A Wedding in Haiti, by Julia Alvarez

I knew about Julia Alvarez because I worked at a middle school for about six years, and in the course of that time one of the English classes I worked in read one of her novels-- Before We Were Free. It's about a young woman whose fairly wealthy, upper-class family are high enough in the social strata to get involved in a coup against the dictator at the time. Her father ends up dead, and she, her mother, and her sister end up in Queens, facing a whole new life in New York.

I liked that book, too-- for the kind of thing it is. 

Anyway, when I was wandering through the nonfiction section of the library the other day, I came across A Wedding in Haiti, which starts with the story of how she (Julia Alvarez) and her husband got involved in a coffee farming venture in her home country of the Dominican Republic, and therefore meet Piti, a Haitian-immigrant farmworker whom they sort-of-adopt, and whose wedding they eventually attend.

And, since they are the fanciest people at the wedding, they end up being the godparents of the wedding. (Don't ask me what that means; Julia Alvarez herself seems a little fuzzy on what exactly it means.) And, being godparents of the wedding, they then end up being godparents of the marriage-- which in turn leads them to take a second trip into Haiti so that they can bring Piti's wife back for a visit to her family, whom she deeply misses.

But this second trip is taken right after the devastating 2010 earthquake, and they end up going to Port-au-Prince to get travel documents, and it's funny and sad and moving and all the things. I think I want to own this one. I felt more human after I read it. I feel a little more human even now, just thinking about it.