A few weeks ago, I picked up Dany Laferriere's memoir of the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Tout Bouge Autour de Moi (The World Turns Around Me). It's an amazing book, full of powerful, palpable, personal description. At one point, a nephew, also named Dany, insists he not write about the earthquake - that the elder Dany's Haiti is done, over writing about, and this is his Haiti, his topic. Elder Dany points out there are as many ways to write an experience as there are experiences - endless.
In search of more information about the quake and in particular, the failure of aid to improve Haiti's lot, especially with the recent hurricane Now also a factor, I turned to the half memoir, half reportage of Jonathan Katz's The Big Truck That Went By. Katz's book is a) by a "blan" - an outsider - and so has more distance (for better and worse) but also b) is the story of him living through the quake - including serious PTSD - as he was embedded there before and after the fact.
