Awards
2007 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for Autobiography
Synopses & Reviews
From the best-selling author of
The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
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 a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who "knew all the verses for love."
And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she's ever known.
Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I'm Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge's firstborn, who will bear his name and the family's stories, both joyous and tragic into the next generation.
Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family of two men's lives and deaths, and of a daughter's great love for them both.
Review
"Exceptionally gripping....[A] deeply felt memoir rife with historical drama...." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] memoir whose cleareyed prose and unflinching adherence to the facts conceal an astringent undercurrent of melancholy, a mixture of homesickness and homelessness." New York Times
Review
"[A] memoir whose cleareyed prose and unflinching adherence to the facts conceal an astringent undercurrent of melancholy, a mixture of homesickness and homelessness." New York Times
Review
"[E]minently readable and emotionally nuanced....[O]ffer[s] a glimpse into the sources of Danticat's vivid imagery and characters." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"There is no guarantee that a distinguished fiction writer will produce a successful memoir. Yet Edwidge Danticat...brings the same lucid storytelling to Brother, I'm Dying." Los Angeles Times
Review
"Acclaimed writer Edwidge Danticat has woven a spellbinding tale that could be yet another best-selling novel, only this time the story is her own. Her memoir revolves around the lives of her father, who left Haiti for New York City in 1971, and his elder brother Joseph, who stayed behind." Helen Zia, Ms. Magazine (read the entire Ms. Magazine review)
About the Author
Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory; 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 first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.