Brother, I'm Dying - Rilegato

“Edwidge Danticat’s memoir Brother, I’m Dying is a breathtaking account of love, loss, and Haiti. . . . that captures her admiration for the two men who raised her and [is] a heartbreaking portrait of the hardscrabble life of Haitians, both in the United States and back home.”
 
            –Frank Houston, Broward Palm Beach News

“More than just another family immigration; Danticat draws up a balance sheet of what is gained and lost from what seems like such a small decision as where to live and work.  Her skills as a storyteller lend themselves well to this story, her own ‘origin myth.’”
 
            –Kel Munger, Sacramento News & Review
 
“[Brother, I’m Dying] ties in the personal and the national into a document of witness, a combination of journalistic and literary roles. . . . As the book opens in 2004, her father is dying in the U.S. of pulmonary fibrosis.  At the same time, life for her relatives in Haiti continues to be perilous, in a more violent and literal way than first-world residents will typically ever experience . . . Danticat’s prose is simple, unadorned, perceptive and unsparing.  There is room for compassion in her work but not for pity, strengthening the emotional honesty of her work.”
 
            –Luciana Lopez, The Oregonian
 
“[Danticat’s] prose is lean and strides confidently between Haiti and America, between flashes of political uprising and the immovable force of bureaucracy. . . . The author’s reportorial tone keeps the glaring indignities suffered by her uncle at the end of his life in clear view.  She builds her case like a lawyer who deftly freezes a time line at poignant scenes.  She does not look away.”
 
            –Jill Coley, Charleston Post and Courier
 
“Edwidge Danticat recounts [her uncle]’s last days on earth with heartbreaking precision and beloved depth . . . What’s startling is that Danticat’s precision and depth don’t ever ire toward anger at the authorities . . . [Danticat] takes a storyteller’s grace and makes of it a memoir as robust and fitting as the life itself. . . . [W]e salute Edwidge Danticat, whose stand against tyranny and untruth shows . . . spirit–and courage.”
 
            –John Hood, Miami SunPost
 
“Danticat’s memoir follows the uncle who was her ‘second father,’ Joseph Danticat.  Through his story, she presents another inside view of Haiti, depicting the country’s possibilities as well as its tragedies. . . . Eventually, at 81, targeted by local gangs, Joseph must flee to the United States in 2004, here his story takes an infuriating and tragic turn.  Despite his valid visa and passport, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detain him and place him in Krome Detention Center . . . Here, Brother, I’m Dying shifts into a moving polemic about discrepancies in U.S. immigration policy.  Joseph’s story obviously speaks to the multitude of troubles that have mired Haiti since its independence in 1804.  But the process that reduces an undoubtedly great man to Alien 27041999 has its troubles as well.”
 
            –Vikas Turakhia, St. Petersburg Times

“Powerful . . . Edwidge Danticat employs the charms of a storyteller and the authority of a witness to evoke the political forces and personal sacrifices behind her parents’ journey to this country and her uncle’s decision to stay behind. . . . Danticat interweaves the story of her childhood spent between her two ‘papas’ with the final months of both men’s lives, which happened to coincide with her first pregnancy.  In the process, Brother, I’m Dying . . . illustrates the large shadow cast by political and personal legacies over both the past and the future.  At age 12, Danticat was finally granted a visa to go to the United States.  With great economy, she conveys in a brief scene at the American consulate the complex attraction and revulsion that aspiring immigrants and their adoptive country hold for each other. . . . As le consul stamps the application of Edwidge and her brother, he tells them that they are now free to be with their parents, for better or for worse.  As insensitive as this treatment is, the question drives much of Brother, I’m Dying, and its answer is neither clear nor easy.”

            –Bliss Broyard, The Washington Post Book World

“Something magical happens when prize-winning novelist Edwidge Danticat strings words together.  From the most trivial details to breathtaking moments of enormous gravity, Danticat uses words as charms that gently beckon readers into her world and make them sigh, smile, laugh and weep.
            Crafted in Danticat’s signature precise, unflinching prose, her latest, Brother I’m Dying, is yet another revelation.  In just three words, the title encompasses the memoir’s essence: It’s about family and it’s about death.  Within those parameters, Danticat unfolds her heart-wrenching, intimate and true stories.
In July 2004, just as she accepts that her father will succumb to pulmonary fibrosis, Danticat learns that she is carrying her first child. . . . Seamlessly, she interweaves inherited stories, folktales and village lore (the chapter titled ‘The Angel of Death and Father God’ is a stunner).  The result is both testament to a past generation and a gift to the next, especially her then-unborn daughter. . . . While Danticat’s previous books have covered some of the worst of atrocities, her prowess as a writer allows her to tell her stories in nuanced, elegant prose.  This memoir is no different.  Through the seemingly effortless grace of Danticat’s words, a family’s tragedy is transformed into a promise of collective hope.”

            –Terry Hong, San Francisco Chronicle

“[Danticat’s] ability to render large complex stories in compact format is powerfully evident in her new memoir, Brother, I’m Dying . . . She comes head-on at the painful tale she has to tell, with results that are both eloquent and devastating. . . . Danticat, drawing on her own memories, family reminisces and U.S. government documentation, makes vivid every stage of [her] fractured family history.  In her hands, the distance between experience as it’s lived and experience as it’s rendered on the page all but disappears.  A sentence as spare and unadorned as ‘Wrong was now the norm,’ for instance, has a power beyond anything you might expect, simply because of its careful placement in Danticat’s flow of recollection.  This is an author who hits her targets with minimum fuss.  Danticat is also an author with a political point to make. . . . The story of [her Uncle] Joseph’s death at the hands of a fumbling, unsympathetic bureaucracy is harrowing. . . . If you have any interest in why would-be immigrants risk so much to reach this country, you will have to read Danticat.  And if you already have an interest in Danticat, you will want to read this book.”

            –Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

“Danticat, a writer of deceptively cool prose, here recalling family tragedies, pitches the emotions just right.  There are no manipulative plays for tears but only measured accounts of horrors: The current [Haitian] regime’s bully boys, the Tonton Macoute, forbid her uncle to see his granddaughter; a cousin so terrified by an armed attack that she suffers a fatal heart attack; and immigrant authorities confiscate her uncle’s vital medications.  Each is searingly effective. . . . Danticat has written a loving tribute and a sobering reminder of the toll that poverty and turbulent politics exact.”

            –Judith Chettle, Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Danticat’s beautiful prose reads as though you’re sitting at her knee, hearing a favorite story told again.  Warm and inviting, she makes Haiti seem like a second home to the reader.  That’s not to say Danticat waxes sentimental.  Full of controlled anger and grief, the author strips her family’s history bare.”

            –Beth Dugan, Time Out Chicago

“Danticat pieces together the dreams of her father and uncle, devoted brothers living worlds apart, in politically volatile Haiti and in America, the promised land.  With the subtlest understanding of how families can splinter but still cohere, she relives the shock of separation, first when her mother and father emigrated to New York, leaving 4-year-old Edwidge and her brother behind, and again, eight years later, when they took the children back from the aunt and uncle who had become second parents.  With a storyteller’s magnetic force, Danticat draws readers to the streets of Haiti, where cutthroat gangs and looters destroyed her uncle’s church; to the hellish holding pen whe...

Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.