"My good grades in high school confirmed my conviction that education wasn't much use when poverty and bad luck were aligned against you." (Page 74 Haiti Noir)
This sentence highlights the lack of social mobility in Haiti. Education is really the only way to move between social cla**es in Haiti and most other developing countries. Therefore, some people think that poor people are to blame for their own misfortunes because they did not recognize that education was their only hope of success. But Edwidge rejects this argument and says education is only useful if you are well off. If a student is hungry and does not know where or when her next meal is going to come from, her main goal would be to do whatever it takes to get food. It is impossible to achieve long term goals like education when one has to work very hard to make sure their short term basic needs are met.