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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

#17 - Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat


Title:  Brother, I’m Dying
Author:  Edwidge Danticat
Genre:  Memoir
Performed by:  Robin Miles
Publisher/Date: Recorded Books/2007
Dates listened to:  4/16/17 – 4/25/17
CDs/Hours:  7/8
ISBN: 978-1-4281-6631-8

Ms. Danticat is an award-winning, best-selling author.  In this book she uses her story-telling abilities to describe how both her father and his brother, her uncle, dealt with their debilitating illnesses.  When Edwidge was only four years old, her parents emigrated from Haiti to New York in search of a better life.  They left their daughter with Uncle Joseph, a peaceful pastor in Port-au-Prince.  He raised her with the love and devotion of a father, despite facing many hardship in politically turbulent Haiti.  Finally, at age 12 Edwidge was reunited to her parents and forced to confront the inevitably complex emotions.

As Kirkus Reviews reports, Brother, I’m Dying is an “exceptionally gripping memoir” that “avoids sentimentality in smoothly honed prose that is nonetheless redolent with emotion.”

I totally agree.  It’s like Haiti’s current situation is no different now than then, the then being the early 1970s.  I found it particularly heart-wrenching in those places where human kindness is lacking and not just in Haiti.

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