Life was hard for Danticat’s parents were because they had to leave their friends and families behind. On top of that, the original plan of theirs was to reunite the family once they found working jobs. But because of the “immigration red tape”, the family couldn’t be reunited even if they found jobs and it took years to finally be together.
The “Faustian bargain” refers to making a deal with the devil. The deal that was offered to the children was either live with their parents with barely anything to sustain life or be separated from them so that they can provide a clothes, food, and even a future for their children. This offer does seem fair because having a clear future set out is better than having no clear chance of enjoying life after growing up from the adolescence age range.
Uncle Joseph saw life in America for poor people that life is not a future of wealth was not a given. For the children’s view they saw that they would be buying all the candy they could ever ask for and have what they want from just working hard. What contributes to their respective points of view is that Uncle Joseph is living a poor life and the thoughts that contribute to the children’s respective point of view would be that they are young and they aren’t sure how the world really works at the time.
The first lesson Danticat learned in New York was that if immigrants were poor, they would have to work for longer hours than most people with less benefits. This lesson should be commonly shared between immigrants because they were basically leaving all their stuff behind to start a new life. I think this lesson is pretty fair because they can’t expect the world be handed to them for leaving the life they had. Instead, they had to build it up using what they own, and if they can’t… that’s just life.
The children owe it to their parents to make a clear plan of what they want to do with their life if they ever decide to reject the dreams the parents tried to push onto them. The sacrifices the parents made were great, so in return, the parents expect the children to work hard and not suffer with life in poverty.
A “transnational” is someone who has the right to vote and has living privileges in 2 countries. An immigrant is someone who just arrived in the country but doesn’t have the right to vote but rather have to try to gain citizenship. Danticat’s parents ultimately chooses to become an immigrant once they became middle aged.
After 9/11 Danticat’s father was afraid becoming a victim of terrorism and  the person to blame for. This treatment occurred because he wasn’t a natural born citizen of the United States so they don’t treat him the same and people would see him differently.
Uncle Joseph death was connected to the beginning of the story because they said some things were inevitable. In this case, it was inevitable that gangs from Haiti would find Uncle Joseph just as it was inevitable that if you were a new immigrant, you left people behind to start a new life somewhere else.
The title is past tense because their thoughts of New York had changed and became more realistic than the idea that you can get anything u can ever hope for after working your hardest.
