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Jan 1, 1969 — —· 57 yrs

HAITI AUTHOR · FICTION · HAITIAN AMERICANS

Edwidge Danticat

Also known as: EDWIDGE DANTICAT, Edwidge DANTICAT

25
BOOKS
3.4
AVG RATING (14)
8
READERS

Edwidge Danticat (Haitian Creole pronunciation: [edˈwidʒ dãtiˈka]; 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. Her work has dealt with themes of national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics. In 2023, she was named the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Wikipedia

A flattened and drying daffodil was dangling off the little card that I had made my aunt Atie for Mother's Day.

— from Breath, Eyes, Memory, 1998

Most acclaimed

#1

The farming of bones

1999

3.5 (2)

It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border. Amabelle, orphaned at the age of eight when her parents drowned, is a maid to the young wife of an army colonel. She has grown up in this household, a faithful servant. Sebastien is a field hand, an itinerant sugarcane cutter. They are Haitians, useful to the Dominicans but not really welcome. There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed. But there are always rumors. Amabelle loves Sebastien. He is handsome despite the sugarcane scars on his face, his calloused hands. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror enfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins. The Farming of Bones is about love, fragility, barbarity, dignity, remembrance, and the only triumph possible for the persecuted: to endure.

#2

Krik? Krak!

2000

2.0 (1)

When Haitians tell a story, they say "Krik?" and the eager listeners answer "Krak!" In Krik? Krak!, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with ten stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly those struggling to survive under the brutal Duvalier regime, Danticat illuminates the distance between people's desires and the stifling reality of their lives.

#3

Breath, Eyes, Memory

1998

3.0 (2)

At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from the impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York to be reunited with her mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know and where she gains a legacy of shame that can only be healed when she returns to Haiti, to the woman who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

Books

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