Before January 12, 2010, most Americans didn’t know much about Haiti. Take the cabbie who drove my husband and me from the airport recently: when told where we’d been, he asked, presumably in all seriousness, if Port-au-Prince was in Wisconsin.
By now, he and others know a few things about Haiti: that it’s the poorest country in the hemisphere, that most of the population lives in poverty, that most are illiterate, that Haitians are known for their fortitude, their ability to survive despite enormous obstacles. All of these factoids, which you …