Edwidge Danticat's "Brother, I'm Dying": A Moving Tale of Family and Faith from Vintage Contemporaries

Leonora: 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.

Italy on Aug 31, 2023

Samuel A Miller: 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.

United States on Jan 19, 2023

Vancia: 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.

Canada on May 28, 2018

Janice Patton: 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.

United States on May 23, 2017

Raficq Abdulla: Simply written, accessible and moving.

United Kingdom on Feb 25, 2017

T. ORourke: 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.

United States on Sep 24, 2015

Gretchen Tremoulet: This won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. It is lively and engaging. Parts are wrapped in joy and humanity; others are wrapped in devastating evidence of the cruelty of war to the non-political citizenry. It is the account of Edwidge's family, part in civil-war-torn and occupied Haiti and part in New York and Miami. The depth of cruelty of all sides in the wars and civil unrest in Haiti and in immigrant detention in Miami destroys any confidence you might have in humanity. The love, dedication, and family bonds coexist with pervasive inhuman cruelty. The narrative voice - Edwidge in first person - puts the reader into the story so completely it's hard to emerge. You finish it with hope for the human spirit, but sadly convinced that there isn't a consistently compassionate God.

United States on Sep 06, 2013

Kyle Minor: 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...

United States on Aug 17, 2008