Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work
In the first section of this work, the author describes the gruesome execution of two Haitian revolutionaries who fought to overthrow the dictatorship of Fançois Duvalier. Duvalier was incredibly determined to find all of the members of the group that the two revolutionaries belonged to, Jeune Haiti. In the process, the Duvalier regime killed hundreds of their family members. The story of these two revolutionaries, Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin, is compared to that of Adam and Eve, who are exiled for disobeying god’s order to not eat an apple. It is in this sense that people, especially artists and thinkers, begin to fear that their words can be punished. What is incredibly interesting is that people began to start reading, instead of writing, to display their anger with the government. They would read the greek classics in rebellion, and find solace in these works. The author argues that it is important to “create dangerously” because it helps the people who “read dangerously.”
I thought this work was incredibly interesting in the sense that often, when I think about artists and why they make their work, I think that the artists do it as an act of rebellion themselves. What Danticat explains is that this is not always the case, and that the artists may be making art in order to give other rebellious people something to rebel with.
The Other Side of the Water
In this chapter, Danticus details her experience with immigration. When the author was younger, she was arranging a journey to the United States. She was to meet Marius in Port-au-Prince, as she was leaving from New York and he was leaving from Miami. After some complications, they never were able to meet and she never spoke to him for many years. The complications were a result of Marius not having his papers. Many years later, the author found out of his death, and began to look into what happened. She was able to get in touch with his roommate, but he did not have much information to offer other than to put her in contact with the funeral home that Marius was being held. The funeral home informed her that he died of AIDS, but they also expressed that it would not yet be possible to ship Marius back to Haiti, so he could be buried with his family, if he did not have his papers.
This passage describes just one of the issues that undocumented immigrants face. When they are undocumented, they do not have access to many of the necessary things that allow documented people to have, including the right to leave the country from which you are undocumented––even when you are dead.
