Novelist Edwidge Danticat's latest book, Brother, I'm Dying, is a memoir that chronicles her family's heartbreaking history in unsentimental terms. When Danticat was 4, she was left with her aunt and uncle in a poor Haitian town continually plagued by political violence, while her parents staked out a better life in the U.S. When she was 12, they returned to take her to New York City, the great unknown. Danticat, 38, now lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.
Throughout your ordeals, you seemed most concerned with protecting everyone else's feelings. Were you a mature child?
I don't think it was maturity. All children learn the codes of their environment. I learned very early that people leave, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I was with other children whose parents were elsewhere, so we were all in it together.
On the same day, in 2004, you found out that your father was dying and that you were pregnant with your first child.
You'd think that one of these events would temper the other—that I would have felt less pain or less joy. But instead it was doubly staggering—joyful and also sad. My father had for so long been saying, "I want to see the firstborn of my firstborn!" The thought that he wouldn't be able to share in my daughter's life was very painful.
During this same time, your uncle suffered tragedy in Haiti, where the church he built was burned down by rebel soldiers, and here in the U.S., where he was imprisoned after requesting asylum and shortly thereafter died. How do you control your anger at the fact that a selfless man came to such a terrible end?
I'm lucky I can be heard. I've channeled my anger through actions, such as requesting an investigation. I wanted an explanation, and the book was an attempt to turn everything into a cohesive narrative. But it's not as if now that I wrote the last page I've put all of this behind me. I don't think that is possible. Grief is a process. Some days you can have a lot of laughter and other days are very difficult.
How do you deal with life's less dramatic endings?
I can't even say good-bye. I could spend two days visiting a friend, and afterward, I kiss them and run away.
Do you sometimes wish your family had stayed in Haiti?
The life I have would not be possible were I not here in the U.S. But we all paid so dearly for it.
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ordeals,
political violence,
rebel soldiers,
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