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Brother, I'm Dying
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 Danticat's 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.
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.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published September 4, 2007
295 people are currently reading
12k people want to read
About the author
Edwidge Danticat
133Ìýbooks2,708ÌýfollowersEdwidge Danticat is a Haitian American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. Her work has dealt with themes of national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics. In 2023, she was named the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 985 reviews
February 15, 2020
3.5 stars rounded up to 4 - Edwidge Danticat writes of her love of her two fathers, the first Mira, her biological father, the second, Joseph, her uncle with whom she and brother, Bob lived when their parents moved from Haiti to the US. Danticat recounts her Uncle Joseph’s life, his political affiliation in the 1950s with Daniel Fignolé as well as her Granpè Nozial’s efforts as a guerrilla to repel the US invasion from 1915. When Joseph gives up politics, he turns to religion, building his own church on his property in Bel Air. Joseph becomes a preacher, his voice becoming the medium of his work for the church. When Joseph is diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, he is told that he will have to go to America to have the surgery as the doctors in Haiti do not do this type of surgery. After arriving in New York, he has an emergency episode where the tumor in his throat is suffocating him and he is rushed to the hospital with a tracheotomy performed en route. The next day, at age fifty-five, he has a radical laryngectomy. His voice is gone, but he feels his work in Haiti is not finished and returns to his church and family.
Danticat’s biological father, Mira, becomes a shoe salesman. In the shoe store, he meets his future wife. They are both twenty-seven years old. After Edwidge and Bob are born, Mira applies for a one-month tourist visa in the US, with the intention of never returning. Two years later, their mother does the same. I can’t imagine how difficult the separation must have been for the parents and the children. Danticat describes a very emotional scene of clutching her mother’s legs as her little brother, Bob, lies on the floor at the airport, crying. It will be eight years before they are reunited with their parents.
Danticat weaves back and forth between present-day and the past. In the present, her father, Mira has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, end-stage pulmonary fibrosis. At thirty-five years of age, she discovers that she is pregnant. Danticat has many emotions about bringing this new life into the world just as her father is dying. In the middle of this, her Uncle Joseph is facing extraordinary circumstances in Haiti. The politics of Haiti, as well as the US treatment of asylum seekers, are threads that Danticat takes up to weave the story of her two fathers. I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Robin Miles. The narration was clear and easily understood. I can apply focus to some audiobooks better than others, and this is one that it would have better for me to have read. This has nothing to do with the narration, which was good. I’ve read ‘The Dew Breaker� by this author and find her to be very interesting and adept in her use of language to tell a story.
Danticat’s biological father, Mira, becomes a shoe salesman. In the shoe store, he meets his future wife. They are both twenty-seven years old. After Edwidge and Bob are born, Mira applies for a one-month tourist visa in the US, with the intention of never returning. Two years later, their mother does the same. I can’t imagine how difficult the separation must have been for the parents and the children. Danticat describes a very emotional scene of clutching her mother’s legs as her little brother, Bob, lies on the floor at the airport, crying. It will be eight years before they are reunited with their parents.
Danticat weaves back and forth between present-day and the past. In the present, her father, Mira has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, end-stage pulmonary fibrosis. At thirty-five years of age, she discovers that she is pregnant. Danticat has many emotions about bringing this new life into the world just as her father is dying. In the middle of this, her Uncle Joseph is facing extraordinary circumstances in Haiti. The politics of Haiti, as well as the US treatment of asylum seekers, are threads that Danticat takes up to weave the story of her two fathers. I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Robin Miles. The narration was clear and easily understood. I can apply focus to some audiobooks better than others, and this is one that it would have better for me to have read. This has nothing to do with the narration, which was good. I’ve read ‘The Dew Breaker� by this author and find her to be very interesting and adept in her use of language to tell a story.
December 17, 2015
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.
November 26, 2007
Danticat hands you her story and walks away. Her writing style is stark here (my first time reading her); the facts are heavy, but she doesn't tug the reader one way or another or mandate sentiment. She relays her tale and then she is done. Damn. Very effective.
I thought most about "absence" on a few levels after finishing it. The literal absence of her parents and extended family at different periods of her life due to political strife and economic necessity. The unjustified absence of faith by people in power at crucial moments. The absence of care and courage from people to whom her uncle had given his entire life.
It is not the stuff of rainbows and sunshine, but I didn't walk away hopeless for some reason. It reaffirmed my strong belief in the need for national, high quality health care (seriously -- do the empty words "socialized medicine" justify the slow care or no care that people receive in this country?) and rational (read: non-racist) immigration policy. And it made me call my father (Chitty!) and just listen.
I thought most about "absence" on a few levels after finishing it. The literal absence of her parents and extended family at different periods of her life due to political strife and economic necessity. The unjustified absence of faith by people in power at crucial moments. The absence of care and courage from people to whom her uncle had given his entire life.
It is not the stuff of rainbows and sunshine, but I didn't walk away hopeless for some reason. It reaffirmed my strong belief in the need for national, high quality health care (seriously -- do the empty words "socialized medicine" justify the slow care or no care that people receive in this country?) and rational (read: non-racist) immigration policy. And it made me call my father (Chitty!) and just listen.
July 8, 2020
“If our country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here.�
WOW�. !
I have to be honest, Edwidge Danticat’s writing is flawless. This is my first time reading something non-fiction written by Danticat and I was not disappointed. FLAWLESS!
In Danticat’s memoir/non-fiction release Brother, I’m Dying she tells the story of her father Andre and his brother Uncle Joseph who acted as her second father while her Mother and Father migrated to the US. Edwidge and her brother remained in the care of Uncle Joseph and his wife Denise while her parents went to the US for better opportunities and to one day file for Edwidge and her brother. During her time in Haiti Edwidge spoke to her parents on a daily basis but it was Uncle Joseph- a Pastor and School administrator who oversaw her childcare.
Edwidge walked us through life in Haiti during the 1970s to the 2000s- showing us the progression and changes in her family dynamics. We see where her parents visited Haiti and ends up filing and taking her and her brother to the US. How her Uncle Joseph lost his voice due to an illness and how hard it was for them to communicate. How her cousins� lives changed for the good and the bad. We saw Danticat’s transition from life in Haiti to living in the US.
The book is told from the present day in 2004 where Edwidge is newly pregnant, but her father is dying and her uncle through a series of awful events ends up seeking alyssum in the US but was detained and thrown in a detention centre in Miami.
There are so many layers to unpack in this book, there is Danticat giving us a historical look into Haiti and what it was like growing up there. We also get insights into the political landscape of the country and how that shaped the society at the time. As someone who is deeply interested in Haiti this book really gave an insightful and rich look into the ordinary lives of Haitians.
The theme of father-daughter relationship was explored beautifully and in the most nuanced and raw way. I could not get enough of Danticat’s exploration of this theme. I also loved how she showed us what immigration is like for Haitian, from how limited their opportunities are and how differently they are treated to other nationals seeking asylum in the US- wow.
Overall a MUST read if you loved Danticat’s work and if you were interested in finding out more about Haiti.
WOW�. !
I have to be honest, Edwidge Danticat’s writing is flawless. This is my first time reading something non-fiction written by Danticat and I was not disappointed. FLAWLESS!
In Danticat’s memoir/non-fiction release Brother, I’m Dying she tells the story of her father Andre and his brother Uncle Joseph who acted as her second father while her Mother and Father migrated to the US. Edwidge and her brother remained in the care of Uncle Joseph and his wife Denise while her parents went to the US for better opportunities and to one day file for Edwidge and her brother. During her time in Haiti Edwidge spoke to her parents on a daily basis but it was Uncle Joseph- a Pastor and School administrator who oversaw her childcare.
Edwidge walked us through life in Haiti during the 1970s to the 2000s- showing us the progression and changes in her family dynamics. We see where her parents visited Haiti and ends up filing and taking her and her brother to the US. How her Uncle Joseph lost his voice due to an illness and how hard it was for them to communicate. How her cousins� lives changed for the good and the bad. We saw Danticat’s transition from life in Haiti to living in the US.
The book is told from the present day in 2004 where Edwidge is newly pregnant, but her father is dying and her uncle through a series of awful events ends up seeking alyssum in the US but was detained and thrown in a detention centre in Miami.
There are so many layers to unpack in this book, there is Danticat giving us a historical look into Haiti and what it was like growing up there. We also get insights into the political landscape of the country and how that shaped the society at the time. As someone who is deeply interested in Haiti this book really gave an insightful and rich look into the ordinary lives of Haitians.
The theme of father-daughter relationship was explored beautifully and in the most nuanced and raw way. I could not get enough of Danticat’s exploration of this theme. I also loved how she showed us what immigration is like for Haitian, from how limited their opportunities are and how differently they are treated to other nationals seeking asylum in the US- wow.
Overall a MUST read if you loved Danticat’s work and if you were interested in finding out more about Haiti.
August 4, 2017
In Brother, I’m Dying Danticat tells the stories of her father, Andre (aka Mira), and his brother---her uncle, Joseph, who along with his wife, Denise, raised Edwidge and her brother in Haiti while their parents immigrated and worked to prepare to bring the family together in New York in the 1970s and early 1980s; and how, in 2004, she lost these two men--- her father to pulmonary fibrosis, while her uncle, a pastor, languished in a detention center in Miami after fleeing gang threats in Haiti and hoping to seek asylum in the U.S. In the detention center this 81-year-old man had his medication taken from him, and he died there, subsequently. That same year, Danticat's first child, a daughter, was born.
When I read this book, I felt undone by the way Danticat had mined and transformed her own grief into a memoir that shared the richness and complexity of her family’s bonds as their love and history inhabited and straddled multiple continents, cultures, and contradictions.
When I read this book, I felt undone by the way Danticat had mined and transformed her own grief into a memoir that shared the richness and complexity of her family’s bonds as their love and history inhabited and straddled multiple continents, cultures, and contradictions.
February 10, 2016
After reading a number of equally excellent books concerning daughters, mothers and grandmothers, it is great to read about the special connections between a daughter and her two fathers, for Edwidge Danticat's writes of both her father Mira, who left Haiti for New York when she was 2 years old - and her Uncle Joseph, who treated her like a daughters for those nine long years that followed before she and her brothers Bob were able to join their parents and the two new brothers that had arrived in the meantime.
The book opens as she discovered she is pregnant for the first time and it is the same day she learns her fathers coughing is a sign of an in curable illness, one that will take him too soon. We learn of the close relationship between the brothers, expressed through some of the more poignant times in their lives, set against a backdrop of a deteriorating political situation in Haiti which becomes a catalyst to a devastating end.
It is a credit to the author that we read something of her life, her early childhood, without putting herself forward as the main character of interest, it is a story of the extended family and the men who tried to lead them to live in safety. The two brothers chose different paths, one chose to leave, the others to stay and though they were separated for 30 years their relationship remained strong and they saw each other as often as they could.
A wonderful book, an honest portrayal of lives, where joy and struggle go hand in hand, where fear is never far from the front gate and sadness its companion , yet full of hope and spiritedness as an eighty one year old man refuses to just let thugs take all that he has, even though risking his life, he continues to do what is necessary in his own country to ensure justice. And so tragic what follows.
Complete review .
The book opens as she discovered she is pregnant for the first time and it is the same day she learns her fathers coughing is a sign of an in curable illness, one that will take him too soon. We learn of the close relationship between the brothers, expressed through some of the more poignant times in their lives, set against a backdrop of a deteriorating political situation in Haiti which becomes a catalyst to a devastating end.
It is a credit to the author that we read something of her life, her early childhood, without putting herself forward as the main character of interest, it is a story of the extended family and the men who tried to lead them to live in safety. The two brothers chose different paths, one chose to leave, the others to stay and though they were separated for 30 years their relationship remained strong and they saw each other as often as they could.
A wonderful book, an honest portrayal of lives, where joy and struggle go hand in hand, where fear is never far from the front gate and sadness its companion , yet full of hope and spiritedness as an eighty one year old man refuses to just let thugs take all that he has, even though risking his life, he continues to do what is necessary in his own country to ensure justice. And so tragic what follows.
Complete review .
December 20, 2007
I am not Haitian. But you will know me better if you read this, because the author has had such an influence on my passions and what I have studied. This book is biographical. I've read and own the 4 other major books written by Edwidge Danticat, and they are my most (and possibly only) lent books. If you ever wondered why I wrote so much about Haiti in college, take a read.
I don't know if I should recommend this book out of order from the other ones, or possibly if this should be the starting point. The other books written by Danticat were fiction, or fictionalized history. They are all very sad, very stirring, but this one I think is most powerful to me because it is non-fiction, and I am highly aware of this because I read about some of the events described in this book as they were happening before they were written. I didn't feel like an outsider reading the news about a faraway place, but like I could be there and see the tragedy as someone who was living it. And further, I found that it helped me see that there are not sides to take, and even people in the center of the chaos have not made sense of it, can only grieve.
Besides the tremendous writing and that I've read all the books written before this by Danticat, Brother I'm Dying appeals to the part of me who studied ethics. It stirs in me the same strong feeling as I believe the author feels, that something about the world's view of Haiti and Haitians is skewed. I feel like the author perhaps struggled to not reveal personal political sentiments, but to focus on her family and their personal struggles that were influenced by outside forces. And for the first time in her writing, I think I saw the author not romanticize Haiti, but start to reveal the more violent, tragic side of things. Truthfully, she has never romanticized the country, but wrote so beautifully as to make the reader forget that all she wrote of was death and brutality and tragedy.
About the actual story... It is not entirely linear. Simultaneously, Edwidge discovers she's pregnant as her father slowly dies a painful death and the uncle who raised her is destroyed by the forces at work in Haiti: his church and house are burned and looted, he is threatened with beheading, bravely escapes Haiti, only to die seeking asylum in the US. This should not be considered a spoiler. I read about her uncle in the news when he died, because she is a very well-known author with some powerful connections and it was rather sudden and shocking. The brilliancy of the story is the back story, finally learning where Edwidge came from and some of the experiences she has drawn upon that have influenced the books I've already read. Before the brutal end are the endless struggles, the folk tales, the sweet moments, the connections, the emotions and memories.
In short, I could not set this book down and have felt compelled to write a book review, the first I've ever written voluntarily and fully. I hope someone besides a Haitian friend at work will read this book, and maybe someone else will understand why I am so moved, rather than be repulsed like so many who shut out the outside world, preferring the isolation and denial of the problems faced in nations of upheaval, thereby not moving a resolution any closer to arrival.
I don't know if I should recommend this book out of order from the other ones, or possibly if this should be the starting point. The other books written by Danticat were fiction, or fictionalized history. They are all very sad, very stirring, but this one I think is most powerful to me because it is non-fiction, and I am highly aware of this because I read about some of the events described in this book as they were happening before they were written. I didn't feel like an outsider reading the news about a faraway place, but like I could be there and see the tragedy as someone who was living it. And further, I found that it helped me see that there are not sides to take, and even people in the center of the chaos have not made sense of it, can only grieve.
Besides the tremendous writing and that I've read all the books written before this by Danticat, Brother I'm Dying appeals to the part of me who studied ethics. It stirs in me the same strong feeling as I believe the author feels, that something about the world's view of Haiti and Haitians is skewed. I feel like the author perhaps struggled to not reveal personal political sentiments, but to focus on her family and their personal struggles that were influenced by outside forces. And for the first time in her writing, I think I saw the author not romanticize Haiti, but start to reveal the more violent, tragic side of things. Truthfully, she has never romanticized the country, but wrote so beautifully as to make the reader forget that all she wrote of was death and brutality and tragedy.
About the actual story... It is not entirely linear. Simultaneously, Edwidge discovers she's pregnant as her father slowly dies a painful death and the uncle who raised her is destroyed by the forces at work in Haiti: his church and house are burned and looted, he is threatened with beheading, bravely escapes Haiti, only to die seeking asylum in the US. This should not be considered a spoiler. I read about her uncle in the news when he died, because she is a very well-known author with some powerful connections and it was rather sudden and shocking. The brilliancy of the story is the back story, finally learning where Edwidge came from and some of the experiences she has drawn upon that have influenced the books I've already read. Before the brutal end are the endless struggles, the folk tales, the sweet moments, the connections, the emotions and memories.
In short, I could not set this book down and have felt compelled to write a book review, the first I've ever written voluntarily and fully. I hope someone besides a Haitian friend at work will read this book, and maybe someone else will understand why I am so moved, rather than be repulsed like so many who shut out the outside world, preferring the isolation and denial of the problems faced in nations of upheaval, thereby not moving a resolution any closer to arrival.
January 9, 2016
The author grabbed my attention with the first sentence:
*Immigration and Customs Enforcement
I was emotionally drawn into the story, and soon I became concerned for the family's welfare. The book is a combination personal memoir and biography of her uncle and father. The uncle stayed in Haiti and for a number of years served in the role of the author's father. Through the uncle's story we learn about the Haitian experience. The author at age 12 was reunited with her father living in New York, and through his story we learn about the immigrant experience. During the period of the author's pregnancy ...
This book is a tender look at the experience of immigrants and how immigration policies can be so cruel. It truly conveys the other side of the harsh treatment given to Haitians who fled the impossible political violence of 2004 when Aristide was forced into exile and UN peacekeepers were sent to Haiti.
__________
The following review is from PageADay's Book Lover's Calendar for 9/9/12:
A LIFE
As the praise attests, this National Book Critics Circle Award winner doesn’t come up short: “If Brother, I’m Dying does not break your heart, you don’t have one� (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “Heartwrenching, intimate� (San Francisco Chronicle), Edwidge Danticat’s memoir of Haiti and her family is deeply personal, but it also illuminates the broader landscape of a tragic country and the failures of American foreign policy. Danticat fled to join her parents in Brooklyn when she was 12. When her beloved uncle, who raised her, tries to follow after 9/11, he finds he waited too long. If you want to read a family story of exquisite love and longing, choose this.
BROTHER, I’M DYING , by Edwidge Danticat (Vintage, 2008)
"I found out I was pregnant the same day that my father’s rapid weight loss and chronic shortness of breath were positively diagnosed as end-stage pulmonary fibrosis."This sentence let me know that the book was going to be about life, death and family relationships. It's also about the immigrant experience, Haitian political violence and cruel actions of ICE*.
*Immigration and Customs Enforcement
I was emotionally drawn into the story, and soon I became concerned for the family's welfare. The book is a combination personal memoir and biography of her uncle and father. The uncle stayed in Haiti and for a number of years served in the role of the author's father. Through the uncle's story we learn about the Haitian experience. The author at age 12 was reunited with her father living in New York, and through his story we learn about the immigrant experience. During the period of the author's pregnancy ...
This book is a tender look at the experience of immigrants and how immigration policies can be so cruel. It truly conveys the other side of the harsh treatment given to Haitians who fled the impossible political violence of 2004 when Aristide was forced into exile and UN peacekeepers were sent to Haiti.
__________
The following review is from PageADay's Book Lover's Calendar for 9/9/12:
A LIFE
As the praise attests, this National Book Critics Circle Award winner doesn’t come up short: “If Brother, I’m Dying does not break your heart, you don’t have one� (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “Heartwrenching, intimate� (San Francisco Chronicle), Edwidge Danticat’s memoir of Haiti and her family is deeply personal, but it also illuminates the broader landscape of a tragic country and the failures of American foreign policy. Danticat fled to join her parents in Brooklyn when she was 12. When her beloved uncle, who raised her, tries to follow after 9/11, he finds he waited too long. If you want to read a family story of exquisite love and longing, choose this.
BROTHER, I’M DYING , by Edwidge Danticat (Vintage, 2008)
September 3, 2023
September 2, 2023
Now I have read it for the third time and my rating does not change. If you are going to read this, be careful. As I got near the end of the book, I remembered the ending - I found that I could not endure reading it at that moment. I put the book away, went to another book and read the last couple of chapters the next day. My feelings about the book have not changed; neither do I believe that my country has changed to a better system of dealing with people who want to visit or move to my country. Mr. Trump is no longer in charge of anything but his successor has done very little to make visiting or immigrating humane or better. I cry in frustration at the evil that happens. I realized that immigration officers, just like police officers become immune to the pain of others. I do not know the answer -- I am too old to go back in the field to change anything. For what it is worth, Danticat has written many other lovely books which do not give us such horrible endings.
This is my second reading of this book. With Mr. Trump's power and lack of wisdom, the book is frightening. I was crying for the last couple of chapters. This is not a spoiler. Danticat wrote this non-fiction book about her two fathers; her blood father who moved to the US from Haiti and her father's elder brother, who acted as her father during some of her formative years in Haiti. Danticat is a beautiful writer, and has won many awards to prove it, but this book is so personal, that it became real to me. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and one of the most lawless and abused countries in the world. This book tells of the horrors of lawlessness in Haiti and the evil and uncaring people in the Immigration Service in the United States. Read this if you want to read a wordsmith; read this if you want to know about real life in Haiti; read this if you want to know what really happens when U.N. "peacekeeping" forces move in; read this if you want to know about the treatment of non-U.S. citizens when they peacefully, legally try to visit this country.
Now I have read it for the third time and my rating does not change. If you are going to read this, be careful. As I got near the end of the book, I remembered the ending - I found that I could not endure reading it at that moment. I put the book away, went to another book and read the last couple of chapters the next day. My feelings about the book have not changed; neither do I believe that my country has changed to a better system of dealing with people who want to visit or move to my country. Mr. Trump is no longer in charge of anything but his successor has done very little to make visiting or immigrating humane or better. I cry in frustration at the evil that happens. I realized that immigration officers, just like police officers become immune to the pain of others. I do not know the answer -- I am too old to go back in the field to change anything. For what it is worth, Danticat has written many other lovely books which do not give us such horrible endings.
This is my second reading of this book. With Mr. Trump's power and lack of wisdom, the book is frightening. I was crying for the last couple of chapters. This is not a spoiler. Danticat wrote this non-fiction book about her two fathers; her blood father who moved to the US from Haiti and her father's elder brother, who acted as her father during some of her formative years in Haiti. Danticat is a beautiful writer, and has won many awards to prove it, but this book is so personal, that it became real to me. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and one of the most lawless and abused countries in the world. This book tells of the horrors of lawlessness in Haiti and the evil and uncaring people in the Immigration Service in the United States. Read this if you want to read a wordsmith; read this if you want to know about real life in Haiti; read this if you want to know what really happens when U.N. "peacekeeping" forces move in; read this if you want to know about the treatment of non-U.S. citizens when they peacefully, legally try to visit this country.
July 27, 2016
You often feel as if you can with stand anything until life hits you with the unexpected. Therefore, as I watch my father labor in what feels like the end stages of his illness, listening to Edwidge Danticat's story of her Uncle Joseph and father, Andre (neé Mira), battle through their own health scares a deep cord was struck within me.
With this memoir, Danticat manages to take her family's tragedy along with Haiti's ongoing political turmoil and magnificently pair it with her journey into motherhood. This intriguing story snatches the reader up right from the start and makes you root for each character to have some type of breakthrough even though it is apparent early on that the family will have no respite from the illnesses that plagues them or the country that crumbles around them.
I shed tears of joy and sadness, laughed, and even outright cheered in some parts listening to this audiobook. Danticat truly has a gift that shines through with the descriptive way that she writes about the two men who she called "father" and the country that no amount of violence can stop her from loving. Likewise, thanks to Robin Miles, the audio narrator, the story truly comes to life with all the different Creole and French accents that she evokes to tell Joseph and Mira's story.
I haven't felt this many range of emotions reading a biography in a long time. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is up for the challenge of a heartbreaking book that's raw and honest. The closest auto/biography I can think that would be similar to Danticat's masterpiece is by Alex Haley and Malcolm X.
With this memoir, Danticat manages to take her family's tragedy along with Haiti's ongoing political turmoil and magnificently pair it with her journey into motherhood. This intriguing story snatches the reader up right from the start and makes you root for each character to have some type of breakthrough even though it is apparent early on that the family will have no respite from the illnesses that plagues them or the country that crumbles around them.
I shed tears of joy and sadness, laughed, and even outright cheered in some parts listening to this audiobook. Danticat truly has a gift that shines through with the descriptive way that she writes about the two men who she called "father" and the country that no amount of violence can stop her from loving. Likewise, thanks to Robin Miles, the audio narrator, the story truly comes to life with all the different Creole and French accents that she evokes to tell Joseph and Mira's story.
I haven't felt this many range of emotions reading a biography in a long time. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is up for the challenge of a heartbreaking book that's raw and honest. The closest auto/biography I can think that would be similar to Danticat's masterpiece is by Alex Haley and Malcolm X.
February 12, 2014
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 .
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 , on their website. So, there are the "facts," such as they are recorded by one party. Also, the ACLU has archived , 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, .)
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 .
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 , on their website. So, there are the "facts," such as they are recorded by one party. Also, the ACLU has archived , 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, .)
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.
March 19, 2023
I’m telling you right now if Edwidge Danticat writes her name on a napkin I’m gonna buy it.
After flipping through the first few pages of the book, there’s this quote by Paul Auster: “To begin with death. To work my way back into life, and then, finally, to return to death. Or else: the vanity of trying to say anything about anyone�. And this is essentially how the book was structured.
I knew this book would be life-changing when I saw the first chapter titled “Have you enjoyed your life�. Edwidge takes us on a journey through her life that’s really unlike anything you’ve ever read. It’s like an autobiography but it’s written about her father and her uncle (really both her fathers - you’ll get it when you read the book).
This book - in under 300 pages - so aptly captures (in my estimation) the emotions of the characters and the gravity of difficult moments. Her descriptions are so clear, it feels like you’re watching the church burn; sharing the pain of systems that should work, but don’t (especially for Black people); witnessing the illusion of help; and feeling the weight of a country always on the brink of disaster. She wrote about Haiti’s history of [feigned] independence: and the juxtaposition of the brother who chose to leave and the brother who chose to stay - and in the end - who was forced to leave.
There are so many stories within this story. This book left me in tears. Grab a copy and some tissue!
After flipping through the first few pages of the book, there’s this quote by Paul Auster: “To begin with death. To work my way back into life, and then, finally, to return to death. Or else: the vanity of trying to say anything about anyone�. And this is essentially how the book was structured.
I knew this book would be life-changing when I saw the first chapter titled “Have you enjoyed your life�. Edwidge takes us on a journey through her life that’s really unlike anything you’ve ever read. It’s like an autobiography but it’s written about her father and her uncle (really both her fathers - you’ll get it when you read the book).
This book - in under 300 pages - so aptly captures (in my estimation) the emotions of the characters and the gravity of difficult moments. Her descriptions are so clear, it feels like you’re watching the church burn; sharing the pain of systems that should work, but don’t (especially for Black people); witnessing the illusion of help; and feeling the weight of a country always on the brink of disaster. She wrote about Haiti’s history of [feigned] independence: and the juxtaposition of the brother who chose to leave and the brother who chose to stay - and in the end - who was forced to leave.
There are so many stories within this story. This book left me in tears. Grab a copy and some tissue!
August 21, 2021
Het ontroerende, maar nergens sentimentele levensverhaal van twee broers, die beiden als een vader voor Edwidge waren. Als kind hebben Edwidge en haar jongere broer Bob jarenlang bij hun oom in Haïti gewoond, terwijl hun ouders een leven probeerden op te bouwen in Brooklyn, New York, om hun gezin weer te kunnen herenigen.
Een verhaal over hechte warme familiebanden. Haïti met haar schoonheid, maar ook eeuwige politieke onrust en het daarmee gepaard gaande geweld, zijn vernietigende natuurrampen en grote armoede. En het onmenselijke immigratiebeleid in de Verenigde Staten.
Edwidge Danticat heeft prachtig, oprecht en vol tederheid woorden gegeven aan haar verhaal.
Een verhaal over hechte warme familiebanden. Haïti met haar schoonheid, maar ook eeuwige politieke onrust en het daarmee gepaard gaande geweld, zijn vernietigende natuurrampen en grote armoede. En het onmenselijke immigratiebeleid in de Verenigde Staten.
Edwidge Danticat heeft prachtig, oprecht en vol tederheid woorden gegeven aan haar verhaal.
'Het is niet gemakkelijk ergens anders helemaal opnieuw te beginnen. Ballingschap is niet voor iedereen weggelegd. Er moet ook iemand achterblijven om de brieven in ontvangst te nemen en familieleden die voor een bezoek terugkomen welkom te heten.'
June 9, 2022
Edwidge Danticat is one of my favorite writers. She is an expert storyteller. All of the works I've read by her have left deep impressions upon me. This narrative of some of her family's history has left me moved. It's a story about Haiti and Haitians; it's a story about immigration. But it's also a story about the circle of life and death, living and dying. This book will sit with me for a while. That's it. I highly recommend this book not only for what's left of Caribbean American Heritage Month, but anytime to gain insight on bits of 20th and early 21st century Haitian history and how the US is complicit in Haiti's current state. Some books require courage to read with openness. If you are unfamiliar with this history, then be courageous and engage it through this narrative.
January 10, 2025
Read for school. I’d love to sit in a silent room with J.D Vance (or any current/previous COO of CBP) and watch him read this cover to cover. Danticat’s ability to weave an artful telling of two personal (and global, institutional) tragedies is really impressive.
November 26, 2024
SO GOODCBWNNDBD new favorite memoir and contender for favorite read of 2024
December 18, 2019
[12/18]
im not crying you're crying
a very compelling and heartbreaking memoir about family and the hardships of immigration.
there's a very big difference between reading a fiction piece and a nonfiction memoir. i'm so used to analyzing character actions and thoughts as a conscious choice of the author but in nonfiction writing, i can't do that, bc everything actually happened. so it was a very jarring experience when i kept catching myself looking for motifs or symbolism, and i had to remind myself that it's not a work of fiction. it made the experience so much more raw and impactful when i realized the horrible things that happened actually happened. we are so used to reading about violence in fantasy books or other forms of cruelty in novels that, at least for me, it hardly makes an impact anymore. but it definitely was a kick to the gut every time i remembered that this story was true.
i'm so grateful that danticat shared her family's story. i was filled with so much rage in the last couple of chapters, i'm not sure i have ever been that disgusted and angry while reading a book before.
but i'm glad that the book wasn't all sadness, and the hopeful note the book ended on was a nice touch.
overall, i think i need to read more memoirs. i think everyone needs to read more memoirs. they foster empathy and i think they are necessary to bridge the gap between so many of the disparate sides that define us today.
im not crying you're crying
a very compelling and heartbreaking memoir about family and the hardships of immigration.
there's a very big difference between reading a fiction piece and a nonfiction memoir. i'm so used to analyzing character actions and thoughts as a conscious choice of the author but in nonfiction writing, i can't do that, bc everything actually happened. so it was a very jarring experience when i kept catching myself looking for motifs or symbolism, and i had to remind myself that it's not a work of fiction. it made the experience so much more raw and impactful when i realized the horrible things that happened actually happened. we are so used to reading about violence in fantasy books or other forms of cruelty in novels that, at least for me, it hardly makes an impact anymore. but it definitely was a kick to the gut every time i remembered that this story was true.
i'm so grateful that danticat shared her family's story. i was filled with so much rage in the last couple of chapters, i'm not sure i have ever been that disgusted and angry while reading a book before.
but i'm glad that the book wasn't all sadness, and the hopeful note the book ended on was a nice touch.
overall, i think i need to read more memoirs. i think everyone needs to read more memoirs. they foster empathy and i think they are necessary to bridge the gap between so many of the disparate sides that define us today.
December 18, 2007
Wow. If I thought I couldn't possibly lose even more respect for this president, his administration, his Homeland Security, and his policies, I was wrong.
This book is yet another reason why we should be very angry and should really work for change in whatever way we can.
This is a very intimate book. By the end, you feel as though you should be coming over with food for the family. I had always known bits and pieces about Haitian history from my years studying the French language, but now I really want to learn more. Living through the struggles of Edwidge Danticat's family, you develop a greater respect for immigrants struggling to come to the United States, despite all odds. Her storytelling is that of someone who truly loves her family (they are her characters in this memoir), sometimes jumping ahead, sometimes dwelling, always knowing details.
I strongly recommend it to everyone. I have long been a fan of her fiction and there are some on goodreads who say that the fiction is better, but why not read both?
This book is yet another reason why we should be very angry and should really work for change in whatever way we can.
This is a very intimate book. By the end, you feel as though you should be coming over with food for the family. I had always known bits and pieces about Haitian history from my years studying the French language, but now I really want to learn more. Living through the struggles of Edwidge Danticat's family, you develop a greater respect for immigrants struggling to come to the United States, despite all odds. Her storytelling is that of someone who truly loves her family (they are her characters in this memoir), sometimes jumping ahead, sometimes dwelling, always knowing details.
I strongly recommend it to everyone. I have long been a fan of her fiction and there are some on goodreads who say that the fiction is better, but why not read both?
January 30, 2019
Intelligent, thoughtful, and heartbreaking. A first-hand account of one man's ordeal, which illustrates in stark relief the way U.S. policies on immigration have combined with ignorance and systemic racism to cause untold suffering in Haitians. Danticat allows us to get to know her uncle in all his humanity and dignity before taking us step by step through his most terrible suffering and death at the hands of immigration officers. Most of this slim memoir is full of love and joy, even in the midst of the coups and day to day violence suffered by Danticat's family members in Haiti. By focusing on these deep family relationships Danticat allows us to experience the horror of what happens to Haitians in an entirely personal and visceral way that no amount of statistical analysis or big history can allow us to understand. I liked this memoir a great deal more than Danticat's fiction--it was grounded and real in a way that her fiction is not for me.
June 9, 2024
A sorrowful and remarkable tribute to a loved one whose life was cut short because of systemic racism and injustice. It is harrowing and straightforwardly written, allowing readers to think and ask themselves on their own implicit bias.
April 18, 2020
"She was leaving my body and going into the world, where she would spend the rest of her life moving away from me."
Absolutely heartbreaking. But a wonderful introduction to Danticat's writing and a moving reflection on family, Haiti, and immigration policy.
Absolutely heartbreaking. But a wonderful introduction to Danticat's writing and a moving reflection on family, Haiti, and immigration policy.
September 29, 2010
Edwidge Danticat is a national treasure, and this is her family's odyssey. Some of the relatives she writes about here were lost in Haiti.
October 23, 2023
This is a heart wrenching, beautiful, terrifying book. The care work that Edwidge Danticat so effortlessly does for her family, primarily her uncle and father, through the writing of this memoir is so striking. She weaves in history and facts and the impersonal so impeccably with the personal, that historical moments lose their factual, textbook-like disconnect and become stories about lives and people and family. There are moments in the memoir that scrape the reader raw, pain and injustice filtering through each word, and then there are scenes of such tenderness, joy, and radiance amidst the terror and agony. Danticat's love and affection for her father and uncle are so visceral, so tangible, that you begin to love them the way that she does as you read. It is almost unreal that they are treated so terribly, because you wonder, how can anyone treat this magnificent person this way? I truly cannot even comprehend how a person can treat other human beings this way, especially towards the end of the book. As painful and saddening as the book is, it is anger and frustration that my throat is thick with. If you do not actively engage with decolonial and postcolonial works, if you do not work to fight against the system of racism and capitalism that completely dehumanizes and turns people into commodities, that causes an eighty-one year old pastor full of life and kindness and optimism and relentless selflessness to be jailed and accused of faking a seizure and then left to die alone in a prison hospital, YOU are part of the problem. You must examine whatever privilege allows you to so easily ignore humanity, to operate solely in your own interests. I cannot help but connect this memoir to the current genocide occurring in Gaza, and how many people so quickly dismiss it in their own self-serving ideologies as too complicated, or a result of "Palestinian terrorism" or whatever other bullshit excuse. People clearly do not care to do the work needed to free themselves from a system that crushes some but benefits them. Examine that. And then read this book.
Danticat, at the end of the memoir, writes that she must not let her grief silence her. And she does not let it. Grief can often feel like the accumulation of love with nowhere to go, and Danticat shows this beautifully in "Brother, I'm Dying," a book that feels like an outpouring of love. There are some incredibly beautiful scenes in this book, scenes of familial love and romantic entanglements and other acts of affection. I do not mean to make it seem as if this book is all terror and bloodshed and pain. Danticat writes the terror and bloodshed and pain as it happens, because it did, but that does not mean that was the only thing. Her family was joyous and loud and happy and festive and celebratory, and that is just as important as the pain.
I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time.
Danticat, at the end of the memoir, writes that she must not let her grief silence her. And she does not let it. Grief can often feel like the accumulation of love with nowhere to go, and Danticat shows this beautifully in "Brother, I'm Dying," a book that feels like an outpouring of love. There are some incredibly beautiful scenes in this book, scenes of familial love and romantic entanglements and other acts of affection. I do not mean to make it seem as if this book is all terror and bloodshed and pain. Danticat writes the terror and bloodshed and pain as it happens, because it did, but that does not mean that was the only thing. Her family was joyous and loud and happy and festive and celebratory, and that is just as important as the pain.
I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time.
June 14, 2020
On one level, this is a story of a family and their great love for each other. When Danticat was a child, her mother and father moved to the US from Haiti to build a new life for their family while their two children stayed with their aunt and uncle. Her Aunt Denise and Uncle Joseph cherished them and they were well loved for the ten years until they were able to join their parents in the US. The memoir opens on a day when Edwidge has gone to NYC to visit her father. She learns she is pregnant on the same day she finds out her father is dying. Throughout the memoir, you see such love in this family - between the author and her parents, the author and her aunt and uncle who were second parents to her, between she and her siblings as well as between her father and his brother. Throughout the book, you also get a glimpse into the political struggles and instability in Haiti, much of it fueled by involvement of the US. You see how this impacts daily life for her family still in Haiti and ultimately leads to her uncle fleeing the country and his heartbreaking encounter with US Immigration Services.
Danticat is an excellent writer - she is a very straight forward storyteller and the directness of her approach makes it easy to connect with her experiences. Highly recommend.
Danticat is an excellent writer - she is a very straight forward storyteller and the directness of her approach makes it easy to connect with her experiences. Highly recommend.
June 2, 2019
"Had he forgotten that he couldn't speak? Should they expect some kind of miracle? But standing there as though stunned into silence, his face sullen, his eyes circling the room- Granmè Melina's death perhaps a reminder of how close he himself had come to dying- he appeared a lot more distressed than the rest of the mourners. Reaching for the microphone, he unhinged it from its stand and raised it to his lips. He opened his mouth and just as he did every morning along with his Berlitz record, he mouthed one word: Good-bye." 74
"He wrapped her body in his arms, thinking that she felt the same to him now as when her father had placed her in his arms as a baby, trusting that he would look after her, that he would always keep her from harm." 63
"what my uncle might have in Creole called mòde soufle, where those who are most able to obliterate you are also the only ones offering some illusion of shelter and protection, a shred of hope- even if false- for possible restoration." 204
"During his life, my uncle had clung to his home, determined not to be driven out. He had remained in Bel Air, in part because it was what he knew. But he had also hoped to do some good there. Now he would be exiled finally in death. He would become part of the soil of a country that had not wanted him." 251
"If our country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here" 251
"He wrapped her body in his arms, thinking that she felt the same to him now as when her father had placed her in his arms as a baby, trusting that he would look after her, that he would always keep her from harm." 63
"what my uncle might have in Creole called mòde soufle, where those who are most able to obliterate you are also the only ones offering some illusion of shelter and protection, a shred of hope- even if false- for possible restoration." 204
"During his life, my uncle had clung to his home, determined not to be driven out. He had remained in Bel Air, in part because it was what he knew. But he had also hoped to do some good there. Now he would be exiled finally in death. He would become part of the soil of a country that had not wanted him." 251
"If our country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here" 251
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2018
There are no words I could write that can adequately capture the substance of this book. Beautifully written, this book chronicles Edwidge's Danticat's life, and the lives and deaths of her father and uncle, but it is more than a simple biography. It focuses more on her uncle, a man she came to think of as her second father when she and her brother were left with him in Haiti so her parents could build a life in New York, and bring them to the United States. It is also a chronicle of a country in constant upheaval, subject to government coups and gang violence, and how this affects the course of the lives of everyone in her family.
February 21, 2019
this book split my heart wide open. let the stars fall and also screw US immigration policy.
November 17, 2019
So well writen and so devastatingly sad. Infuriating. Krome. How refugees are treated.😞
May 5, 2023
This book broke my heart. Danticat tells her family’s immigration story and story of family separation and of the us broken immigration system. Danticat and her brother stay with her uncle in Haiti when her parents move to NY. She shows their parallel stories of the two brothers as they struggle with illness and Haiti faces horrific day to day violence. It lays bare the tragedy of the us immigration system and was really moving.
May 6, 2008
I need to stop telling people "This is a book about a lady that grew up in Haiti with her uncle. Her uncle died, around the same time her father died, and she had a baby in between those times." (I'm not spoiling this for anybody; it says all of that stuff in the jacket of the book." I mean, that just sounds depressing, and overall, the book is not.
First of all, the book is really well written. Very simple language, but powerful. Characters, situations, feelings come across.
This was a book for my neighborhood book club. Somebody asked if the author had an agenda for writing this book, and we considered for a while. Even though the author could easily criticize the U.S. government and military, that doesn't come across really. Any unpleasant situations her family has had, she says it simply, and moves on, lets you take from it what you will. A woman in my book club suggested her agenda was just to show Haiti in a pleasant light, since honestly, we don't see that too much. And I have to agree. I loved most about this book the culture she showed, the strong family ties, the neighborhood, her uncle's church, etc. I would love to read more about Haiti, or the author's life in general.
First of all, the book is really well written. Very simple language, but powerful. Characters, situations, feelings come across.
This was a book for my neighborhood book club. Somebody asked if the author had an agenda for writing this book, and we considered for a while. Even though the author could easily criticize the U.S. government and military, that doesn't come across really. Any unpleasant situations her family has had, she says it simply, and moves on, lets you take from it what you will. A woman in my book club suggested her agenda was just to show Haiti in a pleasant light, since honestly, we don't see that too much. And I have to agree. I loved most about this book the culture she showed, the strong family ties, the neighborhood, her uncle's church, etc. I would love to read more about Haiti, or the author's life in general.
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