After a decade of dreaming, Allison Coffelt arrived in Haiti, ready-she thought-"to learn how much she didn't know" about the Caribbean nation. Traveling the highways with Dr. Jean Gardy Marius, founder of the public health organization OSAPO, she embarked on a life-changing journey that would weave Haiti's proud, tumultuous history and present reality into her life forever.
Maps Are Lines We Draw explores the culture and natural beauty of the island as well as its discomfiting realities: the threat well-intentioned aid organizations can present to the local economy; the privilege that determines who gets to travel between a "here" and a distant "there" which is foreign and other; and the challenge of doing short-term good without creating long-lasting harm.
About the Author :
Allison Coffelt is a writer and teacher working at the intersection of health and humanities. She is the author of the award-winning nonfiction bookMaps Are Lines We Draw: A Road Trip through Haiti. She holds an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University and an MA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Missouri. Her work has been featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association,Los Angeles Review of Books, and British Medical Journal's Medical Humanities. Allison lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Review :
“A compelling read for anyone who has traveled, or wishes to travel, to a foreign country.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Pick up this book if you’ve never read anything about Haiti or if you’ve read everything about Haiti: Maps Are Lines We Draw forges a new path.”—Jen Hirt, author of Under Glass: The Girl with a Thousand Christmas Trees
“A beautifully written book that explores both personal experience and global issues.”—Vicki Mayk for Hippocampus Magazine
“A profoundly thoughtful volume about place, medicine, light, opportunity, water, and storytelling, among other ideas.”—Brevity
