Edwidge Danticat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edwidge Danticat
Danticat, September 2007
Danticat, September 2007
Born January 19, 1969 (age 51)
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Occupation Writer
Nationality Haitian-American
Education
Barnard College (BA)
Brown University (MFA)
Period 1994–present
Genre Novels, short stories
Edwidge Danticat (Haitian Creole pronunciation: [ɛdwidʒ dãtika]; born January 19, 1969)[1] is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Themes
4.1 National identity
4.2 Mother-daughter relationships
4.3 Diasporic politics
5 Awards and honors
5.1 Critical reception
6 Bibliography
6.1 Books
6.2 Short stories
6.3 Film
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Early life
Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. When she was two years old, her father André immigrated to New York, to be followed two years later by her mother Rose.[1] This left Danticat and her younger brother, also named André, to be raised by her aunt and uncle. When asked in an interview about her traditions as a child, she included storytelling, church, and constantly studying school material as all part of growing up.[2] Although her formal education in Haiti was in French, she spoke Haitian Creole at home.[3]
While still in Haiti, Danticat began writing at nine years old.[4] At the age of 12, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, to join her parents in a heavily Haitian-American neighborhood. As an immigrant teenager, Edwidge's disorientation in her new surroundings was a source of discomfort for her, and she turned to literature for solace.[3] Danticat did not realize the racism until she went to college because of the protection of her community.[5] Two years later she published her first writing in English, "A Haitian-American Christmas: Cremace and Creole Theatre," in New Youth Connections, a citywide magazine written by teenagers published by Youth Communication. She later wrote another story about her immigration experience for New Youth Connections, "A New World Full of Strangers". In the introduction to Starting With I, an anthology of stories from the magazine, Danticat wrote, "When I was done with the [immigration] piece, I felt that my story was unfinished, so I wrote a short story, which later became a book, my first novel: Breath, Eyes, Memory...Writing for New Youth Connections had given me a voice. My silence was destroyed completely, indefinitely."[6]
After graduating from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, Danticat entered Barnard College in New York City where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1990.[7] Initially she had intended to study to become a nurse, but her love of writing won out and she received a BA in French literature.[8] She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Brown University in 1993.[8]
Career
In 1993, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Brown University—her thesis, entitled "My turn in the fire – an abridged novel",[9] was the basis for her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, which was published by Soho Press in 1994.[8] Four years later it became an Oprah's Book Club selection.[10]
The literary journal Granta asked booksellers, librarians, and literary critics to nominate who they believed to be the country's best young author. The standards were that the person must be an American citizen under the age of 40 and must have published at least one novel or collection of short stories before May 31, 1995. In 1997, at the age of 27, with 19 other finalists, Danticat was named one of the country's best young authors.[11]
Since completing her MFA, Danticat has taught creative writing at the New York University and the University of Miami.[12] She has also worked with filmmakers Patricia Benoit and Jonathan Demme, on projects on Haitian art and documentaries about Haïti.[1] Her short stories have appeared in over 25 periodicals and have been anthologized several times. Her work has been translated into numerous other languages, including Japanese, French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Danticat is a strong advocate for issues affecting Haitians abroad and at home. In 2009, she lent her voice and words to Poto Mitan: Haitian Women Pillars of the Global Economy, a documentary about the impact of globalization on five women from different generations.[13]
Personal life
Danticat married Fedo Boyer in 2002. She has two daughters, Mira and Leila.[8] Although Danticat resides in the United States, she still considers Haiti home. To date, she still visits Haiti from time to time and has always felt as if she never left it.[14]
Themes
Danticat speaks in 2019
Three themes are prominent in various analyses of Edwidge Danticat's work: national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics.
National identity
Scholars of Danticat's work frequently examine the theme of national identity. In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat explores the relationship between women and the nationalist agenda of the state [i] during the Duvalier regime. Throughout the novel, as generations of women "test" their daughters, by penetrating their vaginas with a finger to confirm their virginity, they "become enforcers," or proxies, of the state's "violence and victimization" of black women's bodies (376–377) [i], similar to the paramilitary Tonton Macoutes. However, while the women of Breath, Eyes, Memory replicate "state-sanctioned" control and violation of women's bodies through acts of violence (375), they also "disrupt and challenge the masculinist, nationalist discourse" of the state by using their bodies "as deadly weapons" (387) [i]. Evidence for this claim can be drawn from Martine's suicide, seen as a tragic exhibition of freedom, releasing her body, and mind, from its past traumas [i]. Additionally, the novel demonstrates some inherent difficulties of creating a diasporic identity, as illustrated through Sophie's struggle between uniting herself with her heritage and abandoning what she perceives to be the damaging tradition of 'testing,' suggesting the impossibility of creating a resolute creolized personhood [ii]. Finally, Danticat's work, The Farming of Bones, speaks to the stories of those who survived the 1937 massacre, and the effects of that trauma on Haitian identity [iv]. Overall, Danticat makes known the history of her nation while also diversifying conceptions of the country beyond those of victimization [iii].
Mother-daughter relationships
Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory explores the centrality of the mother-daughter relationship to self-identity and self-expression [v]. Sophie's experiences mirror those of her mother's Martine. Just as Martine was forced to submit to a virginity test at the hand of her own mother, she forces the same on Sophie after discovering her relationship with Joseph. As a result, Sophie goes through a period of self- hate, ashamed to show anyone her body, including her husband (80) [viii]. Sophie's struggles to overcome frigidity in relation to intimacy with her husband Joseph, as well as her bulimia parallels Martine's struggle bear a child with Marc to term, as well her insomnia, and detrimental eating habits (61–62) [v]. Due to Martine's rape by a Tonton Macoute and Sophie's abuse by her mother, "each woman must come to terms with herself before she can enter into a healthy relationship with a man, and these men attempt to meet these women on the latter's own terms" (68) [vi]. The pinnacle of this mirroring comes when Sophie chooses to be her mother's Marassa, a double of herself for her mother, to share the pain, the trials and the tribulations, the ultimate connection: to become one with her mother. Marassas represent "sameness and love" as one, they are "inseparable and identical. They love each other because they are alike and always together" [vii]. This connection between Sophie and her mother Martine has also been challenged through Sophie's own connection with her daughter Brigitte: "Martine's totally nihilistic unwillingness to begin again with the draining responsibilities of motherhood comments upon and stands in stark contrast to Sophie's loving desire to bring her daughter Brigitte into the welcoming" (79) [viii]
Diasporic politics
Scholars agree that Danticat manages her relationship with her Haitian history and her bicultural identity through her works by creating a new space within the political sphere. In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat employs the "idea of mobile traditions" as a means of creating new space for Haitian identity in America, one that is neither a "happy hybridity" nor an "unproblematic creolization" of Flatbush Brooklyn (28) [ix]. Danticat's open reference to and acceptance of her Caribbean predecessors, especially through the "grand narratives of the dead iconic fathers of Haitian literature," creates a "new community [...] in luminal extra-national spaces" that "situates her narrative" in a place that is neither "absolute belonging" nor "postcolonial placelessness" (34) [ix]. Suggestive of the Haitian literary movement Indigenism, in which works sought to connect to the land of Haiti and the "plight of the peasant class" (55) [x], Sophie's complex reality in Breath, Eyes, Memory encapsulates the transnational experience (61) [x]. Translations of Breath, Eyes, Memory, especially those in France, contain slight alterations and "clumsy" replacement of creol/Caribbean terms that shift the empowered stance of Danticat's works to one of victimization, mirroring the fight authors face for a new political space in which dual Caribbean identity is accepted (68) [x]. Danticat's short story cycles in Krik? Krak! demonstrate "a symbolic weaving together" of her works and the transnational communities, including "Haitians, immigrants, women, [and] mothers and daughters," that she attempts to unite (75) [xi]. Through her "voicing the intersubjective experience of a community," Danticat distinguishes herself from other Haitian prose authors (73, 76) [xi]. She creates a space for the "voicelessness" of those unable to "speak their individual experience" (76) [xi]. Danticat's short stories uphold an undivided experience, one that politically aligns itself with an "egalitarian regime of rights and the rule of law" (81) [xi]. The political space in which such a single experience can exist is the means through which Danticat's transnational identity and her characters can survive.
Another work of Danticat's is her travel narrative After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (2002). She believes it provides readers with an inside look and feel of Haiti's cultural legacy, practices related to Lent, its Carnival, and the Haitian Revolution. She embarks on a journey through her work to recover the lost cultural markers of Haiti while also being marked by the Haitian geopolitical privilege and by her own privilege of mobility.[15] Due to her active traveling privilege, she considered herself an "outsider" of Jacmel even though she did originate from Haiti. She explains: "This is the first time I will be an active reveler at carnival in Haiti. I am worried that such an admission would appear strange for someone whom carnival is one of life's passions...As a child living in Haiti...I had never been allowed to 'join the carnival' ... it was considered not safe for me...Since I had an intense desire to join the carnival as some peculiar American children have of joining the circus, my uncle for years spun frightening tales around it to keep me away." She said in her narrative of going back to Jacmel, "I was still wearing my own mask of distant observer." Because of this, she advises her reader to look observe her work from the perspective of a diasporic returnee rather than of an insider.[16]
Awards and honors
Danticat has won fiction awards from Essence and Seventeen magazines, was named "1 of 20 people in their twenties who will make a difference" in Harper's Bazaar,[17] was featured in The New York Times Magazine as one of "30 under 30" people to watch,[1][17] and was called one of the "15 Gutsiest Women of the Year" by Jane magazine.[17]
1994 Fiction Award The Caribbean Writer
1995 Woman of Achievement Award, Barnard College
Pushcart Short Story Prize for "Between the Pool and the Gardenias"
National Book Award nomination for Krik? Krak!
1996 Granta magazine's Best Young American Novelists[18]
Lila-Wallace-Reader's Digest Grant
1999 American Book Award for The Farming of Bones
The International Flaiano Prize for literature
The Super Flaiano Prize for The Farming of Bones
2005 The Story Prize for The Dew Breaker
2005 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award[19] for "The Dew Breaker"
2007 National Book Award nomination for Brother, I'm Dying
2007 The National Book Critics Circle Award for Brother, I'm Dying
2008 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Brother, I'm Dying
2009 MacArthur Fellows Program Genius grant
2009 The Nicolas Guillen Philosophical Literature Prize, Caribbean Philosophical Association
2011 Langston Hughes Medal, City College of New York
2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for Create Dangerously
2012 Smith College Honorary Degree
2013 Yale University Honorary Degree[20]
2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, shortlist for Claire of the Sea Light[21]
2014 PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Award
2017 Honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) degree from the University of the West Indies Open Campus[22][23]
2017 Neustadt International Prize for Literature[24]
2019 National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction) winner for Everything Inside[25]
2020 The Story Prize for Everything Inside [26]
2020 Vilcek Foundation Prize in Literature[27]
Critical reception
Edwidge Danticat is an author, creator and participant in multiple forms of storytelling. The New York Times has remarked on Danticat's ability to create a “moving portrait and a vivid illustration” as an “accomplished novelist and memoirist”. The New Yorker has featured Danticat's short stories and essays on multiple occasions, and regularly reviews and critiques her work. Her writing is much anthologized, including in 2019's New Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby).[28][29]
Danticat's creative branching out has included filmmaking, short stories, and most recently children’s literature. Mama's Nightingale was written to share the story of Haitian immigrants and family separation. The book combines Danticat's storytelling abilities and work by accomplished artist Leslie Staub. Published in 2015 by Penguin Random House, the children's book tells "a touching tale of parent-child separation and immigration...with stirring illustrations...and shows how every child has the power to make a difference."[30] A review in the New York Times said that Mama's Nightingale "will inspire not just empathy for the struggles of childhood immigration, but admiration" of Danticat and Staub, too.[31]
In other creative pursuits, Danticat has worked on two films, Poto Mitan and Girl Rising. The latter received a large amount of press, largely due to the star power involved with the film (including Anne Hathaway, Chloë Grace Moretz, Liam Neeson, Meryl Streep, Alicia Keys and Kerry Washington). In the film, Danticat was tasked with narrating the story of Wadley from Haiti. Girl Rising was defined by The Washington Post as "a lengthy, highly effective PSA designed to kickstart a commitment to getting proper education for all young women, all over the globe".[32]
In Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, Danticat tells her own story as a part of the Haitian diaspora. Create Dangerously was inspired by author Albert Camus's lecture "Create Dangerously" and his experience as an author and creator who defined his art as "a revolt against everything fleeting and unfinished in the world".[33] In Create Dangerously, Danticat is admired for "writing about tragedies and vanished cultures" and how "she accepts that by some accident she exists and has the power to create, so she does."[34] NPR positively reviewed Create Dangerously and the journey through "looming loss [which] makes every detail and person to whom we are introduced more luminous and precious."[35] It was chosen by The University of Kansas as the 2018–19 Common Book, which is distributed to all first-year students at the University.
Danticat published her first novel at the age of 25, and since then has been raved by critics and audience members alike. Some of her most well-known novels include The Dew Breaker, Brother, I'm Dying, Krik? Krak!, and Breath, Eyes, Memory. Each of these novels has won awards including the National Book Award, The Story Prize, and the National Books Critic Circle Award. Danticat usually writes about the different lives of people living in Haiti and the United States, using her own life as inspiration for her novels, typically highlighting themes of violence, class, economic troubles, gender disparities, and family.
The Dew Breaker is a collection of short stories that can either be read together or separately, and detail the intermingled lives of different people in Haiti and New York. Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani said: "Each tale in 'Dew Breaker' can stand on its own beautifully made story, but they come together as jigsaw-puzzle pieces to create a picture of this man's terrible history and his and his victims' afterlife."[36] It was rated four out of five stars by Goodreads. Brother, I'm Dying is an autobiographical novel that tells her story of being in Haiti and moving to the United States, falling in love, and having a child. This is one of Danticat's best-rated books and was named Top-10 African American Non-fiction Books by Booklist in 2008. For Jess Row of the New York Times, it is "giving us a memoir whose cleareyed prose and unflinching adherence to the facts conceal an astringent undercurrent of melancholy, a mixture of homesickness and homelessness".[37] Krik? Krak! is a collection of short stories of women in Haiti, their trials and tribulations, which The Washington Post Book World called: "virtually flawless. If the news from Haiti is too painful to read, read this book instead and understand the place more deeply than you ever thought possible."[38] Finally, Breath, Eyes, Memory was Danticat's first novel. It tells the story of a girl, a child of rape, as she moves from Haiti to New York City and discovering the traumatic experience her mother endured, and many other women did. This book was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in 2008 and also received four out of five stars on Goodreads. Oprah said it had "vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage."[39]
Bibliography
Books
Breath, Eyes, Memory (novel, 1994)
Krik? Krak! (stories, 1996)
The Farming of Bones (novel, 1998)
Behind the Mountains (young adult novel, 2002, part of the First Person Fiction series)
After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (travel book, 2002)
The Dew Breaker (novel-in-stories,2004)
Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 (young adult novel, 2005, part of The Royal Diaries series)
Brother, I'm Dying (memoir/social criticism, 2007)
The Butterfly's Way (anthology editor)
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (essay collection, 2010)
Eight Days: A Story of Haiti (picture book, 2010)
Tent Life: Haiti (essay contributor, 2011)
Haiti Noir (anthology editor, 2011)
Best American Essays, 2011 (anthology editor, October 2011)
The Last Mapou (children's novel, January 2013)
Claire of the Sea Light (novel, August 2013)
Haiti Noir 2: The Classics (anthology editor, January 2014)
Mama's Nightingale (picture book, September, 2015)
Untwine (young adult novel, October 2015)
The Art of Death (biography, July 2017)
My Mommy Medicine (picture book, February 2019)
Everything Inside (stories August 2019)
Short stories
"The Book of the Dead". The New Yorker: 194–. June 21, 1999.
"Ghosts". The New Yorker. 84 (38): 108–113. November 24, 2008. Retrieved April 16, 2009.
"Quality Control". The Washington Post. November 14, 2014. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
Film
Poto Mitan – Writer/Narrator, 2009
Girl Rising (Haiti) – Writer, 2013[40]
References
Jaggi, Maya (November 20, 2004). "Island Memories (Profile: Edwidge Danticat)". The Guardian. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
Adisa, Opal Palmer (2009). "Up Close and Personal: Edwidge Danticat on Haitian Identity and the Writer's Life". African American Review. 43 (2/3): 345–355, here: 346. doi:10.1353/afa.2009.0004 – via Project Muse.
"Behind the Books: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat". Random House. 1998. Archived from the original on November 4, 2008. Retrieved May 13, 2013.
Munro, Martin (October 5, 2010). "Inside Out: A Brief Biography of Edwidge Danticat". In Munro (ed.). Edwidge Danticat: A Reader's Guide. University of Virginia Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780813930732. Retrieved May 13, 2013.
Adisa, Opal Palmer (2009). "Up Close and Personal: Edwidge Danticat on Haitian Identity and the Writer's Life". African American Review. 43 (2/3): 345-355; here: 347-348. doi:10.1353/afa.2009.0004 – via Project Muse.
Andrea Estepa (ed.), Starting with I: Personal Essays by Teenagers, Persea Books, 1997, p. xii.
https://www.pbk.org/Files/Visiting-Scholar/KC-Danticat-Transcript.pdf
Harvey, Charlotte Bruce (January 2011). "Haiti's Storyteller". Brown Alumni Magazine. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
Theses & Dissertations Record from a Brown University website
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat from Oprah Winfrey's official website
"Two Blacks Named Among America's Most Promising Young Novelist", The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 12 (Summer 1996), p. 111.
"Rackstraw Downes – MacArthur Foundation". Macfound.org. January 26, 2009. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
"Haitian women pillars of the global economy". Poto Mitan. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
Adisa, Opal Palmer (2009). "Up Close and Personal: Edwidge Danticat on Haitian Identity and the Writer's Life". African American Review. 43 (2/3): 345–355, here: 345. doi:10.1353/afa.2009.0004 – via Project Muse.
Chancy, M. J. A (2011). "Floating Islands: Spectatorship and the Body Politic in the Traveling Subjectivities of John Edgar Wideman and Edwidge Danticat". Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. 15: 24, 25. doi:10.1215/07990537-1443268.
Chancy (2011). "Floating Islands: Spectatorship and the Body Politic in the Traveling Subjectivities of John Edgar Wideman and Edwidge Danticat". Small Axe. 15: 32, 33. doi:10.1215/07990537-1443268.
Postigo, Daniela (September 21, 2007). "Author Danticat MFA'93 returns to campus for reading". Brown Daily Herald. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
"Best of Young American Novelists" Granta 54, Summer 1996.
"Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards – The 80th Annual".
Hua, Cynthia; Julia Zorthian (May 20, 2013). "University Confers 3,084 Degrees at 312th Commencement". Yale Daily News. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
Hillel Italie (June 30, 2014). "Tartt, Goodwin awarded Carnegie medals". Seattle Times. Associated Press. Retrieved July 1, 2014.
"The UWI to confer 12 honorary degrees at 2017 graduation ceremonies", The University of the West Indies Open Campus.
"The UWI 2017 Honorary Graduands", The University of the West Indies Open Campus.
"Edwidge Danticat is 2018 Winner of Prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature". The Neustadt Prize. November 9, 2017. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
Beth Parker (March 12, 2020). "Announcing the 2019 Award Winners". bookcritics.org. Retrieved March 13, 2020.
"Author Edwidge Danticat wins $20,000 Story Prize". Associated Press. February 26, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
"Edwidge Danticat". Vilcek Foundation. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
Busby, Margaret (March 9, 2019). "From Ayòbámi Adébáyò to Zadie Smith: meet the New Daughters of Africa". The Guardian. London.
Delgado, Anjanette (2019). "New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent". New York Journal of Books.
"Mama's Nightingale". Penguin Random House.
Yelchin, Eugene (August 21, 2015). "'Mama's Nightingale,' by Edwidge Danticat, and More". The New York Times.
Chaney, Jen (April 19, 2013). "'Girl Rising' movie review". The Washington Post.
"Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work". Princeton University Press. 2010.
Halford, Macy (January 6, 2011). "Edwidge Danticat's Dangerous Creation". The New Yorker.
Alvarez, Julia (December 28, 2010). "'Create Dangerously': The Heart And Healing Of Haiti". NPR.
Kakutani, Michiko (March 10, 2004). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Hiding From a Brutal Past Spent Shattering Lives in Haiti". The New York Times.
Row, Jess (September 9, 2007). "Haitian Fathers". The New York Times.
Omang, Joanne (May 14, 1995). "Fiction". The Washington Post.
"Breath, Eyes, Memory". Oprah.com. May 22, 1998.
Girl Rising.
Further reading
Alexander, Simone A. James. "M/Othering The Nation: Women's Bodies As Nationalist Trope In Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory." African American Review 44.3 (2011): 373–390.
Bellamy, Maria Rice. "More Than Hunter Or Prey: Duality And Traumatic Memory In Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker." MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 37.1 (2012): 177–197.
Burchell, Eileen. "As My Mother's Daughter: Breath Eyes Memory by Edwidge Danticat". Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender. Fisher, J., & E. Silber (eds). Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2003
Counihan, Clare. "Desiring Diaspora: 'Testing' The Boundaries Of National Identity In Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory". Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 37 (2012): 36–52.
Dash, J. Michael. "Danticat and Her Haitian Precursors." Edwidge Danticat: A Reader's Guide. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2010. 26–38. Print.
Hewitt, Heather. "At the Crossroads: Disability and Trauma in The Farming of Bones." MELUS. 31.3 (2006): 123–145. Print.
Machado Sáez, Elena (2015), "Dictating Diaspora: Gendering Postcolonial Violence in Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat", Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-8139-3705-2
Marouan, M. (2013). Witches, Goddesses, and Angry Spirits: The politics of spiritual liberation in African diaspora women's fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Martin, W. Todd. "'Naming' Sebastian: Celebrating Men in Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones." Atenea (AteneaPR) 28.1 (2008): 65–74. Web. MLA. University of Maryland, College Park Lib., College Park, MD, October 24, 2013
Nesbitt, Nick. "Diasporic Politics: Danticat's Short Works." Edwidge Danticat: A Reader's Guide. Ed. Martin Munro. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2010. 73–85. Print
Rosello, Mireile. "Marassa With A Difference". Edwidge Danticat: A Reader's Guide. Munro, Martin, ed. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010
Samway, Patrick, S. J. "A Homeward Journey: Edwidge Danticat's Fictional Landscapes, Mindscapes, Genescapes, and Signscapes in Breath, Eyes, Memory". The Journal of Southern Cultures 57.1 (2003–2004 Winter): 75–83. Mississippi Quarterly. Web. MLA. University of Maryland, College Park Libraries, College Park, MD, October 24, 2013
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Edwidge Danticat
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edwidge Danticat.
Appearances on C-SPAN
Edwidge Danticat interview on Democracy Now!, video, audio, and print transcript, October 5, 2007.
Novelist on "The Immigrant Artist at Work" – video interview by Democracy Now!
Haitian-American Novelist Predicts "Ongoing Disaster" in Impoverished Haiti After Hurricane Matthew
Edwidge Danticat by Garnett Cadogan for BOMB Magazine
この作家について調べてみました。diaspora identityが主なテーマですね。
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwidge_Danticat
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A8%E3%83%89%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B8%E3%83%BB%E3%83%80%E3%83%B3%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%82%AB
Everything Inside
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Everything Inside
by Edwidge Danticat
3.93 · Rating details · 2,835 ratings · 425 reviews
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love.
Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.
In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.
This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart—a master at her best. (less)
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Hardcover, 224 pages
Published August 27th 2019 by Knopf Publishing Group
Original TitleEverything Inside: Stories
ISBN0525521275 (ISBN13: 9780525521273)
Edition LanguageEnglishSettingMiami, Florida (United States)
Port-au-Prince (Haiti)
Haiti
Literary AwardsNational Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2019)
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Roxane
Feb 01, 2020Roxane rated it really liked it
I really enjoyed these stories. They are quiet and careful and every story has a breathtaking moment that is perfectly written. The narrators were particularly interesting, each one grappling with a sense of displacement, of standing apart from the rest of the world. There is also a weariness in many of these stories as women surrender to forces beyond the control. These stories gave me a lot to think about.
Danticat remains one of our finest writers.
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Diane S ☔
Aug 05, 2019Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it
Shelves: lor-2019
I just adore Danticat and her writing. She zeroes in on those torn between Haiti and their homes in the US. Families and death, scars inside or out, living with what they've seen in the past or experienced in the present when visiting Haiti. Things that have changed their lives, in big or small ways. Emotions they carry inside themselves.
Eight stories and I loved them all. Some were more intense than others, but many seem to hinge on a decision that they either make on the spot or have made in the past. The author has such an insight into families and of course into Haiti, its current political climate and its past. Her stories are always interesting and give one a glimpse into a cou try that many don't know about.
ARC from Edelweiss. (less)
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Michael Finocchiaro
Apr 01, 2020Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing
Shelves: fiction, short-stories, american-21st-c, pulitzer-2020-shortlist
Everything Inside is a beautiful book of 8 short stories about Haïtian people in varying degrees of distress due to violence, diaspora, and broken hearts. Each story is equally poignant talking about displacement for immigrants to Brooklyn and Miami. I grew up in Miami and recall the arrival of boats from Haïti during the two Duvalier regimes (described in the final story "Without Inspection"). I did not live near Little Haïti however and only came into rare contact with these refugees. Nevertheless, their stories always moved me, so much so that in my junior year in high school, I took a trip with a friend's church which showed us most of the western coast of the island and featured a week (or was it 10 days?) on the smaller island of La Gonave. The countryside that Danticat describes in "Seven Stories" matches perfectly with my visual and olfactory memories of that fateful trip. I enjoyed "Dosas", the first story, with its twist at the end. In fact, all of the stories are rich in Creole culture and a true pleasure to read.
A few quotes to whet your appetites:
Dosas
From her experience working with the weak and the sick, she’d learned that the disease you ignore is the one that kills you, so she tried her best to have everything out in the open.
My father no longer looked like he was sleeping. A sliver of white was visible through his half-open left eyelid. A veiled world remained hidden behind that small gap, a world I had never been privy to, a world I’d never know. In the old days, coins might have been placed over his eyes to keep me from seeing even this much of the windows to his soul.
The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special
This is in part a guide and hotelier’s job. If guests show up hungry, you feed them. If they want drink, you ply them. If they want to be left alone, you make yourself scarce. If they want company, you entertain. If they are lovelorn, you find them love. And if they show up sick, you find them treatment quickly before they expire on your watch.
I knew what she was thinking. These half-assed outsiders, these no-longer-fully-Haitian, almost-blan, foreigner-type people, these dyaspora with their mushy thinking, why does it all come back to one kind of love with them, the kind of love you keep talking about rather than the kind of love that shatters you to pieces? Don’t these die-ass-poor-aahs, these dyaspowa and dyasporèn, these outside-minded kings and queens, know that there are many other ways to show love than to be constantly talking about it?
Hot Air Ballons
“I am too easily swayed by every story I hear, or see, or witness, especially the tragic ones,” she said. “I think this is going to be the story of my life. I’m going to be the girl who is too easily swayed by other people’s stories.” “I think you’re going to be the girl who helps other people,” I said. “A Mother Teresa type.”
The Tainos [a Caribbean native tribe indigenous to Haïti and nearby islands] believed themselves to have originally been cave people who would turn into stone when touched by sunlight. They knew the risk when they stepped into the light, but they did it anyway in order to create a new world, a world that continues to exist, because we are still here. I thought that the next time we were chatting while half-asleep, I might tell Neah that story. In the meantime, while she was still asleep, I lowered my right wrist to the crevice between her breasts and let it rest there for a moment. And briefly, very briefly, my pain and hers embraced.
Sunrise, Sunset
Doesn’t she realize that the life she is living is an accident of fortune? Doesn’t she know that she is an exception in this world, where it is normal to be unhappy, to be hungry, to work nonstop and earn next to nothing, and to suffer the whims of everything from tyrants to hurricanes and earthquakes?
Sometimes you just have to shake the devil off you, whatever that devil is. Even if you don’t feel like living for yourself, you have to start living for your child, for your children.
It would be appropriate, if only she could make herself believe that this is what her daughter is actually doing. It would be a fitting close to her family life, or at least to life with her children. You are always saying hello to them while preparing them to say goodbye to you. You are always dreading the separations, while cheering them on, to get bigger, smarter, to crawl, babble, walk, speak, to have birthdays that you hope you’ll live to see, that you pray they’ll live to see. Jeanne will now know what it’s like to live that way, to have a part of yourself walking around unattached to you, and to love that part so much that you sometimes feel as though you were losing your mind.
Seven Stories
She pointed to some coils of light winding their way throughout the city. They were people, hundreds of them, dressed in white and carrying candles as they walked toward the port and the sea. “It’s called a shedding,” she said. “As you walk to the sea, you shed from both your body and spirit all the awful things that have happened to you in the previous year.”
On Three Kings’ Eve, my parents used to make me leave my shoes by my bedroom door for an angel to fill with rolls of hair ribbons while I slept. Before I went to sleep, they would tell me about a bad decision made by this angel, who they said looked like whoever is the most beautiful woman I know. This angel had been asked by the Three Kings to join them on their journey to bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the baby Jesus, and for some reason, she had turned them down. The angel regrets her decision to this day, my mother said, which is why she brings small presents to children on the eve of Three Kings’ Day. After we met, I wanted to be her angel and give Callie all my ribbons. Somehow I sensed that something about her needed to be bundled and held tight. Maybe she still needed to be bundled and held tight. Maybe that’s why she’d held on to those ribbons for so long.
Without Inspection
There are loves that outlive lovers. Some version of these words had been his prayer as he fell. Darline would now have two of those. He would also have two: Darline and Paris. He would keep trying to look for them. He would continue to hum along with Darline’s song, and keep whispering in Paris’s ear. He would also try to guide Darline back to the beach, to look for others like him.
My List of 2020 Pulitzer Candidates: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
My blog about the 2020 Pulitzer: https://wp.me/phAoN-19m (less)
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Anna Luce
Oct 02, 2019Anna Luce rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: ebooks, audiobooks, favourite-relationships, 2019-reviews, favourites, my-feelings, loved-it, novellas-and-short-stories, audiobooks-i-own, poignant-reads
★★★★✰ 4.5 stars
“The difference between her and them was as stark as the gulf between those who’d escaped a catastrophe unscathed and others who’d been forever mutilated by it.”
This was such a wonderful and poignant collection of short stories.
In a interview on LitHub Edwige Danticat said that one of the reasons why she loves the short story form is that it allows her “to magnify smaller moments and to linger on these small epiphanies in the smaller interactions that mean so much”, and indeed each one of her stories seems to prolong a particular moment in her characters' lives.
Given the brevity of her stories Danticat doesn't wast any words. And yet, while her writing could be described as both economic and simple, her prose also demonstrated a richness of expression that resonated with the feelings and scenarios experienced by her characters.
Through the wide range of her narratives Danticat examines similar themes in very different ways. Within her stories Danticat navigates the way in which bonds are tested, broken, or strengthened in times of crisis. Most of Danticat's narratives are concerned in particular with the diasporic experiences of Haitians in America, and she emphasises the feelings of longing, loneliness, and disconnect faced by those who are seen as 'other' in a poignant yet matter of fact way. They are never reduced to the status of 'outsider', nor are they completely united by their heritage, as each one of them has a distinctive voice and a particular relationships with the countries they inhabit.
With seeming ease Danticat imbues her characters with their own history and personality, so that within a few pages we would feel as if we'd know them personally, so much so that to define them as characters seems almost an injustice.
Within these narratives the ordinary moments that make up everyday life can carry both enlightening and tragic overtones. These stories centre on the characters' anxieties, hopes, and fears they may harbour for themselves or their loved ones.
In “Dosas” Elsie, a nurse’s assistant, is betrayed by her husband and her own best friend. Months later her now ex-husband calls her and begs her to help pay the ransom for his kidnapped girlfriend, who happens to be Elsie's former friend. His increasingly desperate calls threaten to disrupt the course of her life.
In “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special” a woman who has returned to Haiti to run a hotel with her husband is confronted with her own privilege when her young nanny is diagnosed with AIDS; the woman has to reconcile herself with her own misjudgement regarding her nanny's mother and with her preference for a white doctor over a local one.
In “Hot-Air Balloons” we observe the bond between two young women, one of which has started to work for Leve a women's organisation in which she witnesses the most brutal aspects of humanity. Still, even when we are presented with these stark accounts of abuse or suffering the story maintains a sense of hope in the genuine relationship between these two women.
Another story that examines the bond between two women is “Seven Stories”. After publishing a short story a writer is contacted by her childhood friend Callie, the daughter of the prime minister of an unnamed island. After her father's assassination Callie was forced to flee from the island and years later our narrator is invited by her friend who has by now married the island’s new prime minister.
“I didn’t have to think too much about this. I already knew. I am the girl—the woman—who is always going to be looking for stability, a safe harbor. I am never going to forget that I can easily lose everything I have, including my life, in one instant. But this is not what I told her. I told her that I was going to be the kind of friend she could always count on.”
The characters in Danticat's stories are often confronted with impossible choices. Within their realities they are forced to contend against betrayal, illnesses, the devastating earthquake of 2010, medical malpractice, kidnappings, and the risks that come with being 'undocumented'. They are made vulnerable by their status or haunted by the knowledge that the world can be a terrible place. Still, while there were many moments of unease, the stories always maintain a vibrancy that made them hard to put down. Her characters demonstrated empathy, love, and compassion so that her stories never felt bleak or hopeless.
I can't recommend this collection enough. These stories were both upsetting and moving, and within each narrative we follow how a certain 'change' forces each character to reassess their own existence. The crisis they experience are depicted with subtlety and consideration. Danticat interrogates serious themes (identity, mortality, grief) whilst focusing on ordinary moments. Phone conversations and dinners become the backdrop for larger debates. Her narratives illuminate the complexities faced by those who are born, or raised, in a country that is now in crisis.
A heart-rendering collection of stories that provided me with a lot food for thought and which I will be definitely reading again.
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BookOfCinz
Aug 12, 2019BookOfCinz rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2019-reads, readcaribbean, short-stories, boc-bookclub, cant-shut-up-about-this, re-reads, caribbean-books, bookofcinzshelf, loved
Updated October 2019
Everything Inside is the BookOfCinz Book Club pick for October and the first short stories collection we have ever read. In re-reading this collection I feel in love with all the characters and their stories- definitely a must read!
August 2019
Everything Inside is a strong collection of stories filled with complex characters, all dealing with major issues, trying to navigate life with Haiti being sometimes at the center of the narrative. I am such a fan of Danticat's writing, and I found myself being immersed in this collection and the lives of the people represented on the pages.
With eight stories in the collection, it is hard to zone in on one that truly floored me, because every single one of these stories I rated either 4 or 5. Danticat knows Haiti and I know when I pick up her book, I will be longing for a place I have never visited. The stories explore immigration, family life, relationships, poverty, courage and shame. These stories are explored in a such a real way and vulnerable way.
I particularly liked Dosas, The Port-Au-Prince Marriage Special, The Gift and Seven Stories These stories really moved me because of the topics explored and how complex the characters were. From the young privilege Haitian who wants move to Haiti and help change the country, to the mistress trying to rekindle her affair with her lover who lost his child and wife to the earthquake.... Truly an amazing collection of stories that will stick with you.
Thanks Knopf for this ARC. (less)
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Dan
Mar 17, 2019Dan rated it really liked it
I pick up an Edwidge Danticat book to dive deeply into quiet, painful emotions endured bravely and this latest collection delivers on that expectation marvelously. Loss and reconciliation haunt every page, and while not as gut-wrenching as, say, her memoir Brother, I'm Dying, the eight stories presented here all leave you wounded in the best possible way.
Danticat's true genius is in the way she hold back information without it feeling like a gimmick. This technique is at its best in what is perhaps my favorite story in the whole collection, "The Gift," which recounts the tale of two former lovers reuniting in the wake of the tragic Haitian earthquake. I won't spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that the stakes shift dramatically throughout. The rest of the stories do a version of this as well. We meet ghosts and travel to unnamed islands seeped in personal and national tragedy; parents and children do their timeless dance of support and neglect; death plays a large role. In each instance, the core of the experience is buried, only to be elegantly unfolded after Danticat has acclimated the reader to the quotidian circumstances present in each story. It's in this way that with Everything Inside Danticat seems to be arguing that the most important moments aren't the marquee ones—the ones that we'll recount for years to come. Real life happens around those moments, and it's these quieter moments that we—and the characters throughout this collection—have to learn to inhabit and endure.
Still, some of the stories seemed to keep their distance, which made it difficult for me to fully connect. At times, I wanted to see a little more vulnerability from the various protagonists and a little less stoicism in the face of unimaginable tragedy. A lot of these stories occupy the space of a recent tragedy, and that's always going to be a tough spot to write about. I'd liked to revisit these characters a few years down the line to see what they've learned in the interim and how they've changed. Overall, though, I greatly enjoyed this collection and can't wait to recommend it to all my friends.
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kelly
Sep 29, 2019kelly rated it it was amazing
Shelves: african-american, fiction, short-stories, five-star-books, 2019
I've said this and I'll say it again: short story collections are usually hit or miss for me. Although I love the genre, I always end up liking some, none, or most of the stories therein. This collection is an exception to the "some, none, and most" rule, as every single story here is a literary achievement.
I've read just about everything Edwidge Danticat has written, from "Krik? Krak!" to "The Dew Breaker" to "Breathe, Eyes, Memory" and everything in between. "Everything Inside"is a wonderful collection of eight short stories, all featuring characters from the Haitian diaspora living in Miami. Her characters deal with death, love, and loss and their lives are complicated. Each story is well written and thought out, with beautiful language that leaps off the page.
Favorites here include "Dosas," a story of romantic entanglement and betrayal featuring a husband, wife, and a female lover; "In the Old Days," about a woman who meets her dying father for the first time, and "Without Inspection," a harrowing tale that narrates a Haitian emigre's final thoughts as he falls 40 stories from a building to his death.
Five stars. Hands up, way way up. (less)
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全米批評家協会賞
小説部門受賞作!
異郷に暮らしながら、故国を想いつづける人びとの、愛と喪失の物語。
四半世紀にわたり、アメリカ文学の中心で、ひとりの移民女性としてリリカルで静謐な物語をつむぐ、ハイチ系作家の最新作品集、その円熟の境地。
「記念日というのは、この本の地震についての話「贈り物」のアニカとトマスの物語からもわかるように、ときにつらいものです。
悲しい記念日は、かつて存在した人や物の不在を大きく膨らませます。この本に収めた短編小説の多くは不在についてのものですが、愛についてのものでもあります。ロマンティックな愛、家族の愛、国への愛、そして他のタイプの厄介で複雑な愛などです。私はその物語の筋をここで明かしたくはありません。それはぜひ、どうぞ、みなさんご自身で見つけだしてください。
ここにあるのは、八つの――願わくは読者の方々にとって魅力的な――短編小説です。
私は今、みなさんを、いくつかの独自(ユニーク)な、愛に突き動かされた冒険(アドベンチャー)へと喜んでお迎えいたします。」――エドウィージ・ダンティカ「日本の読者への手紙」より
amazou@karakuchi
ベスト500レビュアー
5つ星のうち5.0 短編小説「七つの物語」に感動
2020年7月14日に日本でレビュー済み
本書には、八つの短編小説が収められています。
八つの短編の中には、『すべて内なるものは』というタイトルはありません。
「すべて内なるものは」という言葉は、いったいどこから？
『すべて内なるものは』の原題は、『Everything Inside』
『すべて内なるものは』とは、不思議なタイトルです。意味が気になります。
哀しい記憶はすべて女性の心の中に秘めて、近く夫となる男性にも未だ話せていないとは！
哀しすぎる歴史の話「七つの物語」。
八つの短編小説の中では、「七つの物語」という作品に注目しました。
「友人がいちばん好きな時間は、彼女が父親とよくしていた『七つの物語』遊びをするときだった。私たちが生きてきた七年間の、それぞれの年から重要な瞬間をひとつずつ挙げるのだ」（197頁）
「七つの物語」というのは、子どもの「遊び」の名前だったのです。
「七つの物語」ごっこ。それぞれの一年間について、ひとつずつの物語を挙げる遊び。
七歳の子どもには、「七つの物語」があるというわけ。
歳が増えれば、歳の数だけ、物語が増えていく。人生。
「七つの物語」という短編小説には、七歳の少女ふたり（キャリーと「私」）が
亡命先のニューヨークで一緒に過ごしたひと月間の話から始まります。
そして、島国に帰国した少女キャリーが成人して
彼女の結婚式に「私」を島に招待するまでのことが描かれます。
さらに、「七つの物語」は、結婚した後まで続いていく、完結していない話です。
結局、「七つの物語」は、このあと、いったい、いくつの物語になっていくのでしょう？
深い余韻を後に残す短編小説です。
「七つの物語」に登場する、もう一つの「セブン」は、
作家の「私」キンバリー・ボイエが書いたエッセイのタイトル「７（セブン）」
「７（セブン）
キンバリー・ボイエ作」（193頁）
「あなたのエッセイ『セブン』の最後に」（203頁）
この短編小説「七つの物語」は、数字の「７」にこだわります。
「７」が何度も何度も出てきます。トラウマのように。
「なんといっても私たちは、七歳のとき以来会っていないのだから」（190頁）
「キャリーの父親のチャールズ・モリセットはこの島の最も有名な首相であったが、キャリーが七歳のときに護衛の一人によって暗殺された」（191頁）
「キャリーと私は七歳のころは同じくらいの背丈だった」（192頁）
「七歳のときの彼女はたいていは英語を話していて」（192頁）
「七歳のときに＜彼は（太字）＞何をしていたのだろう」（193頁）
「七年目、父さんが死んだ」（198頁）
「そのときまで私は、自分の生きてきた七年間のことをそんなに考えたことはなかった」（198頁）
「七年目、キャリー・モリセットが来て、泣きながら私の生活に入ってきた……」（198頁）
その「七年目」の物語について、キャリーは「私」に、そのとき島から脱出できたわけを告げる。
「母さんに航空券と搭乗のために書類をくれた男」（232頁）のすさまじい話を。
キャリーの人生を変えてしまった悲惨な物語です。
「『わかったでしょう』彼女は私に告げた。『完結している話など、ないのよ』」（233頁）
そう、キャリーは「私」に七年目＜以降＞の物語について告げたのです。
これから結婚した後まで続いていく、完結していない話。
いったい、いくつの物語になることでしょう。
「『母さんは私のためにとても苦しんだの』彼女がつけ加えた。『だから私は子どもを作らない。グレッグは欲しがっているけど、私は絶対にいや』彼女は首をかしげて腕を組んだ。『私は絶対に子どもを持ちたくない』彼女は言った。『じきに彼に話さなければならないわ』」（228頁）
哀しい結末の物語。
哀しい記憶に苛まれる人生の物語でした。
もっと少なく読む
1人のお客様がこれが役に立ったと考えています
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Everything Inside
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Everything Inside
by Edwidge Danticat
3.93 · Rating details · 2,835 ratings · 425 reviews
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love.
Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.
In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.
This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart—a master at her best. (less)
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Hardcover, 224 pages
Published August 27th 2019 by Knopf Publishing Group
Original TitleEverything Inside: Stories
ISBN0525521275 (ISBN13: 9780525521273)
Edition LanguageEnglishSettingMiami, Florida (United States)
Port-au-Prince (Haiti)
Haiti
Literary AwardsNational Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2019)
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Roxane
Feb 01, 2020Roxane rated it really liked it
I really enjoyed these stories. They are quiet and careful and every story has a breathtaking moment that is perfectly written. The narrators were particularly interesting, each one grappling with a sense of displacement, of standing apart from the rest of the world. There is also a weariness in many of these stories as women surrender to forces beyond the control. These stories gave me a lot to think about.
Danticat remains one of our finest writers.
flag184 likes · Like · comment · see review
Diane S ☔
Aug 05, 2019Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it
Shelves: lor-2019
I just adore Danticat and her writing. She zeroes in on those torn between Haiti and their homes in the US. Families and death, scars inside or out, living with what they've seen in the past or experienced in the present when visiting Haiti. Things that have changed their lives, in big or small ways. Emotions they carry inside themselves.
Eight stories and I loved them all. Some were more intense than others, but many seem to hinge on a decision that they either make on the spot or have made in the past. The author has such an insight into families and of course into Haiti, its current political climate and its past. Her stories are always interesting and give one a glimpse into a cou try that many don't know about.
ARC from Edelweiss. (less)
flag78 likes · Like · see review
Michael Finocchiaro
Apr 01, 2020Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing
Shelves: fiction, short-stories, american-21st-c, pulitzer-2020-shortlist
Everything Inside is a beautiful book of 8 short stories about Haïtian people in varying degrees of distress due to violence, diaspora, and broken hearts. Each story is equally poignant talking about displacement for immigrants to Brooklyn and Miami. I grew up in Miami and recall the arrival of boats from Haïti during the two Duvalier regimes (described in the final story "Without Inspection"). I did not live near Little Haïti however and only came into rare contact with these refugees. Nevertheless, their stories always moved me, so much so that in my junior year in high school, I took a trip with a friend's church which showed us most of the western coast of the island and featured a week (or was it 10 days?) on the smaller island of La Gonave. The countryside that Danticat describes in "Seven Stories" matches perfectly with my visual and olfactory memories of that fateful trip. I enjoyed "Dosas", the first story, with its twist at the end. In fact, all of the stories are rich in Creole culture and a true pleasure to read.
A few quotes to whet your appetites:
Dosas
From her experience working with the weak and the sick, she’d learned that the disease you ignore is the one that kills you, so she tried her best to have everything out in the open.
My father no longer looked like he was sleeping. A sliver of white was visible through his half-open left eyelid. A veiled world remained hidden behind that small gap, a world I had never been privy to, a world I’d never know. In the old days, coins might have been placed over his eyes to keep me from seeing even this much of the windows to his soul.
The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special
This is in part a guide and hotelier’s job. If guests show up hungry, you feed them. If they want drink, you ply them. If they want to be left alone, you make yourself scarce. If they want company, you entertain. If they are lovelorn, you find them love. And if they show up sick, you find them treatment quickly before they expire on your watch.
I knew what she was thinking. These half-assed outsiders, these no-longer-fully-Haitian, almost-blan, foreigner-type people, these dyaspora with their mushy thinking, why does it all come back to one kind of love with them, the kind of love you keep talking about rather than the kind of love that shatters you to pieces? Don’t these die-ass-poor-aahs, these dyaspowa and dyasporèn, these outside-minded kings and queens, know that there are many other ways to show love than to be constantly talking about it?
Hot Air Ballons
“I am too easily swayed by every story I hear, or see, or witness, especially the tragic ones,” she said. “I think this is going to be the story of my life. I’m going to be the girl who is too easily swayed by other people’s stories.” “I think you’re going to be the girl who helps other people,” I said. “A Mother Teresa type.”
The Tainos [a Caribbean native tribe indigenous to Haïti and nearby islands] believed themselves to have originally been cave people who would turn into stone when touched by sunlight. They knew the risk when they stepped into the light, but they did it anyway in order to create a new world, a world that continues to exist, because we are still here. I thought that the next time we were chatting while half-asleep, I might tell Neah that story. In the meantime, while she was still asleep, I lowered my right wrist to the crevice between her breasts and let it rest there for a moment. And briefly, very briefly, my pain and hers embraced.
Sunrise, Sunset
Doesn’t she realize that the life she is living is an accident of fortune? Doesn’t she know that she is an exception in this world, where it is normal to be unhappy, to be hungry, to work nonstop and earn next to nothing, and to suffer the whims of everything from tyrants to hurricanes and earthquakes?
Sometimes you just have to shake the devil off you, whatever that devil is. Even if you don’t feel like living for yourself, you have to start living for your child, for your children.
It would be appropriate, if only she could make herself believe that this is what her daughter is actually doing. It would be a fitting close to her family life, or at least to life with her children. You are always saying hello to them while preparing them to say goodbye to you. You are always dreading the separations, while cheering them on, to get bigger, smarter, to crawl, babble, walk, speak, to have birthdays that you hope you’ll live to see, that you pray they’ll live to see. Jeanne will now know what it’s like to live that way, to have a part of yourself walking around unattached to you, and to love that part so much that you sometimes feel as though you were losing your mind.
Seven Stories
She pointed to some coils of light winding their way throughout the city. They were people, hundreds of them, dressed in white and carrying candles as they walked toward the port and the sea. “It’s called a shedding,” she said. “As you walk to the sea, you shed from both your body and spirit all the awful things that have happened to you in the previous year.”
On Three Kings’ Eve, my parents used to make me leave my shoes by my bedroom door for an angel to fill with rolls of hair ribbons while I slept. Before I went to sleep, they would tell me about a bad decision made by this angel, who they said looked like whoever is the most beautiful woman I know. This angel had been asked by the Three Kings to join them on their journey to bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the baby Jesus, and for some reason, she had turned them down. The angel regrets her decision to this day, my mother said, which is why she brings small presents to children on the eve of Three Kings’ Day. After we met, I wanted to be her angel and give Callie all my ribbons. Somehow I sensed that something about her needed to be bundled and held tight. Maybe she still needed to be bundled and held tight. Maybe that’s why she’d held on to those ribbons for so long.
Without Inspection
There are loves that outlive lovers. Some version of these words had been his prayer as he fell. Darline would now have two of those. He would also have two: Darline and Paris. He would keep trying to look for them. He would continue to hum along with Darline’s song, and keep whispering in Paris’s ear. He would also try to guide Darline back to the beach, to look for others like him.
My List of 2020 Pulitzer Candidates: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
My blog about the 2020 Pulitzer: https://wp.me/phAoN-19m (less)
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Anna Luce
Oct 02, 2019Anna Luce rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: ebooks, audiobooks, favourite-relationships, 2019-reviews, favourites, my-feelings, loved-it, novellas-and-short-stories, audiobooks-i-own, poignant-reads
★★★★✰ 4.5 stars
“The difference between her and them was as stark as the gulf between those who’d escaped a catastrophe unscathed and others who’d been forever mutilated by it.”
This was such a wonderful and poignant collection of short stories.
In a interview on LitHub Edwige Danticat said that one of the reasons why she loves the short story form is that it allows her “to magnify smaller moments and to linger on these small epiphanies in the smaller interactions that mean so much”, and indeed each one of her stories seems to prolong a particular moment in her characters' lives.
Given the brevity of her stories Danticat doesn't wast any words. And yet, while her writing could be described as both economic and simple, her prose also demonstrated a richness of expression that resonated with the feelings and scenarios experienced by her characters.
Through the wide range of her narratives Danticat examines similar themes in very different ways. Within her stories Danticat navigates the way in which bonds are tested, broken, or strengthened in times of crisis. Most of Danticat's narratives are concerned in particular with the diasporic experiences of Haitians in America, and she emphasises the feelings of longing, loneliness, and disconnect faced by those who are seen as 'other' in a poignant yet matter of fact way. They are never reduced to the status of 'outsider', nor are they completely united by their heritage, as each one of them has a distinctive voice and a particular relationships with the countries they inhabit.
With seeming ease Danticat imbues her characters with their own history and personality, so that within a few pages we would feel as if we'd know them personally, so much so that to define them as characters seems almost an injustice.
Within these narratives the ordinary moments that make up everyday life can carry both enlightening and tragic overtones. These stories centre on the characters' anxieties, hopes, and fears they may harbour for themselves or their loved ones.
In “Dosas” Elsie, a nurse’s assistant, is betrayed by her husband and her own best friend. Months later her now ex-husband calls her and begs her to help pay the ransom for his kidnapped girlfriend, who happens to be Elsie's former friend. His increasingly desperate calls threaten to disrupt the course of her life.
In “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special” a woman who has returned to Haiti to run a hotel with her husband is confronted with her own privilege when her young nanny is diagnosed with AIDS; the woman has to reconcile herself with her own misjudgement regarding her nanny's mother and with her preference for a white doctor over a local one.
In “Hot-Air Balloons” we observe the bond between two young women, one of which has started to work for Leve a women's organisation in which she witnesses the most brutal aspects of humanity. Still, even when we are presented with these stark accounts of abuse or suffering the story maintains a sense of hope in the genuine relationship between these two women.
Another story that examines the bond between two women is “Seven Stories”. After publishing a short story a writer is contacted by her childhood friend Callie, the daughter of the prime minister of an unnamed island. After her father's assassination Callie was forced to flee from the island and years later our narrator is invited by her friend who has by now married the island’s new prime minister.
“I didn’t have to think too much about this. I already knew. I am the girl—the woman—who is always going to be looking for stability, a safe harbor. I am never going to forget that I can easily lose everything I have, including my life, in one instant. But this is not what I told her. I told her that I was going to be the kind of friend she could always count on.”
The characters in Danticat's stories are often confronted with impossible choices. Within their realities they are forced to contend against betrayal, illnesses, the devastating earthquake of 2010, medical malpractice, kidnappings, and the risks that come with being 'undocumented'. They are made vulnerable by their status or haunted by the knowledge that the world can be a terrible place. Still, while there were many moments of unease, the stories always maintain a vibrancy that made them hard to put down. Her characters demonstrated empathy, love, and compassion so that her stories never felt bleak or hopeless.
I can't recommend this collection enough. These stories were both upsetting and moving, and within each narrative we follow how a certain 'change' forces each character to reassess their own existence. The crisis they experience are depicted with subtlety and consideration. Danticat interrogates serious themes (identity, mortality, grief) whilst focusing on ordinary moments. Phone conversations and dinners become the backdrop for larger debates. Her narratives illuminate the complexities faced by those who are born, or raised, in a country that is now in crisis.
A heart-rendering collection of stories that provided me with a lot food for thought and which I will be definitely reading again.
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BookOfCinz
Aug 12, 2019BookOfCinz rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2019-reads, readcaribbean, short-stories, boc-bookclub, cant-shut-up-about-this, re-reads, caribbean-books, bookofcinzshelf, loved
Updated October 2019
Everything Inside is the BookOfCinz Book Club pick for October and the first short stories collection we have ever read. In re-reading this collection I feel in love with all the characters and their stories- definitely a must read!
August 2019
Everything Inside is a strong collection of stories filled with complex characters, all dealing with major issues, trying to navigate life with Haiti being sometimes at the center of the narrative. I am such a fan of Danticat's writing, and I found myself being immersed in this collection and the lives of the people represented on the pages.
With eight stories in the collection, it is hard to zone in on one that truly floored me, because every single one of these stories I rated either 4 or 5. Danticat knows Haiti and I know when I pick up her book, I will be longing for a place I have never visited. The stories explore immigration, family life, relationships, poverty, courage and shame. These stories are explored in a such a real way and vulnerable way.
I particularly liked Dosas, The Port-Au-Prince Marriage Special, The Gift and Seven Stories These stories really moved me because of the topics explored and how complex the characters were. From the young privilege Haitian who wants move to Haiti and help change the country, to the mistress trying to rekindle her affair with her lover who lost his child and wife to the earthquake.... Truly an amazing collection of stories that will stick with you.
Thanks Knopf for this ARC. (less)
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Dan
Mar 17, 2019Dan rated it really liked it
I pick up an Edwidge Danticat book to dive deeply into quiet, painful emotions endured bravely and this latest collection delivers on that expectation marvelously. Loss and reconciliation haunt every page, and while not as gut-wrenching as, say, her memoir Brother, I'm Dying, the eight stories presented here all leave you wounded in the best possible way.
Danticat's true genius is in the way she hold back information without it feeling like a gimmick. This technique is at its best in what is perhaps my favorite story in the whole collection, "The Gift," which recounts the tale of two former lovers reuniting in the wake of the tragic Haitian earthquake. I won't spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that the stakes shift dramatically throughout. The rest of the stories do a version of this as well. We meet ghosts and travel to unnamed islands seeped in personal and national tragedy; parents and children do their timeless dance of support and neglect; death plays a large role. In each instance, the core of the experience is buried, only to be elegantly unfolded after Danticat has acclimated the reader to the quotidian circumstances present in each story. It's in this way that with Everything Inside Danticat seems to be arguing that the most important moments aren't the marquee ones—the ones that we'll recount for years to come. Real life happens around those moments, and it's these quieter moments that we—and the characters throughout this collection—have to learn to inhabit and endure.
Still, some of the stories seemed to keep their distance, which made it difficult for me to fully connect. At times, I wanted to see a little more vulnerability from the various protagonists and a little less stoicism in the face of unimaginable tragedy. A lot of these stories occupy the space of a recent tragedy, and that's always going to be a tough spot to write about. I'd liked to revisit these characters a few years down the line to see what they've learned in the interim and how they've changed. Overall, though, I greatly enjoyed this collection and can't wait to recommend it to all my friends.
If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews! (less)
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kelly
Sep 29, 2019kelly rated it it was amazing
Shelves: african-american, fiction, short-stories, five-star-books, 2019
I've said this and I'll say it again: short story collections are usually hit or miss for me. Although I love the genre, I always end up liking some, none, or most of the stories therein. This collection is an exception to the "some, none, and most" rule, as every single story here is a literary achievement.
I've read just about everything Edwidge Danticat has written, from "Krik? Krak!" to "The Dew Breaker" to "Breathe, Eyes, Memory" and everything in between. "Everything Inside"is a wonderful collection of eight short stories, all featuring characters from the Haitian diaspora living in Miami. Her characters deal with death, love, and loss and their lives are complicated. Each story is well written and thought out, with beautiful language that leaps off the page.
Favorites here include "Dosas," a story of romantic entanglement and betrayal featuring a husband, wife, and a female lover; "In the Old Days," about a woman who meets her dying father for the first time, and "Without Inspection," a harrowing tale that narrates a Haitian emigre's final thoughts as he falls 40 stories from a building to his death.
Five stars. Hands up, way way up. (less)
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Will
Sep 03, 2019Will rated it really liked it
Shelves: short-stories
4.5 - Nearly perfect.
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John Hatley
Jun 07, 2020John Hatley rated it it was amazing
This book compels me to give it five stars. I enjoyed every single story in the collection. Every story is different, but each of them was impossible to put down, once I had started reading it. Whether sad, happy, funny, or tragic, there is one thing that seemed to me to be present in every story: hope.
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Barbara
Sep 12, 2019Barbara rated it it was amazing
Shelves: carribean, haiti, short-stories, immigrants, 2019-reads
I have been a devotee of Edwidge Danticat since I met her at a workshop for teachers at the Haitian embassy in Washington, DC in the 1990’s. Her writing has power, and grace, and provides deep insight into the experiences of the Haitian Diaspora, as well as into life in Haiti. This is Edwidge Danticat’s first collection of short stories. Seven of the eight stories have been previously published, some in different versions with different titles. Nevertheless, I found this to be a collection in which every single story was strong.
Dosas, the first in the collection, is about Elsie, who works as a health care aide in Florida. This is demanding, underpaid work, the kind of work that is frequently relegated to immigrants. Elsie is contacted by her ex-husband when his girlfriend is kidnapped in Haiti, while visiting family. But such matters are never simple in Haiti. Deception and revenge are at the heart of this story.
In the Old Days on the surface is the story of a father abandoning his wife and new born daughter. The reason that this occurred though may be uniquely Haitian. After the fall of the Duvaliers, some Haitian exiles decided to return to their homeland. They did so to help build a new Haiti. But in some cases, couples split up because one wanted to return and one wanted to stay in the U.S. The twenty-five-year-old daughter of Maurice De Jean is asked to go to Haiti because her father, a man she never met, is dying.
The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special is about the illusions and disillusions of young Haitian women who are promised love and marriage. They often get something else, and in this case, it is deadly. Even modern medical cures may be a deception, and yet (false) hope perseveres.
The Gift , set after in Miami after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, is the story of a meeting between a woman and her married lover, months after their relationship has ended. She was deceived by him, but he has paid a bigger price.
Hot-Air Balloons tells the story of Lucy, a first year college student, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, who have invested all they have in her future. Her roommate Neah is the privileged child of an “esteemed” Trinidadian academic. During the Thanksgiving week break, Neah goes to Haiti, and on her return decides to drop out of college to volunteer full-time for an organization in the Little Haiti neighborhood in Miami. Lucy is “blamed” for Neah abandoning her studies. As Lucy works to get Lcuy back to college, she becomes of her own mixed feelings about Haiti.
Sunrise, Sunset takes place on the day of a baby’s christening. A family is confronted with the growing evidence that the child’s grandmother is displaying signs of serious cognitive decline. Seven Stories – In the longest story of the collection, Kim accepts on invitation to Haiti from the Prime Minister’s wife, a childhood friend in Brooklyn. The final story, Without Inspection, Arnold reviews his life after he arrived, washed up on a Florida beach.
Each story contains an entire world. This is what well-wrought short stories offer readers. What life in the U.S. offers Haitian immigrants, and what it takes away. The hopes of parents for their children, and the challenges of identity their children experience. The hard work and sacrifices Haitian immigrants make and the realization of dreams as well as their theft. The reality of life in Haiti is may be romanticized by exiles, the there are stories that share the reality.
Danticat is a versatile write whose work includes novels, non-fiction, books for children and young adults, as well as articles in respected publications including The New Yorker.
Highly recommended.
I supported an indie bookstore with my purchase of this book at Everybody’s Books in Brattleboro VT on August 27, 2019.
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Karima
Sep 01, 2019Karima rated it liked it
I have read all of Danticat's book (most memorable being KRIK KRAK and CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT) and been very moved by all, except this one. It has all the same themes: displacement, love, loss, extreme poverty, betrayal, diaspora, political persecution, all told in her uncluttered, cutting-to-the-bone style.
But....but, the characters didn't move me, didn't get under my skin, as in her other books.
I struggle with giving this acclaimed writer only three stars, instead of the full-force of a five but so be it.
I must take responsibility for my own frame-of-mind. Perhaps I am over-the-top-disgusted with man's inhumanity to man and this was more of the same.
Still, I recommend it. Help change my opinion. (less)
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David
May 12, 2020David rated it really liked it
Shelves: short-stories, _fiction
Each of the eight stories reminds the reader that Haitians have learned how to live through hard travels in life. The stories are snapshots along the road of living. They tell stories that have a powerful sad main fact of life. This factual way of telling each story lets you see the simple acceptance by all the characters. Every story has some island traditions or tale or song or religious twist that helps explain the underlying strength of their love of their homeland.
1 Dosa
A story of the harsh reality of forgone love betrayal.
"From her experience working with the weak and the sick, she'd learned that the disease you ignore is the one that kills you."
This quote is a metaphorical reference to another woman hitting on her husband. It has very timely and literal application to our COVID pandemic (as I write this).
2 In the Old Days
A father never known to his daughter meet the day he dies.
3 The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special
A daughter with AIDS and unscrupulous doctors.
4 The Gift
He never knew the baby they lost to miscarriage after he left. He lost wife and child in an earthquake. They meet for her to give a gift.
Doesn't she realize that the life she is living is an accident of fortune? Doesn't she know that she is an exception in this world, where it is normal to be unhappy, to be hungry, to work nonstop and earn next to nothing, and to suffer the whims of everything from tyrants to hurricanes and earthquakes?
5 Hot-Air Balloons
A week on fall-break in college to a rape-recovery center on Haiti changes life's goals.
6 Sunrise, Sunset
A grandmother works til the end to help keep family together.
7 Seven Stories
Royalty has its perks, but also hidden dangers and loss of real freedom.
8 Without Inspection
He falls off the scaffolding early in the story, and his complicated path of water crossing, lover and gained child flash between the pages.
The even pace of all the stories made for enjoyable reading. (less)
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Beverly
Sep 28, 2019Beverly rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2019, short-stories, immigrant, family-drama, contemporary, haiti, united-states
thoughts coming shortly
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Never Without a Book
Aug 28, 2019Never Without a Book rated it it was amazing
Writing in beautiful and elegant language, Edwidge Danticat’s new collection, Everything Inside, is an intimate and moving eight-story collection that centers on love, lost, struggles and the experiences of women.
With each story Danticat presents characters and situations that will grip you into another facet of the lives, hopes, dreams, and realities of women in and from Haiti. Her perfect pacing and seamless narrative make each character’s destiny seem inevitable. I promise your heart won’t leave this book untouched.
My year of Danticat has truly been an amazing journey. With each book, story and character I was able to bear witness as she established herself as a brilliant storyteller. If you enjoyed Krik? Krak! you will love this collection. If you haven’t read Krik? Krak …add that to your TBR list.
My favorite stories are: Without Inspection, Dosas, The Port-au-Prince Special & The Gift
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Gwenn Mangine
Sep 04, 2019Gwenn Mangine rated it it was amazing
I preordered this book because I was so anxious to read something new by Danticat. I love the observations she makes on Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora.
I feel the writing is impeccable and deserves 5 stars. That being said, short stories are not my favorite genre. That's just a personal thing because I feel like just as I am starting to relate to the characters, the story is over. I guess I just find myself wanting more. And this was no exception. I wanted to know more about what happened in each of the stories.
But within the genre of short stories-- excellent. Truly.
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Radwa
Jul 15, 2020Radwa rated it liked it
Shelves: around-the-world, 2019-awards-project, e-books
مناقشة الكتاب باللغة العربية في فيديو قريبا
Around the World Project: Haiti
This is a collection of stories of people with of different backgrounds and with different experiences from Haiti, whether they've lived all their lives there, or immigrated, or have never been there and only know about it from their parents. Haiti been through occupation that left it in the poor state it is in now, and it shows from the author's writing, the hope in these stories is very fleeting.
1- Dosas: is about a failed relationships and nurse struggling with her job and how she deals with betrayal.
2- In the Old Days: is about a girl who loses a father she never knew, and we knew more about the traditions of life and death in Haiti, and the stories of those who immigrated and never went back, and those who did.
We see in a lot of the stories the two faces of Haiti, the one designed for tourists with beaches and museums and the other with poor people and rape victims, and it shows in some of the upcoming stories.
3- The Port-au-Prince Special: An example of Haitian who are used and tossed aside by tourists is the girl in this story, who a man promises to marry her and leaves her with a disease she can't escape.
4- The Gift: a story about cheating, and while this is the biggest topic I don't want to read in fiction, the author excelled in writing about the feeling of loss.
5- Hot-Air Balloons: While this story doesn't mainly take place n Haiti, it's another story about the ugly side of Haiti and immigrants' experiences and everything the have to lose.
6- Sunrise, Sunset: a story about the suffering of motherhood and a painful portrayal of a mother's deteriorating mind due to dementia.
7- Seven Stories: a story of two childhood friends and how they meet again as adults and how the politics of Haiti and neighboring islands has affected their lives.
8- Without Inspection: One of the most painful stories in the collection, about the last moments of a dying illegal immigrant from Haiti and what he sees and thinks of in his last moments.
It's a solid collection with ups and downs, and with a bit of a slow start, but I enjoyed it. (less)
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Kasa Cotugno
Apr 12, 2020Kasa Cotugno rated it it was amazing
Shelves: culture-haiti, genre-short-stories, subj-diaspora, loc-usa-fl, awards-winners
Only eight stories, but each packs a punch to the heart. I've loved Ms. Danticat's writing ever since reading her memoir, but her fiction is in a class all its own. I've said before that collections usually feature a clunker, but these stories are uniformly powerful and affecting with not a weak link in the chain. Each provides insight into the experience of either first or second generation Haitian refugees, some of which will haunt me in time to come. Highly recommend.
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Vanya
Aug 07, 2019Vanya rated it really liked it
Shelves: own
Short stories and I have never found the best footing in our relationship mostly because of my own discomfort with the genre. I have often wondered why that is. The answer that has surfaced from my hazy consciousness has always been the same - my supposed inadequacy at grasping narratives that leave a lot to the reader’s imagination, that skip past details to arrive at the crux, and that end too soon for me to enjoy an immersive experience. Despite these failings (all mine), I set out to challenge my own notions every once in a while.
I recently read Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat, a collection of short stories that evoke the experience of Haitian diaspora in Miami. Occasionally, we are taken to Port-au-Prince where we meet characters fighting the charms of a propitious future in the States with the nostalgic love for home and one’s own community. Danticat portrays a wide spectrum of emotions, ranging from love to longing to helplessness to hope. These stories try to articulate the experience of feeling untethered from your country without being able to shake off a profound yearning to belong somewhere wholly.
My favourite stories from the collection are “The Port-au-Prince Special” and “Without Inspection”. The former is about a young woman who harbours impossible dreams even in the face of death. Even though the possibility of survival becomes faint with every passing moment, she holds on to her dreams as if her very existence depends on this act of unflinching optimism. The latter story goes inside the mind of a man as he falls off from a building. In the brief moment before he dies, his mind flits through countless memories to present him with the ones that defined his life. These ‘flashes of epiphanies’ (taking a cue from Virginia Woolf) are heart-rending as the reader glimpses a life that will be no more. (less)
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Shivanee Ramlochan
Jan 19, 2020Shivanee Ramlochan rated it really liked it
I struggled a fair bit with Everything Inside - my expectations from these stories, and from what I know of Danticat's empyrean power as a storyteller, didn't feel met in vital ways. Yet where I feel I land, and remain for the time being, is that the writing here meets a quieter, less predictable, still necessary, vacancy. And fills it, if not as I'd hoped. But Danticat is a force, making it impossible to walk away from this work without a reconfiguration, a reestimation, of the balance between ...more
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Lillian
Sep 14, 2019Lillian rated it really liked it
Shelves: doorway-character, short-stories, doorway-setting, contemporary-fiction, world-literature
In eight searingly emotional stories, with eloquent prose, Edwidge Danticat explores complexities of the Haitian diaspora that is forced time and again to find love in harsh circumstances. A diaspora seeking human connection through all aspects of life, which is not confined to Haiti but a universal need as well.
The final story titled Without Inspection will break your heart.
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Andree Miller
Oct 05, 2019Andree Miller rated it it was amazing
I enjoyed this book. Edwidge's writing primarily focuses on the underdog and the marginalized and how those stories intersect with the rest of us. Because sometimes we are the underdogs and marginalized. You see yourself in her writing.
This is a collection of short stories where all of the characters are Haitian or Haitian-American. They remember where they came from and what they aspire to be. There's hardship, lots of hardship because that seems to be the plight of the Haitian no matter where they are.
My favorite story was Seven Stories. It is not seven stories but rather refers to a time when both characters were seven and told each other seven stories. There's hardship, but the two main characters in Seven Stories have come full circle and now share their adult lives. It's a well-written story. All of the stories are. (less)
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Shawn Mooney (Shawn The Book Maniac)
Jan 21, 2020Shawn Mooney (Shawn The Book Maniac) marked it as did-not-finish
Shelves: did-not-finish-2020
I did the first three stories on audio and they left me completely cold. I didn’t think Krik! Krak! was very good, but at least with that collection I recall feeling a couple emotions along the way. Bailed.
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Judith von Kirchbach
Aug 10, 2020Judith von Kirchbach rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Haunting !
I discovered this book through Reese’s book club as it is the book of the month for August 2020. The stories are thought provoking and all have a different theme/lesson. It brings to light the Haitian culture in a different light in every story. Each of the short stories in this collection created story creates a beautiful tableau of sadness and hope, and you become absolutely immersed.
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Dinah Moore
Aug 11, 2020Dinah Moore rated it really liked it
Shelves: reeses-book-club
I think all 8 stories were good but I liked Port-au-Prince Marriage Special and Without Inspection were my favorites.
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Lori L (She Treads Softly)
Aug 25, 2019Lori L (She Treads Softly) rated it it was amazing
Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat is a very highly recommended collection of eight short stories. All of the characters are either Haitian or have ties to Haiti and are set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed Caribbean country.
Danicat is a natural, lyrical story teller and the writing in Everything Inside is beautiful. The complicated lives of people and their emotional upheavals, tragic events, and unexpected occurrences are keenly observed. Her characters handle their circumstances and loss with the fortitude and stoicism of careful observers. Many of these characters are people who live in one place but are drawn elsewhere. This is a very special, thoughtful collection.
Contents include:
Dosas: Elsie is a home healthcare nursing assistant. She is divorced from Blase who left her for her best friend Olivia. Blase calls her one day, claiming Olivia was kidnapped when back visiting Haiti, and now the kidnappers are demanding a ransom.
In the Old Days: A woman flies from New York to Miami to meet her dying father. She was born after he left and raised by her mother, so this trip will be the first time she meets him.
The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special: A couple who runs a hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, take the young woman who is their son's nanny to the doctor. When she is diagnosed with SIDA, AIDS, they find and pay for her treatment, but their help has unexpected results.
The Gift: Anika and Thomas are former lovers who meet in Miami. The two were having an affair before an earthquake killed his wife and child and left him with an amputated leg. Anika has a gift she wants to give him.
Hot Air Balloons: Lucy and Neah are roommates at college in Miami and grew up with very different backgrounds. When Neah drops out to do international aid work for a Haitian women's organization that she learned about through Lucy, Neah's father blames Lucy for this and asks that she talk to his daughter.
Sunrise, Sunset: Carol is an aging woman who is suffering from dementia, which her husband helps her hide, but her condition is becoming worse and frightening her daughter, Jeanne. This all results in a frightening event which occurs at the christening for Jeanne's son.
Seven Stories: Two childhood friends meet again as adults in an unnamed Caribbean country where one of them is now the wife of the prime minister.
Without Inspection: An undocumented construction worker is falling to his death and is flashing back through his memories and the defining moments of his life.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/0... (less)
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Amanda
Nov 09, 2019Amanda rated it liked it
There was nothing particularly wrong with Everything Inside, but nothing particularly right with it either. It was (and still is) hard to put my finger on, but there was just something of Danticat's typical magic missing from this text. In particular, the endings of many of the stories included in this collection seemed to trail off into vague murmurs as opposed to the intrepid conclusions I'm so used to coming from Danticat.
Though it's difficult to identify favorites in a collection that felt so lacking, if pressed, mine within Everything Inside would be: "Hot-Air Balloons" and "Seven Stories" - "The Gift" would get honorable mention, but falls just short of being classified as a favorite.
The stories included in Everything Inside definitely aren't lacking in substance: they tackle themes of betrayal, diaspora, exploitation, sex tourism, generational trauma, Haiti's 2010 earthquake, and the sheer will to live. If anything the title feels quite apropos, due to the fact that the characters the reader encounters in these stories all carry a wound, experience, life lesson, or secret that they are often working diligently to quell. For some unknown reason, though, Danticat wasn't quite able to reach her usual high mark with these stories or their characters. Mediocrity definitely isn't Danticat's strong suit. This is why the mediocrity I overwhelmingly encountered throughout Everything Inside felt so foreign and out of place. This was one of my least favorite works from Danticat - for me, it ranks just above Claire of the Sea Light in that regard.
Noteworthy quotes:
"From her experience working with the weak and the sick, she'd learned that the disease you ignore is the one that kills you, so she tried her best to have everything out in the open." (p.12)
"The Tainos believed themselves to have originally been cave people who would turn into stone when touched by sunlight. They knew the risk when they stepped into the light, but they did it anyway in order to create a new world, a world that continues to exist, because we are still here." ("Hot-Air Balloons" - p.130)
"I lowered my right wrist to the crevice between her breasts and let it rest there for a moment. And briefly, very briefly, my pain and hers embraced." ("Hot-Air Balloons" - p.130)
"Carole tried so hard to protect her US-born children from these stories that they are now incapable of overcoming any kind of sadness...Her daughter's psyche is so feeble that anything can rattle her. Doesn't she realize that the life she is living is an accident of fortune? Doesn't she know that she is an exception in this world, where it is normal to be unhappy, to be hungry, to work nonstop and earn next to nothing, and to suffer the whims of everything from tyrants to hurricanes and earthquakes?" ("Sunrise, Sunset" - p.135)
"...she was so lonely and homesick that she kept kissing her babies' faces, as if their cheeks were plots of land in the country she'd left behind." ("Sunrise, Sunset" - p.143) (less)
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Matthew
Sep 12, 2019Matthew rated it really liked it
4.5 stars.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’m afraid of death. It’s a fear that’s been bubbling for years, yet over the course of the last 18+ months it’s perpetuated to the point of overflow (and subsequent therapy sessions). I’m no longer young. I’m now at that age where a friend passing is almost as common as that of a parent. What’s more, I’ve had my share of medical issues, even despite being considered relatively healthy. The fact I married a physician, whose expert knowledge is so resonant I’ve all but become a hypochondriac, hasn’t helped conquer my distress.
Coming to terms with mortality, whether it be our own or that of those we love, is a monumentally difficult endeavor. It’s also one many of us may never succeed in overcoming. The characters that make up Edwidge Danticat’s latest work, the short story collection Everything Inside, make up both sides: those who have grieved, and those still grieving (and will forever grieve). The results are emotionally intense.
The fact Danticat loosely connects these characters by way of their Haitian descent only adds to the intensity. These are people who’ve experienced a different, more intense level of tragedy than many of us, whether it be natural, cultural or economical. Yet Danticat does not place the focus on these particular issues; they’re assumed if not implied. Instead the author positions her characters in situations many, if not most of us can relate to in some way, shape or form. And does so with a brilliant, juxtaposing elegance that oftentimes left me breathless.
All 8 stories that make up Everything Inside hold merit; here are my favorites:
Opening story “Dosas”, which follows a palliative care nurse (Elsie) who has recently divorced upon discovering her partner (Blase) has been having an affair with her best friend, Olivia. Blase contacts Elsie while she’s on the job, claiming Olivia was kidnapped while visiting Haiti; he hopes Elsie could help contribute to the kidnappers’ ransom demands.
"The Gift," a tale of two ex-lovers (Anika & Thomas) reuniting in Miami shortly after the Haitian earthquake, in which Thomas lost his wife and child (and leg). Anika has a gift for Thomas, who is clearly shaken by the recent tragic events. How Danticat expresses their intimacy – both past and present – is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.
Finale "Without Inspection", perhaps the best of an already-sublime bunch, opens with a man – who we soon learn is an undocumented Haitian immigrant – accidentally falling to his death. As he plummets, his life literally flashes before his eyes; Danticat vividly brings us along for the ride. (less)
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2TReads
Feb 29, 20202TReads rated it really liked it
Danticat effortlessly weaves themes of family, life, death, mental health, and country throughout each story within this collection
And as each story is experienced, the reader themselves feel as if they had just experienced a piece of Haiti, Haitian culture and history themselves
She writes about missed opportunities; broken promises; swindling; loss; devastation, yet is still able to lace these stories with a bit of hope and beauty.
She removes the facades that obscure the darker sides of the people and places we think know; that are rarely shown as part of the whole. With the darkness, there is light.
And all this is done with prose that is gently impactful. (less)
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Edna Desir
Jan 22, 2019Edna Desir rated it it was amazing
I first started reading Edwidge Danticat's short stories in The New Yorker magazine in 1999. The stories in this gorgeous collection are poignant, lyrical, and some heartbreaking. Everything you expect from Danticat with the added nuance of age. Stunningly beautiful stories. Each one took my breath away.
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Marcos
Oct 13, 2019Marcos rated it it was amazing
The most heartbreaking work I've read yet this year- Edwidge Danticat has done it again in making me, the reader, feel as if I just witnessed the lives of the vivid characters that pervade this short-story collection. Weaving stories set in Brooklyn, Miami and Haiti- Ms. Danticat continues to write about the complexities of Haitian life in the 21st century: full of poverty, forced sex work, and harrowing moments that are nothing next to heartbreaking. "Dosas" is the story of Elsie and Blaise, having an affair as he waits for news of whether or not his wife and child survived the Haiti Earthquake of 2010, and the scam that comes afterwards. "In the Old Days" is the story of Nadia, a teacher, invited to Miami by her newly discovered stepmother, so she could pay her father last respects. It is a story about grief between father and daughter, who are both teachers. "The Port-au Prince Marriage Special" is a horrifying and heartbreaking story of Melisande, diagnosed with AIDS and given placebos by a quack Canadian doctor. "The Gift" is about Anika, having an affair with Thomas, a man with a prosthetic leg, also waiting for the news whether his wife and daughter survived the Haitian earthquake. She sketches a portrait of his family to him as a gift- realizing that she doesn't want to be alone. "Without Inspection" is a masterpiece of love and grief. As Ernesto Hernandez falls to his death from a building, his life flashes before his eyes and all he could think about is the love he has for his family: Paris and Darlene. (less)
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