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thethirdcrouch's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderful account of Edwidge's life in Haiti and US with her uncle and her father and the brothers' and the love that binds the whole family. I appreciate how she told the Haitian culture especially the stories her Granme had always told them. I also love the quotes from her Uncle Joseph and how poetic they are.
But until the end all I'm thinking is that medic from Krome! That disgusting piece of a person! Even that immigration officer! In this current time in US history, about that wall and the shutdown, this part of the story is very relevant. I just wished we knew the name of that medic who diagnosed her uncle as faking it! And all those racist creatures who even with the legal documents and being valid to be released did not have any hint of compassion or empathy in their voices, I leave them all to God. And to this treatment of immigrants in the US a large portion of the world, I hope God gives his judgment soon enough.
But until the end all I'm thinking is that medic from Krome! That disgusting piece of a person! Even that immigration officer! In this current time in US history, about that wall and the shutdown, this part of the story is very relevant. I just wished we knew the name of that medic who diagnosed her uncle as faking it! And all those racist creatures who even with the legal documents and being valid to be released did not have any hint of compassion or empathy in their voices, I leave them all to God. And to this treatment of immigrants in the US a large portion of the world, I hope God gives his judgment soon enough.
lautodd_'s review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.25
So beautiful, just as mournful. Need to gather my thoughts
gulfof's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
Edwidge Danticat has a preternatural ability to submerge: in environment, in feeling, in the body. Her stories are so intimate with death, but she reminds us that storytelling is what keeps us alive. It is as natural as breath. It's how we keep each other close.
kingsteph's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Grief, Police brutality, Colonisation, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Death, Medical trauma, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, and Cancer
Moderate: Violence, War, and Gun violence
Minor: Deportation
tonioberto's review against another edition
5.0
“...a lifetime to plant some things that have been uprooted in me and uproot others that have been planted in me.”
papidoc's review against another edition
4.0
Brother, I'm Dying is Edwidge Danticat's memoir of her two fathers, one really her uncle, but who raised her from age four to twelve in Haiti, until her parents, Haitian immigrants, could afford to bring her to live with them in New York City. Clearly she loved both her uncle and her father dearly, and this book is a fitting tribute to their memories. Reading her story, I felt her intimate connection with both men, and with other members of her family. The last third of the book is truly terrifying, revealing the horror of good people caught up in a horrifying machine, built of policies and procedures and unthinking functionaries carrying them out, that chews her uncle up and spits him out without mercy or remorse.
Terrible things happen to good people...we know this. It is an almost inevitable part of every person's life. For me, one of the powerful messages of this book came in seeing the fundamental differences in the deaths of Danticat's father and uncle. Her father died prematurely of a devastating illness, but with family circled around him and bathed in their love and service. Her uncle, on the other hand, suffered a tragic end at the hands of uncaring, almost faceless cogs in the machine of bureaucracy and political preference. The former, though a hard thing for anyone to bear, is at least attributable to mortality and a consequence of life itself. The latter, on the other hand, was completely avoidable, and attributable to people who simply stopped (or never started) caring about him as a human being. That is what I cannot abide, and is a message, a perspective, an imperative, that I try to embed deep within my students before they go off to begin their professional careers. This is also the powerful testimony of Edwidge Danticat, as a witness to the world, that we must not ever lose our humanity.
Terrible things happen to good people...we know this. It is an almost inevitable part of every person's life. For me, one of the powerful messages of this book came in seeing the fundamental differences in the deaths of Danticat's father and uncle. Her father died prematurely of a devastating illness, but with family circled around him and bathed in their love and service. Her uncle, on the other hand, suffered a tragic end at the hands of uncaring, almost faceless cogs in the machine of bureaucracy and political preference. The former, though a hard thing for anyone to bear, is at least attributable to mortality and a consequence of life itself. The latter, on the other hand, was completely avoidable, and attributable to people who simply stopped (or never started) caring about him as a human being. That is what I cannot abide, and is a message, a perspective, an imperative, that I try to embed deep within my students before they go off to begin their professional careers. This is also the powerful testimony of Edwidge Danticat, as a witness to the world, that we must not ever lose our humanity.
alaiyo0685's review against another edition
5.0
As I read Brother, I'm Dying, it gradually became clearer and clearer to me that I'd read it before, possibly back in high school around the time I read a few other Danticat works. Normally when I discover I've already read a book I've picked up, I abandon it for something I know is new. I didn't this time, because I felt as engrossed in the tale as if it were new, even when I remembered what was going to happen next. It's an amazingly well-written family autobiography, that reads much like a novel.
texcajunlibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
An incredibly moving, interesting, and relevant non-fiction novel. Has to be one of the best books I read all year.