Author Interview

Danielle Legros Georges
Danielle Georges Interview
By Christina Pham
1) What book have you read that has the greatest influence on you?
That's a tough one. I don't think I can name just one book. Books I've read in the past 10 years that have stayed with me include Marlene Nourbese Philip's She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks and Looking For Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence. Édouard Glissant's Caribbean Discourse and Edward Said's Orientalism have also had a great influence on me. I love the work of Toni Morrison, Maryse Condé, Rikki Ducornet, Harryette Mullen, Octavio Paz, Aimé Césaire, and the short stories of A.S. Byatt. I've also found John Keene's Annotations and Nurudin Farah's Sweet and Sour Milk to be great.
2. Which three words would you use to describe your poetry?
I hope that it is true, engaged, and engaging.
3. Your book will clearly have an effect on Haitian Americans. Is that the audience you primarily have in mind or do you feel that Maroon will cross cultural barriers and have an impact on the average reader?
My hope is that Maroon appeals to all types of readers. I'm always happy when my writing resonates with Haitian Americans, and with readers of other backgrounds.
I think that my Haitian-American experience is probably not unlike other immigrant experiences. I think the immigrant experience is really the American experience (whether the migration happened a decade ago or a few hundred years ago). My feeling is that we, in the Americas, are all marked in some way or another by movement and displacement. Maroon takes some of this on, but it also takes on moments of everyday life that occur between the larger motion.
4. What is your aim in writing poetry?
In reference to the power of poetry and the word, the poet Jimmy Santiago Baca said, "oh it caught me up in the fiercest typhoon I had ever been in and from which I never escaped. . . I have continually swirled like a leaf." Strong feeling, but not unlike how I feel about writing poetry. I feel compelled to write. What I hope emerges is writing that is meaningful to others.

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