Now an adult, she resolves to return and exorcise her Carnival demons. This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart-a master.Įdwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too much abandon, losing their voices from singing too loudly, going deaf from the clamor of immense speakers, and being punched, stabbed, pummeled, or fondled by other lustful revelers. In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. AUGUST 2020 REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2020 VILCEK PRIZE IN LITERATURE Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant. In Chapter Three, I analyze how The Dew Breaker interweaves explorations of violence, remembrance, and forgiveness to interrogate the potential for emotional healing.įrom the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love. In my second chapter, I examine how the author uses Breath, Eyes, Memory to reformulate memory and reclaim tradition. In Chapter One, I explore hybridity and creolized language as a space to articulate new forms of identity. I will thus divide my thesis in three chapters.
In acknowledging the traumatic experiences of their past as part of themselves, Danticat's characters exercise agency by choosing to address the past.
More particularly, I provide an account of how the Creole language helps the reader to "come to a better understanding of the cultural, physical, and the historical realities of Haiti" (Sarthou 20). My study argues that in these texts the author creates a space where notions of hybridity and creolization mingle and give birth to new forms of discourse. In my thesis, I investigate how Danticat uses the characters of Sophie and Ka to interrogate questions related to trauma and emotional betrayal. Both novels depict the psychological, interpersonal, and cultural damage caused by the violence of an authoritarian regime. At their center are Ka Bienaimé, a young Haitian-American woman, who has idealized her father, whom she has perceived as a victim of the Duvalier regime, and her father, a Haitian immigrant hiding his past as a dew breaker, a Tonton Macoute, working as a violent enforcer of the dictatorship. The text explores a multiplicity of perspectives representing the long-term effects of political terror on a host of characters. The Dew Breaker (2004), a novel as short stories, recounts the tales of different characters whose lives intersect under the Haitian regimes of both François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. Her coming-of-age-narrative becomes an exploration of cultural displacement, political violence, and intergenerational sexual abuse. Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) tells the story of Sophie Caco, a young Haitian girl who moves from Croix-Des-Rosets, Haiti, to New York City to reunite with Martine, her birth mother.