Edwidge Danticat Popular Books
Edwidge Danticat Biography & Facts
Edwidge Danticat (Haitian Creole pronunciation: [ɛdwidʒ dãtika]; born January 19, 1969) is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Early life Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. When she was 12 years old, her father André emigrated to New York, to be followed two years later by her mother Rose. This left Danticat and her younger brother, also named André, to be raised by her aunt and uncle. When asked in an interview about her traditions as a child, she included storytelling, church, and constantly studying school material as all part of growing up. Although her formal education in Haiti was in French, she spoke Haitian Creole at home. While still in Haiti, Danticat began writing at nine years of age. She later wrote another story about her immigration experience for the magazine New Youth Connections, "A New World Full of Strangers". In the introduction to Starting With I, an anthology of stories from the magazine, Danticat wrote: "When I was done with the [immigration] piece, I felt that my story was unfinished, so I wrote a short story, which later became a book, my first novel: Breath, Eyes, Memory...Writing for New Youth Connections had given me a voice. My silence was destroyed completely, indefinitely." After graduating from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, Danticat entered Barnard College in New York City where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1990. Initially she had intended to study to become a nurse, but her love of writing won out and she received a BA in French literature. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Brown University in 1993. Danticat is a strong advocate for issues affecting Haitians abroad and at home. In 2009, she lent her voice and words to Poto Mitan: Haitian Women Pillars of the Global Economy, a documentary about the impact of globalization on five women from different generations. Personal life Danticat married Fedo Boyer in 2002. She has two daughters, Mira and Leila. Although Danticat resides in the United States, she still considers Haiti home. To date, she still visits Haiti from time to time and has always felt as if she never left it. Themes Three themes are prominent in various analyses of Edwidge Danticat's work: national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics. National identity Scholars of Danticat's work frequently examine the theme of national identity. In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat explores the relationship between women and the nationalist agenda of the state [i] during the Duvalier regime. Throughout the novel, as generations of women "test" their daughters, by penetrating their vaginas with a finger to confirm their virginity, they "become enforcers," or proxies, of the state's "violence and victimization" of black women's bodies (376–377) [i], similar to the paramilitary secret police Tonton Macoutes. However, while the women of Breath, Eyes, Memory replicate "state-sanctioned" control and violation of women's bodies through acts of violence (375), they also "disrupt and challenge the masculinist, nationalist discourse" of the state by using their bodies "as deadly weapons" (387) [i]. Evidence for this claim can be drawn from Martine's suicide, seen as a tragic exhibition of freedom, releasing her body, and mind, from its past traumas [i]. Additionally, the novel demonstrates some inherent difficulties of creating a diasporic identity, as illustrated through Sophie's struggle between uniting herself with her heritage and abandoning what she perceives to be the damaging tradition of 'testing,' suggesting the impossibility of creating a resolute creolized personhood [ii]. Finally, Danticat's work, The Farming of Bones, speaks to the stories of those who survived the 1937 massacre, and the effects of that trauma on Haitian identity [iv]. Overall, Danticat makes known the history of her nation while also diversifying conceptions of the country beyond those of victimization [iii]. Mother-daughter relationships Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory explores the centrality of the mother-daughter relationship to self-identity and self-expression [v]. Sophie's experiences mirror those of her mother's Martine. Just as Martine was forced to submit to a virginity test at the hand of her own mother, she forces the same on Sophie after discovering her relationship with Joseph. As a result, Sophie goes through a period of self- hate, ashamed to show anyone her body, including her husband (80) [viii]. Sophie's struggles to overcome frigidity in relation to intimacy with her husband Joseph, as well as her bulimia parallels Martine's struggle bear a child with Marc to term, as well her insomnia, and detrimental eating habits (61–62) [v]. Due to Martine's rape by a Tonton Macoute and Sophie's abuse by her mother, "each woman must come to terms with herself before she can enter into a healthy relationship with a man, and these men attempt to meet these women on the latter's own terms" (68) [vi]. The pinnacle of this mirroring comes when Sophie chooses to be her mother's Marassa, a double of herself for her mother, to share the pain, the trials and the tribulations, the ultimate connection: to become one with her mother. Marassas represent "sameness and love" as one, they are "inseparable and identical. They love each other because they are alike and always together" [vii]. This connection between Sophie and her mother Martine has also been challenged through Sophie's own connection with her daughter Brigitte: "Martine's totally nihilistic unwillingness to begin again with the draining responsibilities of motherhood comments upon and stands in stark contrast to Sophie's loving desire to bring her daughter Brigitte into the welcoming" (79) [viii]. Diasporic politics Scholars agree that Danticat manages her relationship with her Haitian history and her bicultural identity through her works by creating a new space within the political sphere. In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat employs the "idea of mobile traditions" as a means of creating new space for Haitian identity in America, one that is neither a "happy hybridity" nor an "unproblematic creolization" of Flatbush Brooklyn (28) [ix]. Danticat's open reference to and acceptance of her Caribbean predecessors, especially through the "grand narratives of the dead iconic fathers of Haitian literature," creates a "new community [...] in luminal extra-national spaces" that "situates her narrative" in a place that is neither "absolute belonging" nor "postcolonial placelessness" (34) [ix]. Suggestive of the Haitian literar.... Discover the Edwidge Danticat popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Edwidge Danticat books.
Best Seller Edwidge Danticat Books of 2024
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Tales of Two Americas
John FreemanThirtysix major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided Americaincluding Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edw...
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The Best American Essays 2018
Hilton Als & Robert AtwanThe Pulitzer–Prize winning and Guggenheimhonored Hilton Als curates the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, bringing “the fierce style of street reading...
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Breath, Eyes, Memory
Edwidge DanticatAt the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of CroixdesRosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secret...
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We Need New Names
NoViolet BulawayoFinalist for the Booker Prize: the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America (New York Times Book Review), from the aut...
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Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat
Celucien L. Joseph, Suchismita Banerjee, Marvin E. Hobson & Danny M. Hoey, Jr.Providing an intellectual interpretation to the work of Edwidge Danticat, this new edited collection provides a pedagogical approach to teach and interpret her body of work in unde...
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The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat
Jana Evans Braziel & Nadège T. ClitandreEdwidge Danticat's prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21stcentury literary culture. Across such novels as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Fa...
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Edwidge Danticat
Martin MunroBreath, Eyes, Memory (1994), the novel born from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood in Haiti and immigration to New York City, was one of the great literary debuts of recent times, marki...
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1,000 Books to Read Before You Die
James Mustich“The ultimate literary bucket list.” The Washington Post “If there’s a heaven just for readers, this is it.” O, The Oprah Magazine Celebrate the p...
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Lavil
Peter Orner & Evan LyonMoving stories of life in a country enduring an ongoing crisisSeven years after the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck Haiti, the island nation re...
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Black Ink
Stephanie, Stokes OliverSpanning over 250 years of history, Black Ink traces black literature in America from Frederick Douglass to TaNehisi Coates in this masterful collection of twentyfive illustrious a...
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The Fire This Time
Jesmyn WardThe New York Times bestseller, these groundbreaking essays and poems about racecollected by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and written by the most important voices of her g...
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The Matter of Black Lives
Jelani Cobb & David RemnickA collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in Americaincluding work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, TaNehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and morewit...
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Farewell, Fred Voodoo
Amy WilentzWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, this is a brilliant writer’s account of a long, painful, ecstaticand unreciprocatedaffair with a country that ha...
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Stories from Quarantine
The New York TimesA stunning collection of new fiction previously published as The Decameron Project and originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as the COVID19 pandemic first spread a...
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Tales of Two Planets
John FreemanBuilding from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us ...
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The Brown Reader
Judy Sternlight“To be up all night in the darkness of your youth but to be ready for the day to come…that was what going to Brown felt like.” Jeffrey EugenidesIn celebration of Brown University’s...
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The Penguin Book of Migration Literature
Dohra Ahmad[Ahmad's] "introduction is fiery and charismatic... This book encompasses the diversity of experience, with beautiful variations and stories that bicker back and forth." Parul Sehg...
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Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat
Joyce WhiteReturning to the cosmological and ontological center of Africana spirituality, Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat: Crossroads as Ritual explores the ways in w...
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Everything Inside
Edwidge DanticatNATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER "Unforgettable tales of families and loversfrom Haiti to Miami, Brooklyn, and beyondoften struggling with grief, loss, and missed co...
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Small Odysseys
Hannah Tinti & Neil Gaiman“Lovers of the short story, rejoice! There’s something for everyone in this anniversary collection . . . The collection makes the argument that time and again, it is stories that s...
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After the Dance
Edwidge DanticatIn After the Dance, one of Haiti’s most renowned daughters returns to her homeland, taking readers on a stunning, exquisitely rendered journey beyond the hedonistic surface of Carn...
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Claire of the Sea Light
Edwidge DanticatFrom the national bestselling author of Brother, I’m Dying and The Dew Breaker: a “fiercely beautiful” novel (Los Angeles Times) that brings us deep into the intertwined lives of a...
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Why We Write About Ourselves
Meredith MaranIn the voices of twenty landmark memoiristsincluding New York Times bestselling authors Cheryl Strayed, Sue Monk Kidd, and Pat Conroya definitive text on the craft of autobiographi...
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Daughters of Latin America
Sandra GuzmánSpanning time, styles, and traditions, a dazzling collection of essential works from 140 Latine writers, scholars, and activists from across the worldfrom warrior poet Audre Lorde ...
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The Good Book
Andrew BlaunerThirtytwo prominent writers share the Bible passages most meaningful to them in this “Sunday School class you’ve been waiting for” (Garrison Keillor).The Good Book, with an introdu...