NEA Big Read: IRSC Reads Brother, I'm Dying: Books, Parts of Books, Short Stories by Danticat

At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her.

It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.

We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret.

They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.

Just as her father makes the wrenching decision to send her away for a chance at a better life, Claire Limyè Lanmè--Claire of the Sea Light--suddenly disappears. As the people of the Haitian seaside community of Ville Rose search for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed.

Part travelogue, part memoir, part historical analysis, this is the deeply personal story of a writer rediscovering her country, along with a part of herself--and a wonderful introduction to Haiti's southern coast and to the beauty and passions of Carnival.

In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile. Here Danticat tells stories of artists who create despite (or because of) the horrors that drove them from their homelands.

Danticat, E. (2011). Lòt bò dlo, the other side of the water. In P. Farmer's Haiti: After the earthquake. New York: Public Affairs.

Farmer describes the incredible suffering--and resilience--that he encountered in Haiti. Having worked in the country for nearly thirty years, he skillfully explores the social issues that made Haiti so vulnerable to the earthquake--the very issues that make it an "unnatural disaster."

Trouillot, E. (2013). Foreword [by E. Danticat]. The infamous Rosalie [M. A. Salvodon Trans.]. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Lisette, a Saint-Domingue-born Creole slave and daughter of an African-born bossale, has inherited not only the condition of slavery but the traumatic memory of the Middle Passage as well.

Hurston, Z. N. (2006). Foreword [by E. Danticat]. Their eyes were watching God. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

A novel about black Americans in Florida that centers on the life of Janie and her three marriages.

Danticat, E.. (2003). Children of the sea. In W. Brown & A. Ling (Eds.), Imagining America: Stories from the promised land. New York: Persea Books.

Thirty-seven short stories from 1900 to the present, written by some of our best authors follow the waves of immigration into and migration within the United States

Danticat, E. (Ed.). (2003). The butterfly's way. New York: Soho Press.

Poetry, essays, stories, and letters by people whose Haitian experiences shaped their lives.

Giselle Boyer and her identical twin, Isabelle, are as close as sisters can be, even as their family seems to be unraveling. Then the Boyers have a tragic encounter that will shatter everyone's world forever. Giselle wakes up in the hospital, injured and unable to speak or move. Trapped in the prison of her own body, Giselle must revisit her past in order to understand how the people closest to her have shaped and defined her.

In "Behind the Mountains" Edwidge Danticat tells the story of Celiane and her family's struggles in Haiti and New York. It is election time in Haiti, and bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. During a visit from her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Espérance and her mother are nearly killed. Looking at her country with new eyes, Celiane gains a fresh resolve to be reunited with her father in Brooklyn, New York.

Bragg, B. (2013). Expressions of African-based spirituality in Edwidge Danticat’s breath, eyes, memory. In C. P. Marsh-Lockett & E. J. West (Eds.), Literary expressions of African spirituality. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Chancy, M. J. A. (2012). Facing the mountains: Dominican suppression and the Haitian imaginary in the work of Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat. In From sugar to revolution: Women's visions of Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Also, "Recovering History "Bone by Bone": A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat: -pp. 109-130.

Page, K. A. (2011). Migrant bodies, scars and tattoos: Art as terror and transformation in Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying and The Dew Breaker. In Transnational negotiations in Caribbean diasporic literature: Remitting the text. New York: Routledge.

Ortiz, R. (2009). Edwidge Danticat's Latinidad: The farming of bones and the cultivation (of fields) of knowledge. In P. Y. Paik & M. P. Bullock (Eds.), Aftermaths : Exile, migration, and diaspora reconsidered. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Bouson, J. B. (2009). Sexual shame, family honor, and the mother-daughter relationship in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory Embodied shame : Uncovering female shame in contemporary women's writings. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Danticat, E. (2009). Brother, I'm Dying. In A. M. Hacht (Ed.), Literary newsmakers for students: Presenting analysis, context, and criticism on newsmaking novels, nonfiction, and poetry. (Vol. 3, pp. 64-82). Detroit: Gale.

The Dew Breaker. (2009). In Novels for students: Presenting analysis, context, and criticism on commonly studied novels (Vol. 28, pp. 77-98). Detroit: Gale.

Kalisa, C. (2009). War and political violence: Nadine Bari’s, Edwidge Danticat’s, and Monique Ilboudo’s literary responses to gender and conflict. Violence in Francophone African & Caribbean women's literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Brown-Rose, J. A. (2009). Nou la: Memory, history, and voice in the works of Edwidge Danticat. Critical nostalgia and Caribbean migration. New York: Peter Lang.

Paravisini-Gebert, L. (2008). Edwidge Danticat's the farming of bones. Literature of the Caribbean. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Kaussen, V. (2007). Revealing is healing: The memory of collective politics in Edwidge Danticat’s the dew breaker and the farming of bones. Migrant revolutions. Lanham, MD: Leington Books.

Caroline's Wedding. (2007). In I. M. Milne (Ed.), Short stories for students (Vol. 25, pp. 17-41). Detroit: Gale.

Rosello, M. (2006). Edwidge Danticat’s the farming of bones : Traumatic memories and the translucent narrator. In E. Walcott-Hackshaw, Reinterpreting the Haitian revolution and its cultural aftershocks. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press.

Gadsby, M. (2006). Refugees of a world on fire: Kitchen place and refugee space in the poetics of Paule Marshall and Edwidge Danticat. Sucking salt: Caribbean women writers, migration, and survival. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Burchell, E. (2003). As my mother’s daughter: Breath, eyes, memory by Edwidge Danticat. In J. Fisher & E. S. Silber (Eds.), Women in literature : Reading through the lens of gender. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.

Children of the sea. (1997). In K. Wilson (Ed.), Short stories for students (Vol. 1, pp. 32-46). Detroit: Gale.