Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Edwidge Danticat visited the Dajabón River, across the Haitian border in the Dominican Republic, in 1995 and was surprised to find the people there seemingly unaware of the brutal killings that had taken place there during the Parsley massacre (1937), when tens of thousands of Haitian workers were murdered. Danticat set out to memorialize the victims and their suffering, by telling their stories and spreading knowledge.