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"We're Alone" with Edwidge Danticat

Co-presented with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights

The Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights and Prince George’s County Memorial Library System presents a conversation with Edwidge Danticat about her collection of exceptional new essays, "We're Alone."

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.

Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “We’re Alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation—we’re alone now, we can talk. "We’re Alone" is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today. ~From the Publisher.

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EDWIDGE DANTICAT is the author of several books, including "Breath, Eyes, Memory," an Oprah Book Club selection, "Krik? Krak!," a National Book Award finalist, "The Farming of Bones," "The Dew Breaker," "Brother, I’m Dying," "Create Dangerously," "Claire of the Sea Light," "The Art of Death," "Everything Inside," a Reese’s Book Club selection and National Book Critics Circle Awards winner. She is also the editor of "The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States,"  "Best American Essays 2011,"  "Haiti Noir," and "Haiti Noir 2." She has written seven books for children and young adults: "Anacaona," "Behind the Mountains," "Eight Days," "The Last Mapou," "Mama's Nightingale," "Untwine," "My Mommy Medicine," and a travel narrative, "After the Dance." Her memoir, "Brother, I'm Dying," was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a  2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.  She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” fellow, the winner of the 2018 Neustadt International Prize, the 2019 St. Louis Literary Award, the 2011 Bocas Nonfiction Prize and 2020 Bocas Fiction Prize, the 2020 Vilcek Prize for Literature, a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, a two-time winner of The Story Prize, and the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.  Her essay collection, "We’re Alone," will be published in September 2024. She teaches at Columbia University.

Find more information about Edwidge Danticat here.