SOURCE: "Haitian Dream, Brooklyn Memory," in Newsday, May 21, 1995, p. A52.

In the following essay, Moses provides an overview of Danticat's life and career.

Novelist Edwidge Danticat remembers that when she went to junior high school in Crown Heights, it was hard to be proud of being Haitian.

The newcomers took separate classes taught in Creole. When they gathered with other students, they were met with taunts that Haitians had AIDS. "There were a lot of fights with blood, because when teased, the students would react," Danticat remembers.

But childhood memories have served Danticat well, helping to inspire her in writing two books that have won her national attention at the age of 26. Her work has brought the Haitian immigrant experience to the American literary world and introduced a new chapter in the literature of Brooklyn.

In an interview last month in the living room of her East Flatbush...