The earthquake Fabiola mentions is likely the real-life 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti. Fabiola would’ve been a young girl at the time of the earthquake, so it would’ve been a formative event in her childhood. Indeed, Fabiola thinks about life in Detroit in terms of the Haitian earthquake—she views everything through the lens of her experiences as a Haitian person. This reflects Fabiola’s status as an immigrant: she’s trying to meld together her Haitian and American identities, and to marry both with her observations of Detroit. Matant Jo, meanwhile, says that people in both countries “talk out of two sides of their mouth,” meaning that both Haitians and Americans lie or mislead people. This suggests that Haiti and the U.S. aren’t so different after all—and that Americans aren’t inherently superior to Haitians.