One of them became the title of my growing manuscript: Jé pa gin bòday (the eye has no boundary).īut as I began to write about the devastating earthquake in part two, I needed a new North Star. (The Dominican Republic abounds in them, as well.) One book, in particular, became a favorite, Andrea Baldeck's The Heart of Haiti (out of print but I'm sure Powell's can get it for you), a collection of wonderful photos, each one captioned with a Haitian proverb. One of my discoveries in reading about Haiti was the richness of proverbs in Kreyòl, no surprise in an oral culture. And you look for a new title to steer your new course. Then, when discoveries and surprises occur, you detour, and that detour turns into a path. Of course, when you write, there is no 'on course.' As the Machado poem says, 'Traveler, there is no path, the path is made by walking.' But if you need a little boost of confidence - and I often do - you tell yourself you are on course, steering by that North Star title. I had written nonfiction before, but it wasn't my accustomed genre, so I needed a simple, straightforward, pedestrian title to keep me on course.

I rattled off a bunch of descriptive phrases, among them, 'It's about how the García girls lost their accents!'Ī Wedding in Haiti began as a travel journal, so when I first started moving from journal to manuscript, I titled it, Going to Piti's Wedding in Haiti. On one of those calls, Shannon suggested we just brainstorm what the book was about. I fumed and fussed, and we spent several weeks of back-and-forth phone calls (this was before the advent of emails). When I turned in my final draft, Shannon told me that my title was just too dull for the lively García family I had created. I recall how during the writing of my first novel, she kept mum about my working title: Daughters of Invention, based on a malaprop of the mami in the book. She wouldn't think of nixing a navigation device while I am still using it. First comes my editor, Shannon Ravenel, who has been reading drafts of the manuscript, but has held off commenting on the title until now. But the title is my North Star to steer by as I navigate my way, paragraph by paragraph, towards the finished book I'm imagining I am writing.Īfter I'm done with the writing, other people enter into the process, all with opinions about the title I've given my book. Sometimes the titles change, as I never really know what a book is about until I've written it. It's usually a title that reminds me what I think the book is about. Early on in the writing of my books, I choose a title.

Names by julia alvarez