Abstract
The proposed chapter will advocate for the benefits of genre theory in reading and teaching the work of Edwidge Danticat, with a particular emphasis on the “short story cycles,” The Dew Breaker and Claire of the Sea Light that dominate Danticat’s recent adult-oriented fiction. Genre will be presented as a useful tool for approaching her complex and evolving relationship with several literary and national traditions; what, for instance, is gained or lost for teachers and students by putting Danticat in conversation with a tradition of American short story cycles inaugurated (arguably) by Sherwood Anderson? In addition to the usefulness of genre theory for this kind of formalist and literary-historical analysis, however, this essay will also employ the category of “genre” to refer to the diverse narratives of involuntary diasporic migration that Danticat corrals into her intricately linked novels-instories. In particular, the piece will discuss the multiple histories of movement and multiple points of contact between homeland and hostland populations associated with diasporic disperal, and ask how these political questions are related to the formative tension between heterogeneous individual stories and the critical drive for an overall thematic “unity” characterizing the genre of the short story cycle.
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