Butterfly's Way: Voices From The Haitian Dyaspora In The United States - Plot & Excerpts
She sat on my toybox, regal in her peasant dress and scarf. I dreamt that she cackled, and attacked my Spiderman comic book, then went after me. My mother saved me. She took the doll away and sent it back to my father. I imagined my father as a bogeyman, like the macoutes my mother described to me from her childhood—they would take you away in the night. My father would arrive unannounced, with the court order, to take me for the weekend, even if I kicked and screamed, even if my mother cried. 1986 In the fourth grade, we presented our family stories to the class. I announced that my parents were from Haiti. I repeated what my mother had taught me in singsong tones, "Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republic. It is next to Puerto Rico and Cuba." My classmates laughed. They had already decided that I was an alien. The only Haiti they could imagine was an island where "everybody hates each other." 1986 was the year my father left.
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