Book Reviews: Book Review of Brother, I'm Dying, by Edwidge Danticatt -- Blue Rectangle

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Brother, I'm Dying

Edwidge Danticatt

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“This book was chosen particularly because it was current. It had just won the National Book Award when we read it. And it's a tremendously personal book, but written in a style that feels almost unemotional. What Danticat does in this book, which is so brilliant, is how she tells a story that is so raw and so intense, but she does it with language that's very distanced. So she leaves a lot of space for the emotions to be felt, but not for the narrator to tell the reader what to feel and what to think. The story is a memoir and it covers three main things. It covers Edwidge Danticat's childhood in I believe it's Haiti. And it also covers the lives of her father and her uncle. The interesting thing about her childhood is that when she was very young her parents moved to America, but left her and one of her siblings behind to live with her uncle. So her uncle raised her until she was almost ten years old. The book itself - she wrote the book because both of these men, these very important men her life, died at a similar time period many years later. And her uncle's story in particular was quite tragic. He was trying to come to America and was wrongfully detained in - by the US Immigration Service and died while he was being held. I really didn't want to stop reading this book once I started it. It - her language is so rich. And the experience of immigration is something that I'm not familiar with either and so I found it fascinating. I also found that she was able to weave in a lot of the history, the political history especially, of Haiti and how it affected her family's life in particular. Anybody who has an interest in the immigration issue I think should read this book. Because it offers an incredible perspective that we don't necessarily hear. I would give this book five stars out of five. I think it's really tremendous.”