Discover the 20th Anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat's
unforgettable National Book Award Finalist story collection--complete
with a new story.
Arriving one year after the Haitian-American's first novel (Breath,
Eyes, Memory) alerted critics to her compelling voice, these 10
stories, some of which have appeared in small literary journals, confirm
Danticat's reputation as a remarkably gifted writer.
Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly those struggling
to survive under the brutal Duvalier regime, Danticat illuminates the
distance between people's desires and the stifling reality of their
lives. A profound mix of Catholicism and voodoo spirituality informs the
tales, bestowing a mythic importance on people described in the opening
story, Children of the Sea, as those in this world whose names don't
matter to anyone but themselves. The ceaseless grip of dictatorship
often leads men to emotionally abandon their families, like the husband
in A Wall of Fire Rising, who dreams of escaping in a neighbor's hot-air
balloon. The women exhibit more resilience, largely because of their
insistence on finding meaning and solidarity through storytelling; but
Danticat portrays these bonds with an honesty that shows that
sisterhood, too, has its power plays. In the book's final piece,
Epilogue: Women Like Us, she writes: Are there women who both cook and
write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew
and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative
dumplings and stuff their daughter's mouths so they say nothing more.
These stories inform and enrich one another, as the female characters
reveal a common ancestry and ties to the fictional Ville Rose. In
addition to the power of Danticat's themes, the book is enhanced by an
element of suspense--we're never certain, for example, if a rickety boat
packed with refugees introduced in the first tale will reach the Florida
coast. Spare, elegant and moving, these stories cohere into a superb
collection.
