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4.23 AVERAGE
4.23 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
fast-paced
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
This book is so wonderful. I loved this!
This is a family memoir, and links several story pieces together more cohesively than almost any novel I've read in ages. It's beautifully done. Partly it is about the author's growing up in Haiti at her uncle's house, before moving to the U.S. at twelve to be with her parents (c. 1980). And partly it is a chronicle of the year that her father and uncle died, and in which she gave birth to her first child (c. 2004). Each of these pieces is a worthwhile story in itself, but there is a darker pull that drew her to write about it all together, which is explained outright in the book's description: the circumstances of her uncle's death in the custody of U.S. Homeland Security.
It's impossible to discuss the book without eventually addressing what happened to Joseph Dantica. But first I feel the need to point out that the content of this book is just about 10% injustice, 5% history lesson, and 85% love, love, love. Edwidge Danticat loves her family so much, and she tells us so many things about the comfort and fun and happiness of belonging to them, it makes us care a lot and understand a lot about them personally. After reading this book, I love her family, and I'm, you know, a stranger to them.
The structural outline of this book is crazy and fun. She jumps back and forth through loops in the timeline every which way, and sometimes branches off into folktales or someone else's memory from decades back. It's a total ramble that she's totally in control of. Her childhood recollections are vivid, even when the circumstances are stark. Haiti at that time was, of course, a poor and often dangerous country, but Edwidge seems to have missed the "worst" of the violence and poverty that would affect her neighbors. Her uncle remembered the U.S. occupation of his childhood, and in his final days he was driven away by rebels from his neighborhood. But in between he and his wife ran a church and school, and helped to raise several young people (only one of them their own child) in what I keep wanting to say appeared to be a happy childhood, although there are plenty of tough stories here. But it isn't evoked in a way that is bleak. It's life. The author seemed to enjoy and be awed by her family as a little girl, with a warm care that the reader begins to share.
However, there is an edge, an imbalance that it seems she can barely glance at. Though waiting comfortably, the author and her brother still waited for eight years — until she was twelve — to be able to join her parents after they moved to New York City. That's a long time. That's a whole childhood. Her parents had two more children in those years, and managed only one visit back home (their immigration story is an interesting time capsule) before Edwidge and her brother were finally allowed to go. And then, snap, they were gone. Exhilarating; wrenching.
For the record: this kind of thing blows my mind, and I would dearly love to read a whole book just about that, if the author would write one. (FWIW it appears she came nearest to it in Breath, Eyes, Memory and in a lesser-known YA novel, both of which I plan to read.) Edwidge's own transition to post-immigration life is not covered in depth in this book, which made me sad because I have a lot of feelings, and it's just something I care to hear about. Our New York City contains so many millions of immigrant tales, and not of the "Ellis Island" kind but the "people who got here yesterday" kind. I think everybody who lives here should care about them, and I find it really important, but I acknowledge it was not essential to the rest of this book right here, only me.
Instead, the timeline mostly advances to her adulthood in 2004, when she learns (on the same day, no less) that her father is dying of a pulmonary disease, and also that she's pregnant. And then, when her uncle comes to visit… In the beginning of the book, she says, "This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time." I loved this introduction, and I feel I understand her all the more for it and her own meaning for the book.
There are all kinds of ways to dwell on how horrible the way that her uncle Joseph died was. I don't really want to lay them all out in a review here, because it's sad, and for most the facts will speak for themselves. The main reason I won't go into it, though, is that the author herself refrains. She shows the restraint of an artist in cataloging the injustices he experienced after being detained by immigration at the airport in Miami, and she leaves many of the more emotional messages inferred, unsaid. While you could write a whole book about those few days, she doesn't. Because of how well she has permitted us to know these people in the book that she did choose to write, we are able to understand them deeply as this very fucked-up thing goes on, and worry for their fears and feelings ourselves.
(Regarding the facts: astoundingly, when I searched his name for news coverage, up came the FOIA-redacted copy of Homeland Security's report on Joseph's death, on their website. So, there are the "facts," such as they are recorded by one party. Also, the ACLU has archived a written testimony that Edwidge gave to Congress, a few years later.)
Actually, I partly take back something I said in my last review — judging by this book, maybe it is possible to write a natural-sounding narrative based on the account of a formal government report. This author, of course, had benefit of interviewing personal contacts (her cousin and their lawyer) who were present during portions of the events, but overall the story sounds measured and real, including the parts that were clearly primarily based on details gleaned from the Freedom of Information Act. It's well done and hard to do.
(An awful additional epilogue I found while Googling: her cousin, Maxo, died in the 2010 earthquake.)
I believe this is the first book by Edwidge Danticat that I've read, though I've certainly read something before, because I've known her name since she showed up in my curriculum in a memoir class my first semester of college. That was several years before the events of this one, so I do not know what we read. A short essay, I think? About her hair, maybe, and perhaps one of her brothers? But I clearly don't remember. I'm eager to know her better, and I love so much that she lets us.
This is a family memoir, and links several story pieces together more cohesively than almost any novel I've read in ages. It's beautifully done. Partly it is about the author's growing up in Haiti at her uncle's house, before moving to the U.S. at twelve to be with her parents (c. 1980). And partly it is a chronicle of the year that her father and uncle died, and in which she gave birth to her first child (c. 2004). Each of these pieces is a worthwhile story in itself, but there is a darker pull that drew her to write about it all together, which is explained outright in the book's description: the circumstances of her uncle's death in the custody of U.S. Homeland Security.
It's impossible to discuss the book without eventually addressing what happened to Joseph Dantica. But first I feel the need to point out that the content of this book is just about 10% injustice, 5% history lesson, and 85% love, love, love. Edwidge Danticat loves her family so much, and she tells us so many things about the comfort and fun and happiness of belonging to them, it makes us care a lot and understand a lot about them personally. After reading this book, I love her family, and I'm, you know, a stranger to them.
The structural outline of this book is crazy and fun. She jumps back and forth through loops in the timeline every which way, and sometimes branches off into folktales or someone else's memory from decades back. It's a total ramble that she's totally in control of. Her childhood recollections are vivid, even when the circumstances are stark. Haiti at that time was, of course, a poor and often dangerous country, but Edwidge seems to have missed the "worst" of the violence and poverty that would affect her neighbors. Her uncle remembered the U.S. occupation of his childhood, and in his final days he was driven away by rebels from his neighborhood. But in between he and his wife ran a church and school, and helped to raise several young people (only one of them their own child) in what I keep wanting to say appeared to be a happy childhood, although there are plenty of tough stories here. But it isn't evoked in a way that is bleak. It's life. The author seemed to enjoy and be awed by her family as a little girl, with a warm care that the reader begins to share.
However, there is an edge, an imbalance that it seems she can barely glance at. Though waiting comfortably, the author and her brother still waited for eight years — until she was twelve — to be able to join her parents after they moved to New York City. That's a long time. That's a whole childhood. Her parents had two more children in those years, and managed only one visit back home (their immigration story is an interesting time capsule) before Edwidge and her brother were finally allowed to go. And then, snap, they were gone. Exhilarating; wrenching.
For the record: this kind of thing blows my mind, and I would dearly love to read a whole book just about that, if the author would write one. (FWIW it appears she came nearest to it in Breath, Eyes, Memory and in a lesser-known YA novel, both of which I plan to read.) Edwidge's own transition to post-immigration life is not covered in depth in this book, which made me sad because I have a lot of feelings, and it's just something I care to hear about. Our New York City contains so many millions of immigrant tales, and not of the "Ellis Island" kind but the "people who got here yesterday" kind. I think everybody who lives here should care about them, and I find it really important, but I acknowledge it was not essential to the rest of this book right here, only me.
Instead, the timeline mostly advances to her adulthood in 2004, when she learns (on the same day, no less) that her father is dying of a pulmonary disease, and also that she's pregnant. And then, when her uncle comes to visit… In the beginning of the book, she says, "This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time." I loved this introduction, and I feel I understand her all the more for it and her own meaning for the book.
There are all kinds of ways to dwell on how horrible the way that her uncle Joseph died was. I don't really want to lay them all out in a review here, because it's sad, and for most the facts will speak for themselves. The main reason I won't go into it, though, is that the author herself refrains. She shows the restraint of an artist in cataloging the injustices he experienced after being detained by immigration at the airport in Miami, and she leaves many of the more emotional messages inferred, unsaid. While you could write a whole book about those few days, she doesn't. Because of how well she has permitted us to know these people in the book that she did choose to write, we are able to understand them deeply as this very fucked-up thing goes on, and worry for their fears and feelings ourselves.
(Regarding the facts: astoundingly, when I searched his name for news coverage, up came the FOIA-redacted copy of Homeland Security's report on Joseph's death, on their website. So, there are the "facts," such as they are recorded by one party. Also, the ACLU has archived a written testimony that Edwidge gave to Congress, a few years later.)
Actually, I partly take back something I said in my last review — judging by this book, maybe it is possible to write a natural-sounding narrative based on the account of a formal government report. This author, of course, had benefit of interviewing personal contacts (her cousin and their lawyer) who were present during portions of the events, but overall the story sounds measured and real, including the parts that were clearly primarily based on details gleaned from the Freedom of Information Act. It's well done and hard to do.
(An awful additional epilogue I found while Googling: her cousin, Maxo, died in the 2010 earthquake.)
I believe this is the first book by Edwidge Danticat that I've read, though I've certainly read something before, because I've known her name since she showed up in my curriculum in a memoir class my first semester of college. That was several years before the events of this one, so I do not know what we read. A short essay, I think? About her hair, maybe, and perhaps one of her brothers? But I clearly don't remember. I'm eager to know her better, and I love so much that she lets us.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
I love Danticat! She is a master storyteller.
After grave political turmoil, separation from her parents and later the aunt and uncle who cared for her in her formative years, Danticat tells an amazing story of an enduring family bond and the immigrant experience in the US. This isn't a happy feel good story, but you don't walk away from it depressed or angry. It's far too compelling for those emotions. You will feel deep sadness at times, like her parents leaving for the US without her and her brother, she and her brother leaving the aunt/uncle in Haiti to join their parents and the failed health and subsequent deaths of her uncle and father. You'll also feel anger at the destruction of her uncle's church, his treatment by US customs officers and the political strife that continues to destroy Haiti. However, you'll finish this book knowing that Haitians are one strong people and that in spite of dire circumstances, still love deeply and value family above all else. I couldn't help but think of their love and resilience as a form of resistance.
After grave political turmoil, separation from her parents and later the aunt and uncle who cared for her in her formative years, Danticat tells an amazing story of an enduring family bond and the immigrant experience in the US. This isn't a happy feel good story, but you don't walk away from it depressed or angry. It's far too compelling for those emotions. You will feel deep sadness at times, like her parents leaving for the US without her and her brother, she and her brother leaving the aunt/uncle in Haiti to join their parents and the failed health and subsequent deaths of her uncle and father. You'll also feel anger at the destruction of her uncle's church, his treatment by US customs officers and the political strife that continues to destroy Haiti. However, you'll finish this book knowing that Haitians are one strong people and that in spite of dire circumstances, still love deeply and value family above all else. I couldn't help but think of their love and resilience as a form of resistance.
Before this book, I thought of Haiti in snippets of earthquake, political unrest, the first successful slave revolution and whatever postcolonial joyrides the country had been taken for thereafter by many an intrusive neighbor. Danticat, née Dantica, does not yet know of the earthquake in the writing of these pages, and indeed has no concern for whatever panoramic blips I've picked up about this country. Her country, for however long a time she has spent outside it, Haiti is where she was born, and Haiti is where she would live with kith and kin, if the world would only let her.
Danticat is not here to speak of her country to an extraordinary depth, but the lives of her loved ones makes for a cross section both historical and personal. While her Granpè Nozial fought on unknown Haitian battlegrounds in 1933, her uncle Joseph hid from occupying US conscription forces and watched a soldier's game of 'Kick the Decapitated Head'. She speaks of Presidents and politics because of the fervent belief of both father and uncle, as well as the simple fact that coup d'états and military regimes suck in the native populace all too often and spit out the death and mutilation of all too many. It is this threat of violence that spurs her father to emigration, and it is the near completion that forces her uncle to jump from frying pan to the final fire.
Again, this is a story of Danticat's beloved father and uncle and many other family members, but it is impossible to discuss her family's immigration and refusal to do so without the context. Up until 2004, papers and passports work out to a serviceable extent, and the pages of this book are spent in recollection of memories both large and small, the losing of her uncle's voice and the accounts of Danticat's first flight from Haiti to the US, all told by different flight attendants, all of them in disagreement. In 2004, the concept of "progress" is put to the test when Joseph flees for his life, the lack of expertise the United Nations Stablisation Mission in Haiti (French acronym: MINUSTAH) sends him off with matching only the lack of humanity with which US Customs and Border Protection receives him.
I would say spoiler alert, but the implications of the title and the bluntness of the cover flap beg to differ. Long story short, Joseph dies, an eighty-one year old man with a number of health issues who could not speak without the aid of technology, incarcerated by a horrifically nonsensical bureaucracy that will never in his lifetime set him free. This is the US ten years ago, perhaps the US today, the refusal of immigration reform and so many other issues being the imbecility it is. It's amazing how little of this shows up on Wikipedia, as if this abject treatment of Haitian immigrants by the US wasn't worthy of contesting. But not really.
So don't read this book for what I've just detailed above, for it is a story too often told in too many a locale. Rather, read for the immense love Danticat had for her uncle, her father, dying soon after his brother but not until he's held his daughter's first child. Read for all the rest of her family and the words they have given her to share with the rest of us. And you DFW and Pynchon and Gaddis types (I'm friends with enough of them), read for the fact that she's a MacArthur fellow. I know what you like.
Danticat is not here to speak of her country to an extraordinary depth, but the lives of her loved ones makes for a cross section both historical and personal. While her Granpè Nozial fought on unknown Haitian battlegrounds in 1933, her uncle Joseph hid from occupying US conscription forces and watched a soldier's game of 'Kick the Decapitated Head'. She speaks of Presidents and politics because of the fervent belief of both father and uncle, as well as the simple fact that coup d'états and military regimes suck in the native populace all too often and spit out the death and mutilation of all too many. It is this threat of violence that spurs her father to emigration, and it is the near completion that forces her uncle to jump from frying pan to the final fire.
Again, this is a story of Danticat's beloved father and uncle and many other family members, but it is impossible to discuss her family's immigration and refusal to do so without the context. Up until 2004, papers and passports work out to a serviceable extent, and the pages of this book are spent in recollection of memories both large and small, the losing of her uncle's voice and the accounts of Danticat's first flight from Haiti to the US, all told by different flight attendants, all of them in disagreement. In 2004, the concept of "progress" is put to the test when Joseph flees for his life, the lack of expertise the United Nations Stablisation Mission in Haiti (French acronym: MINUSTAH) sends him off with matching only the lack of humanity with which US Customs and Border Protection receives him.
I would say spoiler alert, but the implications of the title and the bluntness of the cover flap beg to differ. Long story short, Joseph dies, an eighty-one year old man with a number of health issues who could not speak without the aid of technology, incarcerated by a horrifically nonsensical bureaucracy that will never in his lifetime set him free. This is the US ten years ago, perhaps the US today, the refusal of immigration reform and so many other issues being the imbecility it is. It's amazing how little of this shows up on Wikipedia, as if this abject treatment of Haitian immigrants by the US wasn't worthy of contesting. But not really.
So don't read this book for what I've just detailed above, for it is a story too often told in too many a locale. Rather, read for the immense love Danticat had for her uncle, her father, dying soon after his brother but not until he's held his daughter's first child. Read for all the rest of her family and the words they have given her to share with the rest of us. And you DFW and Pynchon and Gaddis types (I'm friends with enough of them), read for the fact that she's a MacArthur fellow. I know what you like.
An incredibly powerful story about the authors father and uncle. The sense of dislocation as an immigrant, living between two worlds, being pregnant while facing death in the family - excellently captured by the talented author. Highly recommend checking out her work.
If you’re looking for a heartwarming memoir about family, this is not that book. This is a book about the love between brothers but also about family tragedy and heartache. And it also deals with immigration and the ways in which our system failed a family. And it is also a fascinating history of Haiti, a country I didn’t know much about at all. It is powerful and moving but also heart wrenching. Danticat’s prose is gorgeous and evocative and you will feel yourself transported to Haiti. If you’re in the right mood for this book, it is truly a great read. But again, it is not a lighthearted memoir by any means so be aware of that before you start.