There is an odd paradox in contemporary Haitian writing, in that it is flourishing and prospering as never before even as the nation continues its apparently inexorable slide into complete social and political chaos. Authors like Dany Laferrière, Gary Victor, Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Lyonel Trouillot, Joël Des Rosiers, Stanley Péan, Frankétienne, Évelyne Trouillot, and many more are enjoying unprecedented international exposure in what is surely a golden age of Haitian writing. Foremost – at least in terms of sales and visibility – among contemporary Haitian authors is Edwidge Danticat, a prodigious talent who published her first written work at the age of fourteen. Her short fiction has appeared in over twenty-five periodicals. Her breakthrough came in 1994 with the publication of her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory. The novel's commercial success and the critical acclaim it provoked were repeated the following year when Krik? Krak!, a collection of short stories, was published, and was subsequently short-listed for the 1995 US National Book Award. Her second and third novels, The Farming of Bones (1998), and The Dew Breaker (2004), have consolidated her prominent place in contemporary North American fiction: the New Yorker magazine selected her as one of its “20 Writers for the 21st Century,” while Granta magazine nominated her as one of its “Best Young American Novelists.” Without a doubt, and despite her relative youth (she was born in 1969), Danticat is the most high-profile and the most widely read of the authors studied in this book.

The clear willingness of the American literary establishment and reading public to claim Danticat as their own immediately raises some critical questions, and not only that of her popularity, her almost universal media endorsement, what might be called her “Oprahfication.” If Danticat's much deserved success is understood in the context of the current preeminence of Haitian writing in general, it could be argued that there is some kind of inverse correlation between this success and Haiti's ever more desperate social situation. In short, it seems that the more Haiti has slid into misery, the more successful its authors have become.