Discusses the reception of South African activist Winnie Madikizela Mandela in the U.S. press, an essay on literature about the suicides of women during India's 1947 partition in Punjab, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
This essay is framed around interpretations of Haiti's long history in order to demonstrate that there is neither curse nor punishment in Haiti's history; there is only intrigue, interest, and interference. The natural disasters whether earthquakes or hurricanes do not occur because of some rational targeting of the country but are the results of the arbitrariness of nature.
