We're Alone. Essays - Edwidge Danticat

A collection of exceptional new essays by one of the most significant contemporary writers on the world stage

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.

Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation—we’re alone now, we can talk. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.

**Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024**


“Piercing . . . Danticat remains in full command of her considerable talents.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A masterful essayist at the top of her game.”—Erica Pearson, Minnesota Star Tribune

“Powerful. . . . [Danticat] offers an elegant commentary on injustice and the mixed feelings one’s home can engender.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Danticat’s luminous, heart-forward prose tends to stick to the ribs. . . . In [We're Alone], Danticat illuminates political crises via personal ones, and vice versa.”—Brittany Allen, Literary Hub's “most anticipated books of 2024”

“These pieces represent [Danticat’s] outstretched hand, an invitation to spend shared time in reflection. . . . These are clearly the essays of an accomplished novelist.”—Wendy S. Walters, Los Angeles Times

“Danticat’s essays are collages of associations and resonances, and they are richer for it. . . . Like the informal but spirited orators she grew up idolizing, Danticat cultivates a style that is diverting and digressive. Her essays are not linear artifacts but webs that spin around ideas or turns of phrase. As such, they are never about only one thing.”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“This essay collection finds Danticat looking back at her native country of Haiti. Not with the naive rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, but with full awareness of the complicated nature of ‘resilience’ and the mixed feelings anyone has about where they came from.”—NPR.org’s Most Anticipated Books of Fall

“Incomparable. . . . With her signature presence, Danticat makes the personal universal and the universal personal with wisdom, grace and candid vulnerability.”—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

“Deeply felt, incisively reported, and lyrically composed . . . all movingly illuminated with Danticat's signature empathy, precision, and artistry.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist

“Personal, touching, rich in observations, smart, resonant, vibrant and complex. . . . Danticat once again proves that she is one of contemporary literature's strongest, most graceful voices.”—Gabino Iglesias, NPR.org

“Drawing threads among issues like political upheaval, the COVID-19 pandemic and her own childhood, this is a deeply personal and wide-ranging essay collection.”—People Magazine’s “Best Books of September 2024”