“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read,” wrote James Baldwin. This quote in Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat’s new essay collection We’re Alone captures the dual meaning of the title: the isolation and despair of the oppressed who believe no one is coming to help them, and the intimacy between author and reader, alone together on the page.

Danticat’s offer of intimacy leads the reader into many circumstances nobody would want to go.