Author Edwidge Danticat, Life As A Haitian Immigrant

The repertoire of award-winning author Edwidge Danticat includes an entry to Oprah's book club as well as critically acclaimed autobiographical epics. Whether she's written a novel or a short story collection, readers are bound to get a story that deals with the difficulties and tensions of living life in a foreign land.

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In the memoir 'Brother, I'm Dying' Danticat presented the story of her life and those of the two men she loved the most, her father and his older brother, who both died in a year that brought life's complexities starkly to her mind as, while dealing with death, she also welcomed life with the birth of her daughter.

After being raised by her Uncle Joseph, a pastor, from the age of four when her parents left for America, Danticat found it difficult to adjust when, at twelve, she left this 'second father' to join the first in New York City. She told the tale in 'Brother, I'm Dying,' in a direct way, a very effective style of writing that doesn't mandate sentiment, but still inspires it. Her portrayal kept in mind that, the dramatic plot that included her beloved uncle fleeing to America for refuge, only to die after being detained by U.S. Customs at eighty-one, and the subsequent death of her father, was part of a real-life tragedy and not the flowery, made-up plot twists of fiction.

This past, literal and literary, bodes well for her up-coming novel, Life as a Haitian Immigrant. Having already proven she has lived the experiences necessary to write on such a subject, she has only to relay it to the world in the same fact-heavy, devastatingly stark way we've come to expect and appreciate.

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Read more: immigration, Oprah, book, writer, refugee, New York, Oprah Winfrey, Author, Edwidge Danticat, Education

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