Create Dangerously By Edwidge Danticat Analysis

Few countries have endured as much violence and terror at the hands of imperial power as the island nation of Haiti. Liberated from French colonialism in 1804, the world’s first Black republic has become synonymous with the poverty and degradation that colonial powers have imposed on populations across the world. Nonetheless, these narratives often shield us from more humanizing portraits of Haiti that do not rely on stereotypes and clichés. Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work provides such a portrait.
From her commentary on the Haitian influences in the works of Basquiat to her account of the resilience of the Haitian people in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, Danticat’s writing leaves a lasting impression
Above all she celebrates Haitian author Marie Vieu-Chauvet. Much like Numas and Drouin, Marie Vieu-Chauvet is celebrated as a figure willing to defy the status quo in the face of overwhelming power. The intellectual kinship that Danticat feels toward Chauvet is clear throughout, most obviously in her remark “in Marie Vieu-Chauvet’s absence [she felt] orphaned.” Again, the ethical code of creating dangerously, which also entails “living fearlessly”, bounds the two artists across generational and geographic divides. As Danticat states in the opening chapter, “somewhere, if not now, then maybe years in the future, someone may risk his or her life to read
In the production of subversive art Danticat seems to imply that both the writer and the reader enter into a tacit agreement whereby each is expected to courageously persevere in their defiance of authority for the sake of a broader social project. Instead of operating in separate realms as conventional wisdom demands, Danticat sheds light on the intersection between the artist and the revolutionary, alerting readers to the responsibilities artists must fulfill as agents of cultural change. In short, artists must practice “creating fearlessly … even when a great tempest is upon