When Danticat’s short story collection Krik? Krak! was published in 1995, it cemented the reputation that Danticat had begun to build with her earlier debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). The collection was nominated for a National Book Award and was warmly received by critics, who welcomed Danticat’s humanizing of Haiti, a country that had been largely ignored by writers and artists and that had mainly been the subject of news reports focusing on political upheaval and violence. In her Boston Globe review, “Danticat’s Stories Pulse with Haitian Heartbeat,” Jordana Hart praises Danticat’s “honest and loving portraits of Haitian people” which have “smashed the numbing stereotypes created by a barrage of media accounts of Haitian poverty, misery and death.”

In an interview with Danticat for Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, Margaria Fichtner makes comments on...