--Edwidge Danticat was born on January 19, 1969, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her parents, fleeing the oppressive regimes of François Duvalier and son Jean-Claude, settled New York, while she and younger sibling André stayed behind
--After years of back and forth correspondence, Danticat and her brother were able to come to the States, being reunited with their parents and meeting two new siblings they didn’t know.
--Danticat started to hone her craft as a writer during her adolescence.
--Over the years, Danticat has penned a variety of fiction and non-fiction, chronicling the lives of Haitian citizens and creating vivid, unflinching portrayals of injustice. She followed Breath, Eyes, Memory with 1995’s Krik? Krak!, a collection of 10 stories
Haiti timeline and Haiti's fight and gain of independence:
1804 - Haiti becomes independent; former slave Jean-Jacques Dessalines declares himself emperor.
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1806 - Dessalines assassinated and Haiti divided into a black-controlled north and a mulatto-ruled south
1818-43 - Pierre Boyer unifies Haiti, but excludes blacks from power.
1915 - US invades Haiti following black-mulatto friction, which it thought endangered its property and investments in the country.
1934 - US withdraws troops from Haiti, but maintains fiscal control until 1947.
1956 - Voodoo physician Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier seizes power in military coup and is elected president a year later.
1964 - Duvalier declares himself president-for-life and establishes a dictatorship with the help of the Tontons Macoutes militia.
1971 - Duvalier dies and is succeeded by his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc", who also declares himself president-for-life.
1986 - Baby Doc flees Haiti in the wake of mounting popular discontent and is replaced by Lieutenant-General Henri Namphy as head of a governing council.
1988 - Leslie Manigat becomes president, but is ousted in a coup led by Brigadier-General Prosper Avril, who installs a civilian government under military control.
1990 - Jean-Bertrand Aristide elected president in Haiti's first free and peaceful polls.
1991 - Aristide ousted in a coup led by Brigadier-General Raoul Cedras, triggering sanctions by the US and the Organisation of American States.
1994 - Military regime relinquishes power in the face of an imminent US invasion; US forces oversee a transition to a civilian government; Aristide returns.
1995 - UN peacekeepers begin to replace US troops; Aristide supporters win parliamentary elections
Rene Preval, from Aristide's Lavalas party, is elected in December to replace Aristide as president.
1997-99 - Serious political deadlock; new government named.
1999 - Preval declares that parliament's term has expired and begins ruling by decree following a series of disagreements with deputies.
2000 November - Aristide elected president for a second non-consecutive term, amid allegations of irregularities.
2001 July - Presidential spokesman accuses former army officers of trying to overthrow the government after armed men attack three locations, killing four police officers.
2001 December - 30 armed men try to seize the National Palace in an apparent coup attempt; 12 people are killed in the raid, which the government blames on former army members.
2002 July - Haiti is approved as a full member of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) trade bloc.
2003 April - Voodoo recognised as a religion, on a par with other faiths.
2004 January-February - Celebrations marking 200 years of independence turn into uprising against President Aristide, who is forced into exile. An interim government takes over.
late 2004 - Rising levels of deadly political and gang violence in the capital; armed gangs loyal to former President Aristide are said to be responsible for many killings.
2005 April - Prominent rebel leader Ravix Remissainthe is killed by police in the capital.
2006 February - General elections, the first since former President Aristide was overthrown in 2004. Rene Preval is declared the winner of the presidential vote after a deal is reached over spoiled ballot papers.
2006 June - A democratically-elected government headed by Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis takes office.
Toussaint L'Ouverture:
--Born in 1743, Bréda, near Cap-Français, Saint-Domingue Haiti and died April 7, 1803, Fort-de-Joux, France
--Emancipated the slaves and negotiated for the French colony on Hispaniola, Saint-Domingue and later Haiti, to be governed, briefly, by black former slaves as a French protectorate.
Dutty Boukman:
--Dutty Boukman was an African man, enslaved in Haiti, who was one of the most visible early leaders of the Haitian Revolution
--Born in Jamaica
--Died in 1791
Dominican Massacre 1937:
--Under the brutal regime of the Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, in the fall of 1937, up to as many 20,000 Haitians were massacred, many in the most horrific ways by Dominican soldiers and civilians wielding machetes, bayonets and rifles.
--The mass slaughter has since been known as the Parsley Massacre. In a test to identify who was Haitian, Dominican border guards would ask people to pronounce the word “perejil” (Spanish for “parsley”). Haitians, who spoke French and Creole, could not pronounce the word properly and often paid for this phonetic inability with their lives.
--Occurred over five days
Rafael Trujillo:
--Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, nicknamed El Jefe, was a Dominican politician and soldier, who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961.
--It has been estimated that Trujillo was responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000 people, including possibly as many as 10,000 in the Parsley massacre.
Voodoo:
--Voodoo is a religion that originates in Africa. In the Americas and the Caribbean, it is thought to be a combination of various African, Catholic and Native American traditions. It is practiced around the world but there is no accurate count of how many people are Voodooists. Voodoo has no scripture or world authority.
--Vodouists believe in a distant and unknowable Supreme Creator, Bondye (derived from the French term Bon Dieu, meaning "good God"). According to Vodouists, Bondye does not intercede in human affairs, and thus they direct their worship toward spirits subservient to Bondye
--In order to navigate daily life, vodouists cultivate personal relationships with the loa through the presentation of offerings, the creation of personal altars and devotional objects, and participation in elaborate ceremonies of music, dance, and spirit possession.
Duvalier:
--François Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, was the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. He was elected president in 1957 on a populist and black nationalist platform and successfully thwarted a coup d’état in 1958.
--His rule, based on a purged military, a rural militia known as the Tonton Macoute, and the use of cult of personality, resulted in the murder of 30,000 to 60,000 Haitians and the exile of many more.
Tonton Macoute:
--Duvalier authorized the Tontons Macoutes to commit systematic violence and human rights abuses to suppress political opposition.
--They were responsible for unknown numbers of murders and rapes in Haiti. Political opponents often disappeared overnight, or were sometimes attacked in broad daylight.
--Tontons Macoutes stoned and burned people alive. Many times they put the corpses of their victims on display, often hung in trees for everyone to see and take as warnings against opposition.
-- Family members who tried to remove the bodies for proper burial often disappeared themselves. Anyone who challenged the MVSN risked assassination.
--Their unrestrained state terrorism was accompanied by corruption, extortion and personal aggrandizement among the leadership. The victims of Tontons Macoutes could range from a woman in the poorest of neighborhoods who had previously supported an opposing politician to a businessman who refused to comply with extortion threats
--The Tontons Macoutes murdered between 30,000 and 60,000 Haitians.
Jean Claude Duvalier:
--President of Haiti from 1971 until his overthrow by a popular uprising in 1986. He succeeded his father François "Papa Doc" Duvalier as the ruler of Haiti after the latter's death in 1971.
--Thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured, and hundreds of thousands fled the country during his presidency. He maintained a notoriously lavish lifestyle while poverty among his people remained the most widespread of any country in the Western Hemisphere.
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