Everything Inside

Nadia is a first-generation Haitian American teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. She is defined by her close relationship with her mother and her anger with her father. Danticat emphasizes Nadia’s closeness with her mother highlighting their physical appearances. Nadia says that “I always felt pretty when my mother’s patrons complimented her beauty, because in the next breath they would say I looked like her” (45). Later, Nadia says that she and her mother are “two nearly identical women” (46). Nadia has accepted her mother’s belief that her father “chose a country over me, over us” (47), and carries a great deal of resentment for him. When she visits her father on her deathbed, Nadia thinks that “I had already killed him over and over in mind” (61), listing a variety of violent scenarios she had imagined. By the end of the story, Nadia’s feelings about her parents have changed somewhat. Grieving her father, Nadia tells her mother that, “he had a wife […] and nice friends who loved him” (61), suggesting that she is beginning to see him as a full person, rather than a monster who abandoned her.

The unnamed narrator of “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special” runs a hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with her husband, Xavier. The narrator is defined by her maternal behavior. She is the mother of an 11-month-old boy named Wesley, but the story also presents her as a mother figure to Mélisande, a hotel employee who contracts AIDS. The narrator feeds Mélisande, nurses her back to health, and attempts to guide her through heartbreak. Xavier tries to reassure his wife by saying that she “did everything we would have done for Wesley” (77) while taking care of Mélisande. In addition to these implicit comparisons, the narrator explicitly compares herself to Mélisande’s mother, Babette, who works as a chef in the hotel: “I wanted Mélisande to be healthy, I told her, and so did she. In that way I knew we were the same” (75). The emphasis on the unnamed narrator’s maternal nature, and Babette’s reluctance to accept her help, highlights the tension between foreign and domestic influences in Haiti.

Anika is a young woman living in Miami who reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, Thomas, after a period of seven months. Anika is an art dealer who recently started producing her own art, specifically sketches of tropical birds. At the beginning of the story, Anika’s primary goal is to see Thomas and rekindle their relationship: she buys a short, revealing black dress to wear, and keeps the titular gift in her apartment, rather than bringing it to the date. She admits to herself that she’d felt “an initial twinge of delight […] when she learned that his wife and daughter had died” (94), and wonders if she can replace his family. By the end of the story, however, Anika has come to realize that Thomas’s trauma is too large for her to fix, and that knowledge of her miscarriage would only wound him further. The final scene, in which Anika imagines her unborn child alongside Thomas’s dead family, suggests she is learning to accept the trauma of her own loss.

Lucy is a Haitian American college student living in Miami. Although she was born in the United States, Lucy describes herself as a “‘left side of the hyphen’ Haitian” (114), meaning that, as a Haitian American, she identifies more with her Haitian identity than her American identity. Lucy is the child of migrant farm workers; throughout her childhood, she would change schools four or five times a year as her family moved along the Florida and Georgia coast for work. Lucy lives a sparse life at school and carries the weight of the sacrifices her parents made for her to attend college. The character of Neah is presented as a foil for Lucy: raised by wealthy and stable academics, Neah had only to decide which of her parents’ universities she would attend. Neah’s privilege means that she can afford to visit and volunteer in Haiti, while Lucy cannot. The drastic differences in their upbringings serves to contrast and highlight their emotional connection.

Carole, a Haitian American immigrant with dementia, is one of the narrators of “Sunrise, Sunset,” and her daughter Jeanne is the other. The story begins and ends with Carole’s perspective, and her character is the more dynamic of the two. At the start of the story, Carole is aware that she is displaying early signs of dementia, though she refuses to name her diagnosis, referring to it as “a lost moment, a blank spot” (133) or simply “her illness” (138). Carole’s unwillingness to acknowledge her declining state is a reflection of her belief that, as a mother and an immigrant, she is immune to suffering. By the end of the story, however, Carole’s dementia has proceeded to the extent that she has completely lost grasp on reality, and she thinks her husband and daughter are conspiring against her, and that her grandson is a doll. This radical transformation mirrors the transformation in Carole’s relationship with her daughter: whereas Carole spent years of her life sacrificing to take care of Jeanne, Jeanne must now act as parent to her mother.

Although the narrator of “Seven Stories” is Kim, Brooklyn-based culture writer for an online magazine, the most dynamic character is Callie Morrissette, Kim’s childhood friend. Callie is the wife of Greg Murray, the recently-elected prime minister of an unnamed island; her father had also been prime minister, until he was assassinated. At the beginning of the story, Callie is presented as the perfect first lady: “she looked like a runway model on her day off, flaunting her flawless onyx skin and her short dark hair, blown out and tucked behind her ears” (161-62). As the story progresses, it is revealed that Callie has a certain degree of influence over her husband, who “seemed to follow Callie’s lead” (172). Ultimately, the story suggests that Callie and her mother, who were subject to violence as they fled the island, have a greater claim to the nation than Greg and others like him, who were able to buy their way out. Callie is characterized by her continued strength and love for her country and her acknowledgement of its flawed history.