Background

Edwidge Danticat, the oldest of four siblings and the only girl, was born in Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti, on January 19, 1969, to André and Rose Danticat. André Danticat, a cab driver, emigrated to New York City in 1971 in search of a better life for his family. Rose, a textile worker, decided to join him two years later, leaving four-year-old Danticat under the care of her aunt and uncle, a Baptist minister.

Education

Creole was the language spoken at home, but Edwidge Danticat was educated in French, the official language of Port-au-Prince's public schools. In 1981, at age 12, she rejoined her family in Brooklyn. She attended public schools in the city enduring the hardships as an immigrant. She graduated from Clara Barton High School. She had intended to study to become a nurse but her love of writing won out.

Danticat, who excelled in English and French, received her Bachelor of Arts degree in French literature at Barnard College in 1990. Her first year at college, she wanted to dip into many things. She signed up for a singing class and was taking swimming. Edwidge Danticat wrote some short stories as well.

She went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts degree from Brown University in 1993. While at Brown, she wrote two plays The Creation of Adam, produced in Providence, Rhode Island, at the Rites and Reasons Theater in 1992; and Dreams Like Me, produced at the university's New Play Festival in 1993.

Danticat has received a Doctor of Letters degree from the University of the West Indies in 2017.

Career

An article Edwidge Danticat wrote and published while in high school about her emigration to the United States, which later developed into her master's thesis, eventually became her first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). The book was immediately recognized by readers and critics alike as heralding the emergence of a shining new literary talent.

Following the publication of her very successful novel, Danticat compiled a collection of short stories Krik? Krak! that she had begun writing as an undergraduate about tortured victims of Haiti's repressive secret police. Danticat described the book's purpose in an interview with National Public Radio: "I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up... mostly poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles." Danticat’s profound connection to her native Haiti and the Haitian community in the United States has not only informed her literary output but has made her a passionate advocate.

In 1998 Danticat published a historical novel, The Farming of Bones, about the 1937 massacre of Haitian farmworkers by the Dominican Republic military. With graceful, deceptively simple prose, she recounts the 1937 massacre of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic in this book. Told through the eyes of a young domestic servant, the story of the atrocity becomes one of cultural and spiritual survival.

In The Dewbreaker (2004), a series of seemingly disconnected stories are revealed to revolve around the same traumatic events. Danticat challenges readers of these stories to understand and forgive a perpetrator of horrific atrocities committed in a distant time and place, illustrating how events in Haiti continue to haunt the immigrants of the diaspora. Her 2007 book, a memoir entitled Brother, I’m Dying, pays tribute to her father and uncle through an unflinching account of the triumphs and tragedies they experienced in Haiti and the United States. In these and other works, Danticat provides a nuanced portrait of the intersection between nation and diaspora, home and exile, and reminds us of the power of human resistance, renewal, and endurance against great obstacles. In Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010), Danticat tells her own story as a part of the Haitian diaspora. Create Dangerously was inspired by author Albert Camus’ lecture “Create Dangerously” and his experience as an author and creator

Her 2017 book, The Art of Death, Writing the Final Story, is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. She is also the editor of The Butterfly‘s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States, Best American Essays 2011, Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2. She has written four books for young adults and children: Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance. Her most recent books are a picture book My Mommy Medicine (2019) and a collection of stories about community, family, and love Everything Inside (2019).

Danticat has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Nation and elsewhere. She has appeared in the films Stones in the Sun, The Foreigner’s Home, had a small cameo in Beloved and has worked on the documentaries, Girl Rising, The Agronomist, and Egalité for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution.

Edwidge has crafted some talks around some books - some incorporating video and PowerPoint - for Common Reads or college-wide reading programs. Danticat has been also a visiting professor of creative writing at New York University (1996-1997) and the University of Miami (2000 and 2008).

Achievements

• In 1997, at the age of 27, with 19 other finalists, Edwidge Danticat was named one of the country's best young authors. The novel Breath, Eyes, Memory was selected in 1998 by Oprah Winfrey's Book Club, making Danticat's book an instant bestseller. Her work has been translated into numerous other languages, including Japanese, French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.
  
  Edwidge Danticat is a recipient of numerous awards such as Fiction Award The Caribbean Writer, Woman of Achievement Award from Barnard College, Pushcart Short Story Prize, American Book Award, The International Flaiano Prize for literature, The Super Flaiano Prize, The Story Prize, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Book Critics Circle Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, The Nicolas Guillen Philosophical Literature Prize from Caribbean Philosophical Association, Langston Hughes Medal from City College of New York, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
  
  She was also nominated for 2007 National Book Award for Brother, I'm Dying and shortlisted for 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Jane magazine named her one of the "15 Gutsiest Women of the Year." Edwidge’s books Krik? Krak!, The Dew Breaker, Create Dangerously, and Brother, I’m Dying have been chosen for First-Year Common Reading Programs. Brother, I’m Dying is also a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read book. It is the book that was named Top-10 African American Non-fiction Books by Booklist in 2008.
  
  

Works

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  • After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti

    (Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival b...)

    2002
  • The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States

    (This compilation of essays and poetry brings together Hai...)

    2001
  • The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story

    (At once a personal account of Edwidge Danticat's mother a...)

    2017
  • Krik? Krak!

    (Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly th...)

    1996
  • Brother, I'm Dying

    (From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Dantic...)

    2007
  • Tent Life: Haiti

    (Arriving in Haiti in the tumultuous aftermath of the 2010...)

    2011
  • The Farming of Bones

    (It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman livi...)

    1998
  • The Dew Breaker

    (We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father, and...)

    2004
  • Claire of the Sea Light

    (Just as her father makes the wrenching decision to send h...)

    2013
  • Breath, Eyes, Memory

    (At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impove...)

    1994
  • My Mommy Medicine

    (My Mommy Medicine is a picture book about the comfort and...)

    2019
  • Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work

    (In this deeply personal book, Edwidge Danticat reflects o...)

    2010
  • Untwine

    (Giselle Boyer and her identical twin, Isabelle, are as cl...)

    2015
  • Haiti Noir 2: The Classics

    (Stories of crime and corruption set in this Caribbean cou...)

    2010
  • Haiti Noir

    (In Haiti Noir featuring brand-new stories by Edwidge Dant...)

    2010
  • Everything Inside: Stories

    (Everything Inside: Stories is a collection of vividly ima...)

    2019
  • Anacaona

    (With her signature narrative grace, Edwidge Danticat brin...)

    2005
  • Behind the Mountains

    (First Person Fiction is dedicated to the immigrant experi...)

    2002
  • Eight Days: A Story of Haiti

    (Hope comes alive in this heartfelt and deeply resonating ...)

    2010

Views

National identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics are prominent in Edwidge Danticat's work.

Although Danticat resides in the United States, she considers Haiti home. To date, she still visits Haiti from time to time and has always felt as if she never left it.

Quotations: "If you feel passionate about something in the moment you shouldn’t be afraid of expressing because you are afraid you’ll later regret it - because probably you will. But it’s important to trust that instinct."

"Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you."

"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them."

"When you write, it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity."

"People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything."

"Life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people's terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms."

"Anger is a wasted emotion."

"I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it."

"No one will love you more than you love your pain."

Membership

Edwidge Danticat is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Danticat deserves every success as she is a phenomenal storyteller."
  
  "Edwidge Danticat is possibly the best American fiction writer of the younger generation. Her novels and story collections have cut a broad swath through the history of 20th century Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Their virtues include lyric and narrative pleasures, a plainspoken and elegant voice, intelligence and intelligibility, and the bridging of two cultures separated by language and mutual misunderstanding." - Kyle Minor
  
  "Edwidge Danticat paints with words. Her canvass is a truth that you can not help but recognize."
  
  "She is an important young writer whose stories are compelling and dark."

Connections

Danticat is married to Fedo Boyer. They have two daughters, Mira and Leila.

Father:

Andre Danticat

Mother:

Rose Danticat

husband:

Fedo Boyer