Edwidge Danticat: A Reader’s Guide ed. by Martin Munro (review)

Abstract

Edwidge Danticat: A Reader's Guide. Edited by Martin Munro, foreword by Dany Laferriere. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. 232 pp. $22.50 paperback.Review by Tomaz CunninghamEdwidge Danticat: A Reader's Guide, edited by Martin Munro, is a collection of fourteen essays followed by a personal interview with Edwidge and a thorough bibliography on her work. Divided into four sections, reader's guide addresses all of from her first highly-acclaimed and controversial novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) up to and including moving personal memoir Brother, I'm Dying (2007). Lesser known portions of work, such as her young adult fiction and travel writing, are addressed in this reader by academics, literary critics, and fellow writers of Caribbean fiction. Together, these fourteen essays provide a thorough and current perspective on work of an incredibly prolific writer whose personal story is one Munro describes as of modern (25).The first section of book, entitled Contexts, contains four essays, which attempts to examine both Edwidge personal life and her as they relate to Haitian, Caribbean, and African-American literature (11). Inside Out: A Brief Biography of Edwidge Danticat, a biographical essay by Munro, traces certain aspects of life from her youth in Duvalierist Haiti to her immigration to Brooklyn, New York and later relocation to Miami. Munro notes that connection to Haiti has largely been a result of migrant Haitian communities that she has been able to find in United States. Munro also names some of literary influences, both Haitian and African-American, and traces her growth as a writer from Eyes, Breath Memory to The Dew Breaker (2004), latter of which he describes as Danticat's most accomplished work to date (23). Similarly, essays by J. Michael Dash (Danticat and her Haitian Precursors) and Carine Mardorossian (Danticat and Caribbean Women Writers) examine work in context of Haitian and Caribbean literature and explore how both fits into and expands certain constructions of identity (national identity, gender, class and race for example) normally accepted in Caribbean literary expression. The most ambitious essay in this section is Danticat and The African American Women's Literary Tradition, in which RegineMichelle Jean-Charles compares with African-American women's writing. This essay seeks in some way to explain selfidentification as an African-Haitian American (AHA) woman and writer and explore how this identity impacts her writing. According to JeanCharles, shares certain themes common to AfricanAmerican women's writing, such as healing from sexual violence, closeknit female relationships, silence and voice and the transformative power of reading and writing (59). However, Jean-Charles also notes that race does not play such a crucial role in work as it does in literary tradition of most African-American women writers. Other factors, such as nationality, language and common experience of immigration inform identity of subjects as much as issues of race (58).Texts and Analyses, second section, is most useful portion of work from a standpoint of literary criticism. This section examines entire corpus of novels, young adult fiction, and travel writing. In Writing Young: Young Adult Fiction, Kiera Voclavik examines Behind Mountains (2002) and Anacaona (2005), noting that recurrent themes of exile, violence and sadness that characterize are as present in young adult fiction as they are in her fiction for mature audiences. The understandable absence of adult theme of sexual relations make young adult fiction an effective way to introduce young non-Haitian readers to culture and history. …