Print List Price:	$23.00
Kindle Price:	$11.99 Save $11.01 (48%)
Sold by:	Random House Canada, Incorp. This price was set by the publisher.

You have subscribed to ! We will pre-order your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we’ll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Edwidge Danticat

Follow

Brother, I'm Dying: National Book Award Finalist (Vintage Contemporaries) Kindle Edition

by Edwidge Danticat (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 457 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

"Please retry"

$11.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover, Deckle Edge

"Please retry"

$16.51

$45.74

$16.51

Paperback

"Please retry"

$17.26

$7.50

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$23.42

—

$23.42

Kindle Edition
$11.99 Read with our free app
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial
Hardcover
$16.51

12 Used from $16.51 4 New from $45.74
Paperback
$17.26

25 Used from $7.50 18 New from $17.26
Audio CD
$23.42

2 Used from $23.42

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
A National Book Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book

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.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

Sept. 4 2007
File size

1249 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Thomas Dekker
38
Kindle Edition
$12.68
John Webster
475
Kindle Edition
$0.00
Patricia Cornwell
12,832
Kindle Edition
$10.99
James Baldwin
8,521
Kindle Edition
$13.99
James McBride
8,731
Kindle Edition
$12.99
P. D. James
1,962
Kindle Edition
$9.99

Product description

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In a single day in 2004, Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory; The Farming of Bones) learns that she's pregnant and that her father, André, is dying—a stirring constellation of events that frames this Haitian immigrant family's story, rife with premature departures and painful silences. When Danticat was two, André left Haiti for the U.S., and her mother followed when Danticat was four. The author and her brother could not join their parents for eight years, during which André's brother Joseph raised them. When Danticat was nine, Joseph—a pastor and gifted orator—lost his voice to throat cancer, making their eventual separation that much harder, as he wouldn't be able to talk with the children on the phone. Both André and Joseph maintained a certain emotional distance through these transitions. Danticat writes of a Haitian adage, Â 'When you bathe other people's children, you should wash one side and leave the other side dirty.' I suppose this saying cautions those who care for other people's children not to give over their whole hearts. In the end, as Danticat prepares to lose her ailing father and give birth to her daughter, Joseph is threatened by a volatile sociopolitical clash and forced to flee Haiti. He's then detained by U.S. Customs and neglected for days. He unexpectedly dies a prisoner while loved ones await news of his release. Poignant and never sentimental, this elegant memoir recalls how a family adapted and reorganized itself over and over, enduring and succeeding to remain kindred in spite of living apart. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her "second father," when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. When she is finally able to join her parents at age twelve, she experiences a jumble of emotions. Reunited with her parents and brothers, she leaves behind Joseph, and the only home she's ever known.

Edwidge makes a new life in America while fearing for those still in Haiti, as the political situation deteriorates, and good people are caught up in terrifying events. In 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, the frail, 81-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he's detained, and dead within days.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In 2004, Danticat's uncle Joseph, a pastor in poor health at 81, fled Haiti after his church was burned, only to die under appalling circumstances in Florida's Krome detention center. Danticat drew on aspects of her uncle's life in her last novel, The Dew Breaker (2004), and now tells the true story straight in this consuming family memoir. Marshaling her considerable storytelling skills, Danticat vividly evokes the volatile Port-au-Prince neighborhood she called home after her parents emigrated to America and left her in the loving care of Joseph, her father's brother, and his wife. As she chronicles her uncle's experiences in politics and the church and the throat cancer that claimed his ability to speak, as well as her parents' lives in New York before and after she was reunited with them, Haiti's bloody history and ongoing turmoil form her narrative's molten core while voice becomes its leitmotif. In a shattering yet redemptive manifestation of life's cycles, as Danticat's uncle enters his final days, her father is slowly silenced by lung disease, and she awaits the birth of her daughter. This meticulously crafted, deeply felt remembrance is a homage to one remarkable family, and all who persevere, seeking justice and channeling love. Seaman, Donna --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Beating the DarknessOn Sunday, October 24, 2004, nearly two months after he left New York, Uncle Joseph woke up to the clatter of gunfire. There were blasts from pistols, handguns, automatic weapons, whose thundering rounds sounded like rockets. It was the third of such military operations in Bel Air in as many weeks, but never had the firing sounded so close or so loud. Looking over at the windup alarm clock on his bedside table, he was startled by the time, for it seemed somewhat lighter outside than it should have been at four thirty on a Sunday morning.During the odd minutes it took to reposition and reload weapons, you could hear rocks and bottles crashing on nearby roofs. Taking advantage of the brief reprieve, he slipped out of bed and tiptoed over to a peephole under the staircase outside his bedroom. Parked in front of the church gates was an armored personnel carrier, a tank with mounted submachine guns on top. The tank had the familiar circular blue and white insignia of the United Nations peacekeepers and the letters UN painted on its side. Looking over the trashstrewn alleys that framed the building, he thought for the first time since he’d lost Tante Denise that he was glad she was dead. She would have never survived the gun blasts that had rattled him out of his sleep. Like Marie Micheline, she too might have been frightened to death.He heard some muffled voices coming from the living room below, so he grabbed his voice box and tiptoed down the stairs. In the living room, he found Josiane and his grandchildren: Maxime, Nozial, Denise, Gabrielle and the youngest, who was also named Joseph, after him. Léone, who was visiting from Léogâne, was also there, along with her brothers, Bosi and George.“Ki jan nou ye?” my uncle asked. How’s everyone?“MINUSTAH plis ampil police,” a trembling Léone tried to explain.Like my uncle, Léone had spent her entire life watching the strong arm of authority in action, be it the American marines who’d been occupying the country when she was born or the brutal local army they’d trained and left behind to prop up, then topple, the puppet governments of their choice. And when the governments fell, United Nations soldiers, so-called peacekeepers, would ultimately have to step in, and even at the cost of innocent lives attempt to restore order.Acting on the orders of the provisional government that had replaced Aristide, about three hundred United Nations soldiers and Haitian riot police had come together in a joint operation to root out the most violent gangs in Bel Air that Sunday morning. Arriving at three thirty a.m., the UN soldiers had stormed the neighborhood, flattening makeshift barricades with bulldozers. They’d knocked down walls on corner buildings that could be used to shield snipers, clearedaway piles of torched cars that had been blocking traffic for weeks and picked up some neighborhood men.“It is a physical sweep of the streets,” Daniel Moskaluk, the spokesman for the UN trainers of the Haitian police, would later tell the Associated Press, “so that we can return to normal traffic in this area, or as normal as it can be for these people.”Before my uncle could grasp the full scope of the situation, the shooting began again, with even more force than before. He gathered everyone in the corner of the living room that was farthest from Rue Tirremasse, where most of the heavy fire originated. Crouched next to his grandchildren, he wondered what he would do if they were hit by a stray. How would he get them to a hospital?An hour passed while they cowered behind the living room couch. There was another lull in the shooting, but the bottle and rock throwing continued. He heard something he hadn’t heard in some time: people were pounding on pots and pans and making clanking noises that rang throughout the entire neighborhood. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it, of course. This kind of purposeful rattle was called bat tenèb, or beating the darkness. His neighbors, most of them now dead, had tried to beat the darkness when Fignolé had been toppled so many decades ago. A new generation had tried it again when Aristide had been removed both times. My uncle tried to imagine in each clang an act of protest, a cry for peace, to the Haitian riot police, to the United Nations soldiers, all of whom were supposed to be protecting them. But more often it seemed as if they were attacking them while going after the chimères, or ghosts, as the gang members were commonly called.The din of clanking metal rose above the racket of roofdenting rocks. Or maybe he only thought so because he was so heartened by the bat tenèb. Maybe he wouldn’t die today after all. Maybe none of them would die, because their neighbors were making their presence known, demanding peace from the gangs as well as from the authorities, from all sides.He got up and cautiously peeked out of one of the living room windows. There were now two UN tanks parked in front of the church. Thinking they’d all be safer in his room, he asked everyone to go with him upstairs.Maxo had been running around the church compound looking for him. They now found each other in my uncle’s room. The lull was long enough to make them both think the gunfight might be over for good. Relieved, my uncle showered and dressed, putting on a suit and tie, just as he had every other Sunday morning for church.Maxo ventured outside to have a look. A strange calm greeted him at the front gate. The tanks had moved a few feet, each now blocking one of the alleys joining Rue Tirremasse and the parallel street, Rue Saint Martin. Maxo had thought he might sweep up the rocks and bottle shards and bullet shells that had landed in front of the church, but in the end he decided against it.Another hour went by with no shooting. A few church members arrived for the regular Sunday-morning service.“I think we should cancel today,” Maxo told his father when they met again at the front gate.“And what of the people who are here?” asked my uncle. “How can we turn them away? If we don’t open, we’re showing our lack of faith. We’re showing that we don’t trust enough in God to protect us.”At nine a.m., they opened the church gates to a dozen or so parishioners. They decided, however, not to use the mikes and loudspeakers that usually projected the service into the street.A half hour into the service, another series of shots rang out. My uncle stepped off the altar and crouched, along with Maxo and the others, under a row of pews. This time, the shooting lasted about twenty minutes. When he looked up again at the clock, it was ten a.m. Only the sound of sporadic gunfire could be heard at the moment that a dozen or so Haitian riot police officers, the SWAT-like CIMO (Corps d’Intervention et de Maintien de l’Ordre, or Unit for Interventionand Maintaining Order), stormed the church. They were all wearing black, including their helmets and bulletproof vests, and carried automatic assault rifles as well as sidearms, which many of them aimed at the congregation. Their faces were covered with dark knit masks, through which you could see only their eyes, noses and mouths.The parishioners quivered in the pews; some sobbed in fear as the CIMO officers surrounded them. The head CIMO lowered his weapon and tried to calm them.“Why are you all afraid?” he shouted, his mouth looking like it was floating in the middle of his dark face. When he paused for a moment, it maintained a nervous grin.“If you truly believe in God,” he continued, “you shouldn’t be afraid.”My uncle couldn’t tell whether he was taunting them or comforting them, telling them they were fine or prepping them for execution.“We’re here to help you,” the lead officer said, “to protect you against the chimères.”No one moved or spoke.“Who’s in charge here?” asked the officer.Someone pointed at my uncle.“Are there chimères here?” the policeman shouted in my uncle’s direction.Gang members inside his church? My uncle didn’t want to think there were. But then he looked over at all the unfamiliar faces in the pews, the many men and women who’d run in to seek shelter from the bullets. They might have been chimères, gangsters, bandits, killers, but most likely they were ordinary people trying to stay alive.“Are you going to answer me?” the lead officer sternly asked my uncle.“He’s a bèbè,” shouted one of the women from the church. She was trying to help my uncle. She didn’t want them to hurt him. “He can’t speak.”Frustrated, the officer signaled for his men to split the congregation into smaller groups.“Who’s this?” they randomly asked, using their machine guns as pointers. “Who’s that?”When no one would answer, the lead officer signaled for his men to move out. As they backed away, my uncle could see another group of officers climbing the outside staircase toward the building’s top floors. The next thing he heard was another barrage of automatic fire. This time it was coming from above him, from the roof of the building.The shooting lasted another half hour. Then an eerie silence followed, the silence of bodies muted by fear, uncoiling themselves from protective poses, gently dusting off their shoulders and backsides, afraid to breathe too loud. Then working together, the riot police and the UN soldiers, who often collaborated on such raids, jogged down the stairs in an organized stampede and disappeared down the street. After a while my uncle walked to the church’s front gate and peered outside. The tanks were moving away. Trailing the sounds of sporadic gunfire, they turned the corner toward Rue Saint Martin, then came back in the other direction. One tank circled Rue Tirremasse until late afternoon. As dusk neared, it too vanished along with the officers at the makeshift command center at Our Lady of Perpetual Help farther down the street.As soon as the forces left, the screaming began in earnest. People whose bodies had been pierced and torn by bullets were yelling loudly, calling out for help. Others were wailing about their loved ones. Amwe, they shot my son. Help, they hurt my daughter. My father’s dying. My baby’s dead. My uncle jotted down a few of the words he was hearing in one of the small notepads in his shirt pocket. Again, recording things had become an obsession. One day, I knew, he hoped to gather all his notes together, sit down and write a book. There were so many screams my uncle didn’t know where to turn. Whom should he try to see first? He watched people stumble out of their houses, dusty, bloody people.“Here’s the traitor,” one man said while pointing at him. “The bastard who let them up on his roof to kill us.”“You’re not going to live here among us anymore,” another man said. “You’ve taken money for our blood.”All week there had been public service announcements on several radio stations asking the people of Bel Air and other volatile areas to call the police if they saw any gangs gathering in their neighborhoods.It was rumored that a reward of a hundred thousand Haitian dollars—the equivalent of about fifteen thousand Americandollars—had been offered for the capture of the neighborhood gang leaders. My uncle’s neighbors now incorrectly believed he’d volunteered his roof in order to collect some of that money.Two sweaty, angry-looking young men were each dragging a blood-soaked cadaver by the arms. They were heading for my uncle.My uncle stepped back, moving to the safer shadows of the church courtyard. Anne, once a student of his school, followed him in.“Pastor,” she whispered, “my aunt sent me to tell you something.”Anne’s aunt Ferna, now thirty-seven years old, the same age Marie Micheline had been when she died, he recalled, had been born in the neighborhood. My uncle had known both Ferna and Anne their entire lives.“What is it?” asked my uncle.“Don’t talk,” said Anne. “People can hear your machine.”My uncle removed his voice box from his neck and motioned for her to continue.“Pastor,” said Anne, “my aunt told me to tell you she heard that fifteen people were killed when they were shooting from your roof and the neighbors are saying that they’re going to bring the corpses to you so you can pay for their funerals. If you don’t pay, and if you don’t pay for the people who are hurt and need to go to the hospital, they say they’ll kill you and cut your head off so that you won’t even be recognized at your own funeral.”My uncle lowered the volume on his voice box and leaned close to Anne’s ears.“Tell Ferna not to worry,” he said. “God is with me.”Because, just as he’d told my father, he would be leaving for Miami in a few days to visit some churches, he had eight hundred dollars with him that he planned to leave behind for the teachers’ salaries. So when his neighbors crowded the courtyard telling him of their wounded or dead loved ones, he gave them that money. Because many were bystanders who had been shot just as he might have been shot inside the walls of his house, his church, they understood that it was not his fault. By the time it got dark, however, and Tante Denise’s brothers urged him to go back inside so they could lock all the doors and gates, the two corpses had been dragged to the front of the church and laid out. That afternoon, on the radio, the government reported that only two people had died during the operation. Obviously there were many more.That night after dark everyone gathered in my uncle’s room. He and the children crowded together on his bed, while Maxo and his wife, Josiane, Léone and her brothers stretched out on blankets on the floor. To avoid being seen, they remained in the dark, not even lighting a candle.They could now hear a more familiar type of gunfire, not the super firing power of the Haitian special forces and UN soldiers but a more subdued kind of ammunition coming from the handguns and rifles owned by area gang members. Shots were occasionally fired at the church. Now and then a baiting voice would call out, “Pastor, you’re not getting away. We’re going to make you pay.”Using a card-funded cell phone with a quickly diminishing number of minutes, Maxo tried several times to call the police and the UN alert hotline, but he could not get through. He wanted to tell them that their operation had doomed them, possibly condemned them to death. He wanted them to send in the cavalry and rescue them, but quickly realized that he and his family were on their own.At one point they heard footsteps, the loud thump of boots on a narrow ledge above my uncle’s bedroom window. Maxo tightened his grip on the handle of a machete he kept under his pillow, just as his father had in his youth. Something heavy was being dragged across the floor above them, possibly the generator on which they relied for most of their electrical power.It was quiet again. My uncle waited for the children to nod off before discussing strategy with the adults.“They’re mostly angry at me,” he said. “They’re angry because they think I asked the riot police and the UN to go up on the roof. Everyone who came tonight asked me, ‘Why did you let them in?’ as though I had a choice.”“Maxo,” he said, putting as much command as he could behind his mechanized voice. “Take your wife and the children and go to Léogâne with your aunt and uncles. If you leave at four in the morning, you’ll be on one of the first camions to Léogâne.”“I’m not going to leave you,” Maxo said.“You have to,” my uncle insisted. He wanted to paint a painful enough picture that would force Maxo to leave, not just to save himself but the children as well. So he borrowed an image from his boyhood of the fears that a lot of parents, including his, had for their children during the American occupation.“They’re very angry with us right now,” he told Maxo. “What if they bayonet the children right in front of us? Would you want to see that? Your children torn from limb to limb right before your eyes?”Maxo paced the perimeter of the room, walking back and forth, thinking.“Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll make sure the children leave safely, then I’ll come back for you. You call my cell phone as soon as you can and we’ll meet at Tante Zi’s house in Delmas.”“You should leave with us,” Léone persisted.I’ll never know whether my uncle thought he was too old or too familiar to his neighbors, including the gang members, to be harmed in any way, but somehow he managed to convince everyone to leave. So when the sun rose the next morning, he was all by himself in a bullet-riddled compound. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times notable book; Brother, I'm Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; 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 inaugural Story Prize. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Miami. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

When the regime of Papa Doc Duvalier and his military security force, the Tonton Macoutes, force her parents to flee Haiti for America, Edwidge and her brother, Bob, are left behind and raised by her fathers brother, Joseph, and his wife. They remain with the couple in Port-au-Prince for eight years, during which time her preacher uncle refuses to leave his congregation. Eventually, Joseph develops throat cancer and requires radical surgery. In rich, appealing tones narrator Robin Miles delivers Danticats poignant memoir of the love between brothers and the tragedy that separates and ultimately unites them. Her performance is controlled and understated, thereby heightening the familys personal strength and heartfelt connections. Danticats elegantly crafted prose and Miless graceful reading make this a stunning listening experience. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

“Remarkable. . . . A fierce, haunting book about exile and loss and family love.” —The New York Times

"With a storyteller's magnetic force . . . [Danticat] gives voice to an attachment too deep for words.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Powerful. . . . 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.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Heartwrenching, intimate. . . . Through the seemingly effortless grace of Danticat's words, a family's tragedy is transformed into a promise of collective hope.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Her power of language is so great, and at the same time, so subtle, that even those that cannot see her or understand her stories will be transformed by her impact on their world.” —Walter Mosley

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000VMBX7G
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (Sept. 4 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1249 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #516,693 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #218 in Caribbean & Latin American Literature
- #219 in Emigration & Immigration (Kindle Store)
- #551 in Australian & Oceania Literature

Customer Reviews:
4.5 457 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Edwidge Danticat

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969 and came to the United States when she was twelve years old. She graduated from Barnard College and received an M.F.A. from Brown University. She made an auspicious debut with her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, and followed it with the story collection Krik? Krak!, whose National Book Award nomination made Danticat the youngest nominee ever. She lives in New York.

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Vancia

Couldn't put it down.

Reviewed in Canada on May 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

This was a captivating read. Told very simply from the narrator's point of view, it gives a clear picture of the world of the narrator's current life and the world she was born into. An excellent description of the culture. Very poignant story of the process of death, juxtaposed against the coming of new life. Written simply but starkly, this book keeps you engaged from beginning to end.

Helpful

Jenn

Pick this book up now

Reviewed in Canada on February 23, 2016

Verified Purchase

Beautiful prose to tell a true story. I wasn't expecting to be so captured by a work of non-fiction, but Danticat's writing had me flying through like a novel. She is a fantastic storyteller who knows how to keep the reader engaged with twists and emotion. A wonderful book that will make you feel enraged, sad, and warm - I highly recommend it.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Leonora

Storia familiare

Reviewed in Italy on August 31, 2023

Verified Purchase

Lo spaccato di una bella famiglia haitiana dalla vita di Haiti, non ricca di cose ma di legami, alla vita in condizione di emigrati negli Stati Uniti, dall'essere parte di un contesto ben radicato e integrato, sebbene in una situazio e politicamente ed economicamente difficile a doversi adattare ad un nuovo mondo, a volte ingiustamente e ottusamente ostile, con la speranza di dare ai propri figli una migliore chance di vita. Letto con molto piacere e interesse in lingua inglese.

Translate review to English

Kyle Minor

A Good Book, Yes, But Also an Important Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2008

Verified Purchase

Edwidge Danticat is possibly the best American fiction writer of the younger generation. Her novels and story collections have cut a broad swath through the history of 20th century Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Their virtues include lyric and narrative pleasures, a plainspoken and elegant voice, intelligence and intelligibility, and the bridging of two cultures separated by language and mutual misunderstanding.

With Brother, I'm Dying, Danticat expands upon the gift for nonfiction she first demonstrated in her book about carnival in Jacmel. This time, she tackles memoir by way of family history, a private story that stands in for hundreds of thousands of other private stories and has deep public policy implications. Through the Dantica and Danticat families, we get an up-close-and-personal look at the terrors of Haitian history from Papa Doc to the present, alongside the beauties of place and people too often underexplored in newspaper accounts of Haiti.

The book's velocity increases toward the end, when Danticat's uncle is run out of Port-au-Prince by street gangs, only to encounter the surprisingly deadlier American immigration system. This part of the story is the most deeply felt section of a deeply felt book, and the reader wants to scream with outrage and the indignities Danticat's uncle suffers, and especially at the unwillingness of the immigration authorities to respond humanely to his illness, his difficulties in communicating, or his family's quite reasonable requests that he receive proper medical and legal attention.

I find myself grieving now, after finishing this book, and I want to know what I can do to make my country more compassionate. Certainly, Haitians receive shabbier treatment than almost any other ethnicity in our immigration and legal system, and, like Danticat, I find myself wondering why, and suspecting that it might be a manifestation of the worst prejudices we have not yet laid to rest.

It is true that books can be about virtuous things without being very good, but the urgency the reader feels about the book's subject owes much to the extraordinary power of the writing. If Danticat were a writer who chose subject matter of a lesser intensity, I believe that more critics would write about the sentences, the structural choices, the wise management of information in her books. That they do not is a testament to the power of the stories she chooses to tell, and her ability to get out of the way and give character and story center stage rather than the pyrotechnics of language which she is certainly capable of exhibiting.

22 people found this helpful

Samuel A Miller

Finished it in one sitting

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

I really enjoyed this book. It’s both an intimate portrait of a family and two brothers— and also informative when it comes to the history/ culture of the Haitian diaspora.

Janice Patton

but it is a love story told to the reader of the two men ...

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book was a mandatory read for my daughter in college. After she read Edwidge Danticat's memoir that she found to be compelling and enlightening of our government and the Haitian people's lives, I read this true story. One of the themes of the book is death, but it is a love story told to the reader of the two men who raised her, her uncle and her father, both of whom are no longer living. One learns about Haitian customs and their way of life, and you will gain a whole new respect for their way of life on that island. Besides these two wonderful family men, Danticat's other family members are very interesting, and their world is unlike anything we know. How our government in Miami treats refugees and her uncle is reprehensible. I recommend this book highly to teen students and adults. Danticat is now a famous writer who lives in Miami, and she deserves every success as she is a phenomenal story teller.

8 people found this helpful

T. ORourke

A Must Read Story of Life in Haiti and the US

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

Ms. Danticat recently gave a talk at the university where I work, and it was a very enjoyable evening. I bought two of her books for my kindle when I got home. This is the first one I read. Having seen her made a difference, and by the end I felt like I knew her very well. She conveys emotions brilliantly without a lot of words, and it is easy to immerse yourself in her life in Haiti and all the troubles she recounts in that unfortunate place. It is not about her, though. She tells of her father and his brother, who served as a surrogate father for her while her parents carved a life for their family out in Brooklyn. As her father's health declines, her uncle goes through a series of catastrophes out of his control, all of which could have been prevented by a shred of human decency and which point out how little has changed in how our country treats the lives of others. I am excited to read the second book soon.

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract and engage customers	Amazon Business Everything for your business	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Warehouse Deals Open-Box Discounts

	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust	Blink Smart Security for Every Home

Image Unavailable

Follow the author

Brother, I'm Dying: National Book Award Finalist (Vintage Contemporaries) Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought