World Building - "The Book of the Dead"

Topic: What are the precise strategies that are used by its creator to convey the world to us and us to the world?

Edwidge Danticat adds subtle background information to the conflicts occurring in "The Book of the Dead".

On the first page, our inciting incident is Ka, a Haitian-American art teacher and our hero, is waiting in an office at the hotel she and her missing father are staying at. There, Ka gives bits and pieces of what she hears and sees: the hotel manager has a Spanish lilt to his voice and that the police officer is Floridian. Within the first page, the readers already know that we are in a Spanish-section of Florida.

Later in the story, we figure out who Ka is giving selling her statue to: a famous Haitian-American named Gabrielle Fonteneau. Here, we now know the time period. If a Haitian-American is successful and wealthy, our timeline is passed the Civil Rights Movement. I'd say around the 70's to the 80's.'