Brother, I’m Dying
by Edwidge Danticat
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TW: Terminal illness, death, war, gun violence, misogyny, deportation, slavery
From the first words of Brother, I’m Dying I was captivated. This is a gut-renching, autobiographical story of Danticat and her family as they traverse life both together in Haiti and apart as some immigrate to the United States. As a child, Danticat stays in Haiti with her uncle while her parents and some sibilings immigrate to the US. Their lives, seperate for now, continue and with it brings different joys and difficulties. At present, Danticat lives with her family in the US and announces her pregnancy. As the news hits her family, health concerns for her father and uncle come to shape. The New York Times said that it’s “a story which, like so much of her fiction, embodies the painful legacy of Haiti’s violent history, demonstrating the myriad ways in which the public and the private, the political and the personal, intersect in the lives of that country’s citizens and exiles. Ms. Danticat not only creates an indelible portrait of her two.”
This book details the highs and lows; the truth in every aspect, and I just can’t say enough good things about this memoir.
I’m not quite sure what it was specifically about this book that made me love it so much. The writing style while relatively straightforward has such a voice that you’ve no choice to continue. I think that this began as Danticat talked with family and read through records. She said she “borrowed recollections of family members. . . . What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. 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” This craft, this following ‘cohesiveness’ combines into a narrative that flips between present and past.
When reading you get such a clear sense of the people. Her uncle Joseph, her father Mira, her mother, and other family members. They are so vibrant, flawed, beautiful, funny, complex, and more. The settings, too, are also full of life. Haiti, Port-au-Prince specifically, is the same. Danticat masterfully writes her families history and, in the greater context, the history of Haiti in starting with her birth in 1969.
The horrors of immigration, the feel of happiness from a phone call, and the sorrow in illness and grief all brought tears to my eyes. The family and bond traverses time and space when countries, politics, and health are all between.
This memoir connects so deeply that I can’t reccomend it enough.
Further reading:
I was staring at my bookshelf trying to see if any book came to mind. In terms of scope, I’m inclined to say Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. This is one of my favorite books and also is a generational look at a family through immigration, war, and time. I also am going to say Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid. While this focuses on the mother/daughter relationship, I also think it gives an excellent look at place and character.
Quotes:
“As soon as the forces left, the screaming began in earnest. People whose bodies had been pierced and torn by bullets were yelling loudly, calling out for help. Others were wailing about their loved ones. Amwe, they shot my son. Help, they hurt my daughter. My father's dying. My baby's dead. My uncle jotted down a few of the words he was hearing in one of the small notepads in his shirt pocket. Again, recording things had become an obsession. One day, I knew, he hoped to gather all his notes together, sit down and write a book.”
“He shouldn’t be here,” my father said, tearful and breathlessly agitated, shortly before drifting off to sleep that night. “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.”
“I realized that afternoon that for nearly a year, while my mother, brothers and I had constantly carried food up to my father, we had rarely eaten with him. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that he missed sharing a table or aplate, passing a spice or a spoon. But he did. Just as he missed seeing certain faces and places and hearing certain voices that neither his friends nor family nor the television could successfully transport to his room”
“What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. 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 am writing this only because they can’t.”
“It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.”