In 1973, she moved in with her aunt when her parents emigrated to New York City. Danticat joined them there in 1981, but found it difficult to fit in at the Brooklyn junior high school she attended; raised with the French Creole language spoken in Haiti, she had a strong accent, and her clothing and hairstyle were much different than that of her New York classmates, who had been raised on American television and grooved to the sound of rap music. She also encountered prejudice among New York's ethnic immigrant community, since by the early 1980s Haitian boat people had become a problem for the U.S. government, which was trying to control their entry into the country. As Danticat explained to
New York Times contributor Garry Pierre-Pierre, "'Haitian' was like a curse. People were calling you, 'Frenchy, go back to the banana boat,' and a lot of the kids would lie about where they came from. They would say anything but Haitian." Fortunately for Danticat, she found an outlet for her loneliness in her writing; by creating stories she was able to return to her native land, at least in her own imagination.
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