The Fire This Time

Edwidge Danticat’s essay begins with her trip to Haiti near the border of the Dominican Republic, which had suddenly driven away many Haitian refugees. Danticat and her friends survey the dusty refugee camps filled with hungry people waiting for food from a church outreach. This trip occurs around the year anniversary of Michael Brown’s fatal shooting by police officer Darren Wilson, an event commemorated by attorney Raha Jorjani in The Washington Post.

Referencing the deaths of unarmed black Americans like Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland, Jorjani’s op-ed suggests that the United States treats African Americans like refugees and that the law gives refugees the right of asylum. These statements recall the use of the word refugee to describe participants of the Great Migration in the mid-twentieth century and those whose homes were lost after Hurricane Katrina. 

Although the word refugee strikes Danticat as dramatic at first, she reconsiders this idea in light of a housing project she once visited in her Brooklyn neighborhood. That residence, as well as the school she attended, operated like a refugee camp by treating people as temporary. Danticat writes of her elementary school, “The message we always heard from those who were meant to protect us: that we should either die or go somewhere else. This is the experience of a refugee” (207).

Danticat grew up in Haiti, where agents of a dictatorship beat and killed dissenters, and left for New York City, where she observed police harassing children on her school bus. She and her community members often remained silent against the New York police. When she was thirty, Danticat’s friend Abner Louima was beaten and sexually assaulted by the NYPD, who suspected him of assaulting a police officer. The police also killed men of color like Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond. 

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, protests against such brutality proclaimed slogans like “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” (209), although the police still ruled the streets and presented continued threats against people of color. As an elderly cab driver, Danticat’s father received not physical violence but trumped-up traffic violations from police. 

Danticat contacts Abner Louima, who survived his assault by police in 1997, soon after a judge refuses to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown. She asks Louima about his emotions after the repeated deaths of African Americans by police, and he says, “It reminds me that our lives mean nothing” (210). America devalues and wages violence against members of the African diaspora, whether they come from abroad or are born here. 

The public travesties against black Americans force some parents to confront difficult conversations with their children. Danticat herself wonders when she should explain incidents like Abner Louima’s assault to her daughters. She has avoided such discussion with them because she does not want them to live in fear, although she wonders if she puts them at risk the longer she delays. Her daughters were young children when President Barack Obama was elected, which gave Danticat hope that their opportunities would be greater than hers. 

The widespread resistance against Obama’s presidency, however, diffused the writer’s hope. Danticat shares Obama’s identity as the child of an immigrant, who must tell her children the reason for migrating as well as the unfortunate realities of being black in their new land. In “My Dungeon Shook,” James Baldwin wrote such a document for his nephew, explaining how this country sees no value in African Americans. Danticat wonders if young people like Trayvon Martin received such instructions from their family members about how to stay safe in public. 

The writer includes a draft of the letter to her daughters Mira and Leila, which begins with a sense of urgency about the ongoing violence against black Americans. She warns them but also encourages them to enjoy life, be free, and pursue justice. Danticat signs the letter, “In Jubilee, Mom” (214). She quotes Baldwin’s piece again and adds to her letter that her daughters can improve the world. 

Danticat would like to maintain hope for herself and her children, but she struggles when observing current events. As a reminder of their responsibility to others, she travels with her daughters to Haiti to assist refugees at the Dominican border. Another Baldwin quote says that no suffering is unique when one studies literature; Danticat adds that people can also observe, grieve, and write to bear witness to fellow sufferers. She ends by addressing her daughters and referring to the jubilee ahead of them.