“Au revoir, Papa,” I said, trying out the word Papa just this once. I had always wondered what it would be like to call someone Papa.”

“Aujourd’hui, papa est mort.”

I thought that Danticat’s word choice in this section was meaningful. In this moment, Nadia is speaking to her father for the first time. Her desire to use the word “Papa” comes from the surface level wanting of a father in her life, but also from wanting a connection to the culture her father represents. Nadia’s first and last words to her father are in one of the languages spoken in Haiti, French. Yet, even French is a language of colonizers, and Danticat makes the choice for Nadia to speak in French rather than Creole. In addition, “Aujourd’hui, papa est mort” is an allusion to the first line of Camus’s “L’Étranger” which Nadia’s students are reading in class. That line has sparked debate about translation work and makes us question Danticat’s own translation of the line to “My father died today”. What does temporality mean in death– to die “today?” Does culture die in this moment, or is it reborn? Danticat uses language and allusion to make us question these notions.