Summary

Danticat begins “Condemned to Die” with another quote from Camus: “The contrary of suicide, in fact, is the man condemned to die” (99). Danticat then relates Camus’ quote to her own novel, The Dew Breaker, which explores the lives of tortures and executioners during Haiti’s dictatorship. Danticat says that when she wrote the book, her question was, “What made these dew breakers think they had the power to condemn people to death?” (100).

Danticat contrasts a man condemned to die with a child being born; she then contrasts the concept of “future” itself with a “child condemned to die” (100). As an example of this severed future, Danticat offers racism toward blacks in America, referencing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ memoir Between the World and Me. In his memoir, Coates tells his son “I think [we parent blacks] would like to kill [you, our children] ourselves before...