While a seemingly unlikely pairing, Edwidge Danticat and President Bush both speak on different sides of the line in regards to one heated issue: torture. In a September 2006 editorial in the Washington Post, the central trauma of the book The Dew Breaker is once again illuminated. At the time, President Bush was proposing to lift some of the facets of the Geneva Convention for the rights of prisoners when those prisoners, especially the ones at Guantanamo Bay, were terrorism-related. While the politically correct phrase "harsher interrogation tactics" was often used in Bush's speech, torture is truly the best word for it. It is in Danticat's book where the result of torture is seen from both sides; maybe a book that Bush should get his hands on.
In this piece Danticat tells the stories of two women who were tortured under the Duvalier Regime in Haiti, as well as Danticat's own research in Haiti regarding the regime that ultimately led her to write the book. In this piece, the question to be asked of President Bush seems to be, "Will anyone ever hear the voices of the tortured and the torturers when this administration is over, when the fear of terrorism hopefully subsides?" She begs that question throughout the piece, but more importantly Danticat urges the readers to understand that no one wins in torture situations, and in fact with these tactics America is coming dangerously close to regimes we purport to be against. "And now, when political leaders in the United States are asking us as a society to consider not only the legal and moral ramifications of torture but its effectiveness, we are brought closer to these regimes than we may think." The question at the time was, as it still is, "Is Bush overstepping his bounds to please right-wingers on the issue of terrorism?" In regards to the legislation passed in 2006, the answer is yes. And yes, torture affects everyone, regardless of whether you obtain the scars or not.
When speaking of the torture of her countrywomen in this piece and how it affected her society, she states that for those Haitians, "torture is not just an individual affliction but a communal one." For the United States, the torture system is something that is the "dirty little secret"; it is a communal secret. On the outside, just like Ka's father in the book, little information is given to the public so new stories about how prisoners are treated are created an glossed over. But those who torture and who are being tortured remember. Soon I feel America will come to the point where it looks in the mirror and remembers the scars of atrocities towards others from this current time in history. America, like Ka's father, will eventually have to "tell a lie, a lie that would further remind him of the truth" (228). Danticat in this editorial is making it known the central trauma of her country's life is running parallel to the way we are now treating prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This editorial speaks not only to the power of the author as a political force, but it asks the question of the necessity of torture to subdue humans.
It is in this political light where the idea of the novel as a living, moving, life-force is applicable. Novels are not just something to be taken lightly, and in the case of Danticat the only way to truly respect the novel is to understand the pain of the characters contained within it. But more than that, The Dew Breaker is a novel that shows us the issue of torture in the context of history but can be extrapolated to issues today. Torture is real and the characters of Anne, The Dew Breaker, Ka, and Dany (just to name a few) all have parallels in Haiti and around the world today. It is a blessing that a woman like Danticat was able to speak of the violence in Haiti that inspired her book, but also speak towards that violence and apply it to America. America should be scared of the morning dew of ignorance being broken by a woman who wants to expose the truth of torture- because it is real, and America needs to recognize that and fight it.
A link to the article by Danticat: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201304.html
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