This is a year not just to celebrate the past; it is a year to build, to change, to question, to recover our history and demystify it. - Évelyne Trouillot

I cannot resist going back to poetry as the main inspiration, and will cite some poets’ names: René Philoctète, Mahmoud Darwish, Louis Aragon, Pablo Neruda. When I want to remember what poetry means, I always go back to them always as an anchor and as an impetus to write, to create.

My youth longs for the calendas, the coral necklaces and images of sun-filled fields, where there are no bent backs, no overseers, no children dying. My youth wants to erase the stories of The Infamous Rosalie and barracoons, to lift off this weight that clouds my vision whenever I try to dream. (p64)

The writer is also a citizen: a citizen who writes. Someone who makes sense of things. For me, this production of meaning does not happen in a vacuum, in a space without place, without society. The social calls out to me.