Bertony Louis walks slowly along Sampsonia Way on Pittsburgh’s North Side, his new home for the next two years. The narrow street is lined with houses painted in murals and words — walls that speak, sharing many of the same messages of justice and freedom as many of the poems he has carried across continents. For Louis, a Haitian writer who calls himself a “humanitarian poet,” the walk is both a meditation and a reminder. “Every step I take here, I’m still walking with Haiti,” he says.
Louis, who was born in 1994, spent his Haiti youth on the move. His parents shifted from Marmelade to Croix de Bouquets to other communities not far from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, seeking security and to avoid gangs in the Caribbean nation.
His parents, neither of whom had more than an elementary education, worked tirelessly so he and his siblings could attend school. His father sold hats at the market, his mother sold rice, and in between, their time was filled with passing along proverbs and stories across the generations. “We didn’t have much, but there was always wisdom around us,” Louis recalls. “Haiti is a place where the culture itself teaches you — through sayings, through music, through struggle.”…