Edwidge Danticat
It is hard to classify Edwidge Danticat, to map where her
imagination is located between the future and the past. She writes well. This adverbial compliment identifies her as a
successful rebel. She satisfies the demands of commerce and undermines those
demands in her critiques of banality.
Is she an American writer?
Yes. She writes in
and about the Americas.
Is she a Haitian writer?
Yes. She knows the
anatomy of the womb wherein the primal horror of her native land gestated. Aimé
Césaire”s Cahier d’un
retour au pays natal enjoys conversations with her works.
Is she a Caribbean writer?
Yes. She is aware
that the beauty of Nature and human nature is malevolent and compassionate.
Is she an African American writer?
Enjoy the pleasure of paradox: no and yes.
Branding is less important than the quality of the product
offered for consumption.
Read
The Dew Breaker. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
The interrelated tales in The Dew Breaker cast light on why some contemporary fiction writers
have minimized the traditional formats of the novel. They want to intensify the
reader’s participation in constructing the knowledge that a story can offer. They
expose the value of narratology.
As a meditation on
the physical and spiritual aspects of torture, Danticat’s book invites us to
think profoundly about why terrorism and pain are slightly more attractive than
peace and love, especially if we are dealing with the subject of torture in
transnational historical spaces.
PHBW BLOG August 17, 2013
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
