Edwidge Danticat guides readers through a uniquely Caribbean crime genre in Haiti Noir. By Matthew Love

From early short-story collection Krik? Krak! to 2007’s multiple-award-winning memoir Brother, I’m Dying, the Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat has been an ambassador and advocate for her Caribbean nation. In the past two years, she’s spent more time editing than writing, but her focus hasn’t diminished. She compiled essays for Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work in 2010 and this month sees the release of Haiti Noir, the latest volume in Akashic Books’ crime series, also put together by Danticat. She spoke to us about the nature of noir and its logical connection with
her homeland.

Why do you think Haiti provides such a useful setting for this sort of storytelling?
There has always been so much intrigue in Haiti from the beginning. From the way the nation was created out of struggle and all the turbulence that followed: the invasion, the forced encounters with different nations, the US occupation and the dictatorships that followed. You have a series of leaders who have either been assassinated or committed suicide. Even now, after the earthquake, you have all these foreigners there, so you have their entry and their interactions with the local people. There’s so much possibility for intrigue in all of that.

It’s interesting you use the word intrigue, as it seems appropriate for the way in which the authors in Haiti Noir have broadened the genre. When you were seeking submissions, did you define noir for yourself or your contributors?
I referred the contributors to the series, but I told them to interpret it however they wanted. I knew that the stories would be dark, which is the most basic definition of noir. [Laughs] I didn’t want to get police procedural after police procedural, but I knew that there was so much in contemporary Haitian life – kidnappings, for instance – that I didn’t worry so much about it.

All of the writers in this collection engage the notion of noir differently, yet the characters and plots feel like natural extensions
of the standard tropes. What makes them feel different?
Often when we read these stories and there are Haitians involved in them, Haitians are the scary, dark element. I was happy to see Haitians write about that from their perspective, to give complexity to both the perpetrators and the victims. Paradise Inn [by Kettly Mars] is the most like a classic noir but Rodney Saint-Éloi’s The Blue Hill is kind of a trippy dream. You have the whole range.
The younger people in my family, who don’t necessarily read Creole or French but want to read Haitian literature, aren’t so thrilled about the possibility of me forcing a book on them. Introducing these writers to a general American audience is great, but I can also give this book to my nephew.

The influence of the supernatural seems to recur in just about every story. How much is this a part of daily Haitian life?
As Haitians, we grew up hearing folktales or urban legends where pretty much anything can happen. It seems like there’s a thin veil between the realm we see and [the realm] we can imagine. In the story Dangerous Crossroads [by Louis-Philippe Dalembert] experiments are seemingly turning people into animals and the detective says something like, “Yeah, people believe in the supernatural here, so they could never be sold on the idea that it was just scientific experiments.”

As real as the earthquake was, it’s strangely ethereal in the stories that address it, as though it could be an invention of the collective imagination...
I think the earthquake is so recent, the writers didn’t have any kind of distance yet. So the earthquake became some kind of dream or something that stimulates violence or revenge. I wouldn’t call it a literary device, but it was interesting to see how it had become just another element of the culture too; you can feel the earthquake even in the stories where it’s not mentioned.

I understand you just returned from Haiti. As someone who’s intimately familiar with the landscape, do you feel the situation is improving on the ground?
There are just a few small improvements. I went to a reopening of the Iron Market there in town and there was a little bit of rubble removal, but overall, it didn’t seem that much different than last year. There are still so many people on the street in makeshift shelters and some who are on private property are getting a lot of pressure to move without any clear destination. It’s still a very, very sad and difficult situation for a lot of people.

What are some of the ways, other than just donating money, which you feel are best for helping Haiti?
It’s important for people to inform themselves about Haiti beyond the single moment they see on the screen, because I think when people see the earthquake or reports of the coup, they think they know the entire country. And if you think you know a place from sound bites, there’s no further curiosity. Haitian art, Haitian music and Haitian literature are more painless ways to learn about it. Then you can engage the culture and the country in a more person-to-person way, instead of always looking down on people, even as you help them, as wretched. If you understand a bit about their culture and what they’ve produced, it makes a big difference.

Haiti Noir (Akashic Books) is out now.