De­spite the on­go­ing cri­sis in Haiti, one Hait­ian-Amer­i­can au­thor Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat wants peo­ple to know that the is­land is much more than its po­lit­i­cal hard­ships.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the BO­CAS Lit Fes­ti­val held at NALIS yes­ter­day, the Breath, Eyes, Mem­o­ry au­thor said there are a lot of great peo­ple in Haiti who are com­mit­ted to work­ing to­ward cre­at­ing a bet­ter fu­ture for their coun­try.

Dan­ti­cat said, “I think the re­gion, like the rest of the world, is see­ing a very dra­mat­ic and dif­fi­cult mo­ment in Haiti right now. I want them to know that Haiti is a beau­ti­ful place in spite of what you’re see­ing. We have won­der­ful writ­ers, won­der­ful cre­ators, won­der­ful peo­ple who are re­al­ly work­ing hard to make sure that the coun­try has a bet­ter fu­ture.”

Dan­ti­cat is a nov­el­ist and short sto­ry writer whose first nov­el be­came one of Oprah’s Book Club’s top se­lec­tions. 

Since the end of Feb­ru­ary, more than 53,000 peo­ple have fled Haiti’s cap­i­tal in less than three weeks, to es­cape a surge in gang vi­o­lence. Heav­i­ly armed and pow­er­ful gangs launched a se­ries of at­tacks on gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions burn­ing po­lice sta­tions, open­ing fire on the main in­ter­na­tion­al air­port that re­mains closed and storm­ing Haiti’s two biggest pris­ons, re­leas­ing more than 4,000 in­mates. The vi­o­lence led to the res­ig­na­tion Ariel Hen­ry as prime min­is­ter. Much of Haiti’s po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty be­came height­ened af­ter the Ju­ly 2021 as­sas­si­na­tion of pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse.

She al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for the Caribbean and the rest of the world to give Haiti their sup­port, whether it’s by sup­port­ing Hait­ian lit­er­a­ture or sup­port­ing Hait­ian-led so­lu­tions.

Dan­ti­cat added, “Sup­port for Hait­ian-led so­lu­tions with­in Haiti is very, very im­por­tant and to sup­port the ar­eas of Haiti out­side of Port-au-Prince that are work­ing with peo­ple who are like­ly to do that… Haiti-led is how it’s been go­ing for a long time but al­so with in­ter­na­tion­al help of course. There are a lot of peo­ple in Haiti who want to move things for­ward if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty. And of course, with help from our neigh­bours, but guid­ed by peo­ple who know Haiti very well.”

On Fri­day, a new nine-mem­ber pres­i­den­tial coun­cil was in­stalled in Haiti to help the coun­try form a new gov­ern­ment.

Dan­ti­cat al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to read Hait­ian lit­er­a­ture, sup­port the Hait­ian arts and keep an open mind about what was hap­pen­ing and the full com­plex­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

The au­thor is cur­rent­ly in Trinidad at­tend­ing the Bo­cas Lit Fest as the 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize chief judge.