We Have Dared to Be Free

Book excerpt: Dady Chery's We Have Dared to Be Free was written between 2010 and 2015. This book is based on a lifelong wealth of knowledge, and it is essential to understand Haiti's complex and extraordinary journey. Dady Chery was born and raised in Haiti and, as such, is proud to call herself natif natal. Before the 2010 earthquake, her professional life was wholly dedicated to science. Like so many Haitians, either still living on the island or from the diaspora, the quake turned her life upside down. It was a wake-up call for Chery. Since then she has given a voice to the voiceless and worked to make Haitians proud of their rich culture and unique history. In her lexicon, Haiti should not be called the poorest nation of the Western hemisphere but, rather, the only republic from a successful slave revolution. Before Chery came on the scene in 2010, the English-language journalistic narrative about Haiti was mainly controlled by a few Western journalists, whom she calls colonists of the mind, or often took the form of frustrated rants from the diaspora. Much of Dady Chery's information is unavailable in English anywhere else. She offers a crisp, beautifully written discourse that allows us to connect the dots to see the bigger picture. Haiti has been a runaway experiment in humanitarian imperialism since 2004. Chery points out that the methods refined there by the United States and its collaborators in the United Nations mission and non-governmental organizations are already coming home to roost. We Have Dared to Be Free is a five-year literary journey through destruction, pain, occupation, corruption and death, from which Dady Chery brings her compatriots and all people who are oppressed the tools to overcome adversity and the sense that adversity can and must be overcome. - Gilbert Mercier, News Junkie Post