We're honored to have Edwidge Danticat join us for our latest Scholastic Reads podcast episode.
Born in Haiti in 1969, Edwidge moved to Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 12. The Caribbean country that she and her family left behind has a long history of colonization, slavery, and torture. Its history is intertwined with that of the United States, which occupied Haiti in the early 20th century and later propped up the Duvalier dictatorship.
Getting to the core of the two nations' shared past is left to such writers as Edwidge, whose work explores the effects of trauma and bloodshed on Haitians at home and in exile.
In her 2007 memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, Edwidge writes about her uncle Joseph, a Baptist minister who helped raise her. One morning in 2004, he awoke in his Port-au-Prince neighborhood to the sounds of gunfire and "rocks and bottles crashing on nearby roofs." United Nations peacekeepers had parked their armored tanks in front of his church.
Amid the din, Joseph "heard something he hadn’t heard in some time: people were pounding on pots and pans and making clanging noises that rang throughout the entire neighborhood. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it, of course. This kind of purposeful rattle was called bat tenËb, or beating the darkness.”
Joseph sought asylum in the U.S., where the Department of Homeland Security detained him. Five days later, he died. U.S. officials did not allow Edwidge to see her dying uncle, citing "security reasons."
Writing, Edwidge says, “is the way I participate in the struggle.” It is also her way of "beating the darkness."
More about Edwidge Danticat. Edwidge is the author of several award-winning books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club pick; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award nominee; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award Winner; and Untwine (Scholastic, 2015).
Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2009, Edwidge lives in Miami, Florida, with her husband and two daughters.
You can listen to the podcast episode, Edwidge Danticat: Beating the Darkness, here. Learn more about Edwidge's YA novel, Untwine, and read an excerpt here.
Photo credit: Mark Dellas, 2015
