I'm Happy To Be Part

One Of The Things That Sparked My Interest In This Is The Case Of Emmanuel Constant, Who Started A Militia Called Fraph That Was Backed By The Cia. Fraph Killed Thousands Of Haitians In The Early 1990s. Now While Constant Is Living Comfortably In Queens, Other Haitians Are Being Deported. I Wanted To See How Those Who Have Been Bruised By People Like That Deal With Coming Face To Face With Their Torturers.

America's Relationship With Haiti Has Always Been Very Complicated. I Often Say To People, "before We Came To America, America Came To Us In The Form Of The American Occupation From 1915 To 1934."

That Experience Of Touching Down In A Totally Foreign Place Is Like Having A Blank Canvas: You Begin With Nothing, But Stroke By Stroke You Build A Life. This Process Requires Everything Great Art Requires-risk-tasking, Hope, A Great Deal Of Imagination, All The Qualities That Are The Building Blocks Of Art. You Must Be Able To Dream Something Nearly Impossible And Toil To Bring It Into Existence.

After The Dance Was My First Attempt At Nonfiction. I'd Never Really Participated In Carnival, And I Really Wanted To Go. It Sounded Like A Wonderfully Fun Thing To Do. And I Wanted To Write Something Happy About Haiti, Something Celebratory. And Going To Carnival Gave Me A Chance To Do That, Because It Is One Of The Instances In Haiti When People Shed Their Class Separation And Come Together.

Creating These Messes That Go From Administration To Administration And Then You Swoop In And Clean Them Up - With That Heroic Delta Force - People Not Realizing That They Were Always There But Doing Different Things Than What We See Them Doing At The Moment.