saying, so he would take me everywhere with him. He would say things, and I would say them out loud. It's a bit presumptuous of me to say that I was his voice, but for a while, I felt like I was an extension of his voice.

At a reading last year, a Haitian woman commented that she thought that Martine was Haiti: she falters, she survives and comes back, but ultimately is lost. When she asked if you intended that meaning, you said no, but that it made sense. Have you thought any more about that idea?

It's wonderful how the work takes on a whole life by itself; it becomes different for different people. I thought that was a very interesting reading, but I don't see Martine as Haiti because I'm more hopeful for Haiti than that. There's the proverb that's in the dedication of Breath, Eyes, Memory that says, “We have stumbled but we will not fall.” It's a situation where we have stumbled a lot, but we haven't counted ourselves out yet. Haitians talk a lot about the glorious beginnings of Haiti, the revolution, being the first black republic, and having a slave revolt that inspired others around the world. Then, we have our heroes that are on these high pedestals but also have their dark sides. It's a complex history.

You've commented before about the influences of African-American writers on you, especially Maya Angelou and Paule Marshall. What about French and Haitian influences?

When I was in school in Haiti, we read mostly French writers, Victor Hugo, Proust. At that time, we didn't even read Alexandre Dumas, who I later found out was part Haitian. I'm always telling people, “The guy who wrote The Three Musketeers was Haitian! Please remember.” We read dead French writers. I find that, even now, my writing in French takes immediately the voice of French Romanticists because that's the literature I knew. When I came here, in my instant nostalgia, I started looking for Haitian writers. Jacques Roumain, who is read now in universities I think more than any other Haitian writer, was one. I found the Marcelin brothers, who wrote together, in translation [Phillippe Thoby-Marcelin and Pierre Marcelin]. But I really started reading Haitian literature in a personal quest once I was outside of Haiti. I started asking people coming back from Canada to bring me books. I remember reading an excerpt of one of Marie Chauvet's books (Love, Anger, Madness), and I just loved her. Her whole story, how she fought and fought to be published, was just amazing to me, and she has become one of my favorite Haitian writers.

Breath, Eyes, Memory has been translated into French [Le Cri de L'Oiseau Rouge, translated by Nicole Tisserand]. How did that come about?

In the ordinary publishing way: after the book came out, a French publisher bought it. After the man who was my French editor passed away, the house kept it and recently published it. When it came in the mail, I couldn't believe it!

Did you collaborate with the translator?

No, we've never spoken, but it's a wonderful translation. I can't read Breath, Eyes, Memory anymore; I can read some of Krik? Krak! still, but it's very hard after working on something endlessly for so long to read it again. I remember once Toni Morrison said that you feel like the work is never finished—you want to change this, make this better. But when the French one came, I read it and really like it. I liked it better! I was so thrilled about the idea of a French translation anyway because a lot of my relatives who don't read English could read it. It was nominated for a Francophone Caribbean prize, which I thought was kind of sweet because it was almost considered in the same way as a French book.

In an article in New York Magazine, you referred to English as your “stepmother tongue.” With all the negative connotations of Cinderella and her wicked stepmother, what does that description mean to you?

I didn't mean it to be negative. I once read an ad in Poets and Writers for an anthology called The Stepmother Tongue, and I remember thinking, “That's what it is to me. English is my stepmother tongue.” I don't mean it derogatively though; I never thought of those images of the bad stepmother. I thought of a stepmother tongue in the sense that you have a mother tongue and then an adopted language that you take on because your family circumstances have changed, sometimes not by your own choice. But I don't think of it as something ugly. I've always thought my relationship to language is precarious because in the first part of my life, I was balancing languages. As I was growing up, we spoke Creole at home, but when you go out, you speak French in the office, at the bank. If you didn't speak French at my school, the teacher would act like she didn't hear what you were saying. French is the socially valid and accepted language, but then the people who speak Creole are not validated and in some way are being told their voice isn't heard. So I've always felt this dichotomy in language anyway.

I've been reading Richard Rodriguez's book Hunger of Memory. I have disagreements with him, but I am really moved by his honesty. I'm still struggling with some of the same issues. People sometimes say to me, “Why do you write in English?” It's the circumstances of my life that led to this. If you grew up in the United States and ended up in Mexico and wrote in Spanish, is your doing that saying you are rejecting something else? It's not to say that if you write in English, you don't think Creole or French should be written in. This is where I am at this point, and a lot of the people I feel I'm writing for are like me.

Many people for whom English is not their first or family language intersperse their English writing with another language, like Sandra Cisneros with Spanish. You did some of this in Breath, Eyes, Memory. Will you do more in the new novel?

Some said I did too much of that in Breath, Eyes, Memory … Since part of the new novel happens in the Dominican Republic, I use some Spanish.

Do you speak Spanish?

Un poquito. But I find in this novel that I'm working on now that I use it when it is absolutely necessary. For certain terms, like los con gozos, which is a bad thing, like saying Sambo, I feel that I have to use that term. There are three languages in play—implied—in the novel: sometimes characters speak Spanish, sometimes in Creole, but it's all in English. Most of the first part takes place in the Dominican Republic in the border valley, so the main character, the survivor of a massacre, speaks Creole and Spanish. There's a doctor who works in the border hospital, and he speaks both Creole and Spanish. But I use the Spanish or the Creole only when it's extremely necessary.

If there is one overriding theme, or maybe presence, in both the novel and your short stories, it is death—not a preoccupation with death, not a fatalism, but a sense of death being another type of connection. Is that how you view death?

A lot of the older people I knew growing up had no fear of death. Many of them would buy the cloths for their dress and talk about their funeral. They were comfortable doing that. Also, because my uncle was a minister, I went to a lot of funerals when I was a girl. Being the minister's family, you would attend the funerals as a matter of respect. One of the things I loved about Rodriguez's book was when he talks about being an altar boy and being exposed to all the realities of life very early. I had moments to ponder death at a very early age. I remember experiencing the possibility of death when my uncle had his surgery, so I thought of all the ways of death very early. Also, I was raised in the Baptist Church with the idea that you have to earn your way in this life to the afterlife. Then I heard other beliefs about death where we would all be reunited in Africa. But always it was engraved in my mind that—whether you believe in Christian principles or something else—death is not the end.

James Baldwin wrote, “I think it's always dangerous for a writer to talk about his work. I don't mean to be coy or modest; I simply mean that there is so much about his work that he doesn't really understand and can't understand—because it comes out of a certain depth concerning which, no matter what we think we know these days, we know very, very little.” So are we doing something dangerous here?

I think he's absolutely right—but danger is part of the job! There could be greater dangers; you could be prosecuted and killed for writing in the first place. What he says is insightfully true, though. I was reading Joyce Carol Oates' Black Water recently, and there's a part where the senator says that you sound trite hearing your own voice over and over. Sometimes you think you are diluting something by talking about it, but I think I learn by talking about the work with other people and hearing their points of view. It's a little bit dangerous if you take it too seriously, but if you are open to sharing and learning from other people, it could also be a process of growth.