Brother, I'm Dying » (~)

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.

Edwidge Danticat is available for lectures and readings. For information regarding her availability, please visit www.knopfspeakersbureau.com or call 212-572-2013.

From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated.

In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I'm Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.

The Washington Post - Bliss Broyard

As she recounts in her powerful new memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, Danticat was 2 when her father left Haiti for the United States and 4 when her mother followed him to New York City. "Then, as now, leaving often seemed like the only answer, especially if one was sick like my uncle or poor like my father, or desperate, like both." She lived for eight years with her father's older brother, Joseph, a dynamic pastor who ran a church and school in the hilltop neighborhood of Bel Air overlooking Port-au-Prince, while waiting to join her parents. 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, a nominee for this year's National Book Award, illustrates the large shadow cast by political and personal legacies over both the past and the future.

He is My Brother
Have You Enjoyed Your Life?     3
Brother, I'm Dying     27
What Did the White Man Say?     43
Heartstrings, Shoestrings     49
We're All Dying     58
Good-bye     62
Giving Birth     76
The Return     87
One Papa Happy, One Papa Sad     97
Gypsy     112
For Adversity
Brother, I Can Speak     127
The Angel of Death and Father God     138
You're Not a Policeman     145
Brother, I Leave You with a Heavy Heart     156
Beating the Darkness     170
Hell     181
Limbo     193
No Greater Shame     206
Alien 27041999     214
Tomorrow     225
Afflictions     231
Let the Stars Fall     237
Brother, I'll See You Soon     244
Transition     252