Brother, Im Dying by Edwidge Danticat - Book Report/Review Example

09 January 2009 Brother, I’m Dying: A Book Review Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat is a biography written with fictionalappeal about a family making a new life in America and anxious about those they left behind in their native land in Haiti. The story revolves around the life of two men close to the author – her father and her uncle. Told in a moving tale, the book is a true to life story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for both of them. Danticat narrates the story of starting a new life in a new country while anxious for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation worsens. However, Brother, I’m Dying soon turns into a frightening tale of decent people becoming victims of circumstances. Towards the end of 2004, his life endangered by an angry mob, coerced to run away from his church, the weak, eighty-one-year-old uncle of Edwidge, Joseph, moves to Miami, convinced that this is where he will be safe. To his surprise, he is instead detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, wrongfully imprisoned, and dead after a few days. It was a story that caught the attention of the news media around the world. The author’s father, Mira, will also soon join his uncle in death, but not before he sees hope for the future: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will be named after her father (Danticat 7). Without directly denouncing or attacking, Danticat weaves a narrative that evidences the price of emigration: pain, broken family ties, alienation, and confusion. Her autobiography illustrates better than any political essay or speech how those who come to the "land of opportunity" must prepare for great loss as well as gain. As she turns older in the story, Danticat narrates how she works to maintain her ties to her family in Haiti and to the country itself. For instance, when Tante Denise dies in 2003, she returns with her father; it is only his third trip "in the thirty-two years since hes first left," but it is her "twentieth-fifth in nearly a decade" (Danticat 46). With her recollections of the difficult adjustment to New York and the frequent renewal of connection to Haiti, she once and for all answers questions about her nationality: She is at heart from Haiti and of Haiti, and her experiences in the America have made her connection to her country more intense and more intricate. Brother, Im Dying likewise traces the political developments within Haiti and the violence that breaks out, eventually affecting Danticats own family in a direct way. While her father is dying and she is pregnant with her daughter, Danticat finds out that her eighty-one years old uncles life is in danger and that he has flown from Haiti to the States. In specific detail, she recounts how in 2004, Joseph Dantica—a pastor, then eighty-one years old—was coerced out of his home in Bel Air, an ironically but positively named, crime-filled neighborhood in the capital of Port-Au-Prince. In this city, he had constructed a church and a computer center. It was also the home where he and his wife had nurtured and helped their extended family, including Edwidge and her brother. One Sunday in late October 2004, gun shooting between Haiti’s ruthless, United Nations-supported police force and local gangs broke out. The police invaded Dantica’s church during mid-service, made their way up to the roof to take better aim at their rivals. When the police left, the gangsters came back. They accused Joseph of assisting the police, stole from and burned his buildings and promised to end his life. He escaped for days to friends and relatives and in the end decided to escape to Miami on a tourist visa. After his arrival in Miami, a nightmare begins that is perhaps more terrifying than any other event in the autobiography. Even though he possesses a visa, Uncle Joseph is taken into custody by the INS and put in a Detention Center in Miami. There his medication is confiscated and during an interview with an asylum officer, he experiences a seizure. "The records indicate that my uncle appeared to be having a seizure. His chair slipped back, pounding the back of his head into the wall. He began to vomit." When a medic at last arrives, the officer repeatedly says, "I think hes faking" (Danticat 104). Ironically, a year before Edwidge’s uncle was imprisoned in the detention, the author with an assembly of researchers visited the detention center, which is isolated in southwest Miami. She talked to common Haitians who had been turned to inmates, clothed in similar overalls and imprisoned by stone, chain-link fence and barbed wire. “I have known no greater shame in my life,” an older man had told her of his experience there.” (Danticat 65) Danticat’s father passed away around six months after her uncle from pulmonary fibrosis that had damaged his body for more than a year. “This is an attempt,” Edwidge writes, “At recreating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back in both celebration and despair” (Danticat 172). With Brother, I’m Dying, Danticat attempts to create awareness regarding the plight of Haitians, incited by a family tragedy to tell the story of her two fathers: Mira, her father and the man who gave her life, and her uncle, Joseph Dantica, who stepped in for the eight years it took her parents, who had settled in New York, to successfully petition the INS for Edwidge and a younger brother to join them from Haiti. Conclusion Immigration is not considered a choice when one comes from a nation like Haiti, which foreign-policy workers repeatedly claim is “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” (Arthur 132). Due to Haiti’s problems of economic stagnancy and political instability, the country suffers massive brain drain as many of the citizens—faced with the prospect of never realizing even modest goals—hardened themselves for adversity and snow, and resolved to become something more somewhere else. Haitians undeniably think of the United States as a land of hope, which is why many Haitians have made the necessary sacrifices to reach America. They sacrifice to live in limbo between Haiti and America, holding unstably to the beliefs and traditions that shaped them back home. Their achievements in the United States are footnoted with wishes of what could they could have contributed instead for Haiti: If only Haiti did not endure racist foreign policy or from greedy, corrupt, often violent, leadership, they could have also stayed on in Haiti and made a contribution. The book is also an example of the abuse of power in Haiti, and in North America. In one of the heartbreaking moments of the story, after Edwidge’s uncle leaves Haiti when his church is finally burned and ransacked, his escape to the United States turns into a nightmare. He requests for asylum, but instead is placed in a detention by U.S. officials. In the detention center he becomes sick, and soon dies in a nearby hospital. This is moving and tragic as the courageous eighty-one year old minister who devoted his life to help people in a country clouded by violence, turns into a representative figure in the end, a testament to the tragic abuse brought about by the U.S. government under the excuse of homeland security. Readers can even get a better view analyzing this topic by noticing some important details. In the United States, Dantica was detained at the Krome detention center (notoriously feared by Haitians) after confessing to immigration officials that he intended to seek temporary asylum. In contrast to Cuban refugees, who are administered and released to their families after landing in the United States soil, Haitians are customarily imprisoned then deported (Philadelphia). Hence, after a few days in his detention, Dantica became sick, was given minimal medical attention and, handcuffed to a hospital bed, passed away alone because his family was not permitted to visit him. In Brother, I’m Dying, the author’s voice is remarkably gentle, although filled with purpose. She narrates the decent, honorable lives of the two Haitian men who took good care of her and made a huge impact on her life. In her recollection of Haiti and Brooklyn, where she spent her adolescent years, Danticat recalls their struggles to build lives, seemingly at the mercy of situations out of her control. Her father, Mira, endured the dangerous work of driving a cab in the immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn, ignoring insults, fare hoppers, even gun and switch blade armed robbers. Her uncle, suffered illness and chaos in upholding a Haitian home. Because they had few opportunities for material wealth, Edwidge focuses the book on the people they knew and loved: adopted children, neighbors and the hundred-year-old matriarch Granme Melina. That is why the biggest achievement of his life, Mr. Danticat tells his family, is that “You, my children, have not shamed me” (Danticat 57). The self control that she exercises in not pointing an accusing finger at the United States’ loud and repressive post-9/11 government and with which the author narrates situations that would bring even spiritual people to outrage is remarkable. The soul of the author is felt through the pages with a resolve and urgency that lingers in the mind of the reader. As the debates on immigration and immigration policy caught attention in the last several months, with arguments of who should or should not be allowed in, Haitians have felt a similar humiliation. It is humiliation that certainly is common, lying within even every immigrant community across the United States. Works Cited Abbott, Elizabeth. Haiti: The Duvaliers and their Legacy. New York: McGraw Hill, 1988. Arthur, Charles. Haiti: A Guide to People, Politics and Culture. New York: Interlink Books, 2002. Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I’m Dying. New York: Knopf, 2007. McCafferty, Jane. Dayton Literary Peace Price. 08 January 2009 . Philadelphia, Dessa. Brother, I’m Dying: A Heart Breaking Account. HaitiAnalysis.com. 08 January 2009 Read More

In this city, he had constructed a church and a computer center. It was also the home where he and his wife had nurtured and helped their extended family, including Edwidge and her brother. One Sunday in late October 2004, gun shooting between Haiti’s ruthless, United Nations-supported police force and local gangs broke out. The police invaded Dantica’s church during mid-service, made their way up to the roof to take better aim at their rivals. When the police left, the gangsters came back.

They accused Joseph of assisting the police, stole from and burned his buildings and promised to end his life. He escaped for days to friends and relatives and in the end decided to escape to Miami on a tourist visa. After his arrival in Miami, a nightmare begins that is perhaps more terrifying than any other event in the autobiography. Even though he possesses a visa, Uncle Joseph is taken into custody by the INS and put in a Detention Center in Miami. There his medication is confiscated and during an interview with an asylum officer, he experiences a seizure.

"The records indicate that my uncle appeared to be having a seizure. His chair slipped back, pounding the back of his head into the wall. He began to vomit." When a medic at last arrives, the officer repeatedly says, "I think hes faking" (Danticat 104). Ironically, a year before Edwidge’s uncle was imprisoned in the detention, the author with an assembly of researchers visited the detention center, which is isolated in southwest Miami. She talked to common Haitians who had been turned to inmates, clothed in similar overalls and imprisoned by stone, chain-link fence and barbed wire.

“I have known no greater shame in my life,” an older man had told her of his experience there.” (Danticat 65) Danticat’s father passed away around six months after her uncle from pulmonary fibrosis that had damaged his body for more than a year. “This is an attempt,” Edwidge writes, “At recreating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back in both celebration and despair” (Danticat 172). With Brother, I’m Dying, Danticat attempts to create awareness regarding the plight of Haitians, incited by a family tragedy to tell the story of her two fathers: Mira, her father and the man who gave her life, and her uncle, Joseph Dantica, who stepped in for the eight years it took her parents, who had settled in New York, to successfully petition the INS for Edwidge and a younger brother to join them from Haiti.

Conclusion Immigration is not considered a choice when one comes from a nation like Haiti, which foreign-policy workers repeatedly claim is “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” (Arthur 132). Due to Haiti’s problems of economic stagnancy and political instability, the country suffers massive brain drain as many of the citizens—faced with the prospect of never realizing even modest goals—hardened themselves for adversity and snow, and resolved to become something more somewhere else.

Haitians undeniably think of the United States as a land of hope, which is why many Haitians have made the necessary sacrifices to reach America. They sacrifice to live in limbo between Haiti and America, holding unstably to the beliefs and traditions that shaped them back home. Their achievements in the United States are footnoted with wishes of what could they could have contributed instead for Haiti: If only Haiti did not endure racist foreign policy or from greedy, corrupt, often violent, leadership, they could have also stayed on in Haiti and made a contribution.

The book is also an example of the abuse of power in Haiti, and in North America. In one of the heartbreaking moments of the story, after Edwidge’s uncle leaves Haiti when his church is finally burned and ransacked, his escape to the United States turns into a nightmare. He requests for asylum, but instead is placed in a detention by U.S.

Read More