Edwidge Danticat Books In Order

Breath, Eyes, Memory

At an astonishingly young age, Edwidge Danticat has become one of our most celebrated new novelists, a writer who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti and the enduring strength of Haiti’s women with a vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people’s suffering and courage. At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix des Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

The Farming of Bones

From the bestselling author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, a passionate and profound novel of two lovers struggling against political violenceThe Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season. However, hostilities toward Haitian laborers find a vitriolic spokesman in the ultra nationalist Generalissimo Trujillo who calls for an ethnic cleansing of his Spanish speaking country. As rumors of Haitian persecution become fact, as anxiety turns to terror, Amabelle and Sebastien’s dreams are leveled to the most basic human desire: to endure. Based on a little known historical event, this extraordinarily moving novel memorializes the forgotten victims of nationalist madness and the deeply felt passion and grief of its survivors. New York Times Notable Book Named one of the Best Books of the Year by People, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, and the American Library Association The author was nominated for a National Book Award and named one of the ’20 Best Young Novelists’ by Granta’A remarkable new novel…
Danticat writes in wonderful, evocative prose, and she is especially adept at treading the path between oppression and grace. At times, it’s a particularly painful path, but, always, a compelling one.’ The Boston Sunday Globe’ With hallucinatory vigor and a sense of mission…
Danticat capably evokes the shock with which a small personal world is disrupted by military mayhem…
The Farming of Bones offers ample confirmation of Edwidge Danticat’s considerable talents.’ The New York Times Book Review’It’s a testament to her talent that the novel, while almost unbearably sad, is still a joy to read.’ NewsweekPenguin Readers Guide Available

The Dew Breaker

From Publishers Weekly Haitian born Danticat’s third novel after The Farming of Bones and Breath, Eyes, Memory focuses on the lives affected by a ‘dew breaker,’ or torturer of Haitian dissidents under Duvalier’s regime. Each chapter reveals the titular man from another viewpoint, including that of his grown daughter, who, on a trip she takes with him to Florida, learns the secret of his violent past and those of the Haitian boarders renting baseme*nt rooms in his Brooklyn home. This structure allows Danticat to move easily back and forth in time and place, from 1967 Haiti to present day Florida, tracking diverse threads within the larger narrative. Some readers may think that what she gains in breadth she loses in depth; this is a slim book, and Danticat does not always stay in one character’s mind long enough to fully convey the complexities she seeks. The chaptersmost of which were published previously as stories, with the first three appearing in the New Yorkercan feel more like evocative snapshots than richly textured portraits. The slow accumulation of details pinpointing the past’s effects on the present makes for powerful reading, however, and Danticat is a crafter of subtle, gorgeous sentences and scenes. As the novel circles around The Dew Breaker, moving toward final episodes in which, as a young man and already dreaming of escape to the U.S., he performs his terrible work, the impact on the reader hauntingly, ineluctably grows. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Krik? Krak!

When Haitians tell a story, they say ‘Krik?’ and the eager listeners answer ‘Krak!’ In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.

Eight Days

From National Book Award nominee Edwidge Danticat comes a timely, brilliantly crafted story of hope and imagination–a powerful tribute to Haiti and children around the world!

Hope comes alive in this heartfelt and deeply resonating story.

While Junior is trapped for 8 days beneath his collapsed house after an earthquake, he uses his imagination for comfort. Drawing on beautiful, everyday-life memories, Junior paints a sparkling picture of Haiti for each of those days–flying kites with his best friend or racing his sister around St. Marc’s Square–helping him through the tragedy until he is finally rescued.

Love and hope dance across each page–granting us a way to talk about resilience as a family, a classroom, or a friend.

Haiti (With: Ramsey Clark)

Drawing from a wide range of authors, experts, and historical texts, this collection challenges historical stereotypes and counters 200 years of cultural myths and disinformation. These essays explain the background to the current crisis in Haiti, revealing the intertwined relationship between the United States and Haiti and the untold stories of the Haitian people’s resistance to U.S. aggression and occupations. Included are a time line, photo essay, author biographies, and bibliography. This revised edition also includes context surrounding the response to the tragic 2010 earthquake disaster.

After the Dance

In After the Dance, one of Haiti’s most renowned daughters returns to her homeland, taking readers on a stunning, exquisitely rendered journey beyond the hedonistic surface of Carnival and into its deep heart. Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too much abandon, losing their voices from singing too loudly, going deaf from the clamor of immense speakers, and being punched, stabbed, pummeled, or fondled by other lustful revelers. Now an adult, she resolves to return and exorcise her Carnival demons. She spends the week before Carnival in the area around Jacmel, exploring the rolling hills and lush forests and meeting the people who live and die in them. During her journeys she traces the heroic and tragic history of the island, from French colonists and Haitian revolutionaries to American invaders and home grown dictators. Danticat also introduces us to many of the performers, artists, and organizers who re create the myths and legends that bring the Carnival festivities to life. When Carnival arrives, we watch as she goes from observer to participant and finally loses herself in the overwhelming embrace of the crowd. Part travelogue, part memoir, this is a lyrical narrative of a writer rediscovering her country along with a part of herself. It s also a wonderful introduction to Haiti s southern coast and to the true beauty of Carnival.

Behind the Mountains

First Person Fiction is dedicated to the immigrant experience in modern America. In ‘Behind the Mountains‘ Edwidge Danticat tells the story of Celiane and her family’s struggles in Haiti and New York. It is election time in Haiti, and bombs are going off in the capital city of Port au Prince. During a visit from her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Esp rance and her mother are nearly killed. Looking at her country with new eyes, Celiane gains a fresh resolve to be reunited with her father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape of her new home are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents’ struggle to earn a living, her brother’s uneasy adjustment to American society, and her own encounters with learning difficulties and school violence.

The Butterfly’s Way

In four sections Childhood, Migration, First Generation, and Return the contributors to this anthology write powerfully, often hauntingly, of their lives in Haiti and the United States. Jean Robert Cadet’s description of his Haitian childhood as a restavec a child slave in Port au Prince contrasts with Dany Laferriere’s account of a ten year old boy and his beloved grandmother in Petit Gove. We read of Marie Helene Laforest’s realization that while she was white in Haiti, in the United States she is black. Patricia Benoit tells us of a Haitian woman refugee in a detention center who has a simple need for a red dress dignity. The reaction of a man who has married the woman he loves is the theme of Gary Pierre Pierre’s ‘The White Wife’; the feeling of alienation is explored in ‘Made Outside’ by Francie Latour. The frustration of trying to help those who have remained in Haiti and of the do gooders who do more for themselves than the Haitians is described in Babette Wainwright’s ‘Do Something for Your Soul, Go to Haiti.’ The variations and permutations of the divided self of the Haitian emigrant are poignantly conveyed in this unique anthology.

Anacaona

With her signature narrative grace, Edwidge Danticat brings Haiti’s beautiful queen Anacaona to life. Queen Anacaona was the wife of one of her island’s rulers, and a composer of songs and poems, making her popular among her people. Haiti was relatively quiet until the Spanish conquistadors discovered the island and began to settle there in 1492. The Spaniards treated the natives very cruelly, and when the natives revolted, the Spanish governor of Haiti ordered the arrests of several native nobles, including Anacaona, who was eventually captured and executed, to the horror of her people.

Brother, I’m Dying

From the best selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph. From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her second father, when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who knew all the verses for love. And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known. Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty one year old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge s firstborn, who will bear his name and the family s stories, both joyous and tragic into the next generation. Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family of two men s lives and deaths, and of a daughter s great love for them both.

Create Dangerously

‘Create Dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. 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.’ Create Dangerously In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus’ lecture, ‘Create Dangerously,’ and combining memoir and essay, Danticat tells the stories of artists, including herself, who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them. Danticat eulogizes an aunt who guarded her family’s homestead in the Haitian countryside, a cousin who died of AIDS while living in Miami as an undocumented alien, and a renowned Haitian radio journalist whose political assassination shocked the world. Danticat writes about the Haitian novelists she first read as a girl at the Brooklyn Public Library, a woman mutilated in a machete attack who became a public witness against torture, and the work of Jean Michel Basquiat and other artists of Haitian descent. Danticat also suggests that the aftermaths of natural disasters in Haiti and the United States reveal that the countries are not as different as many Americans might like to believe. Create Dangerously is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat’s belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.

Bronx Noir (By:S J Rozan)

Brand new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Kevin Baker, Thomas Bentil, Lawrence Block, Jerome Charyn, Suzanne Chazin, Terrence Cheng, Ed Dee, Joanne Dobson, Robert Hughes, Marlon James, Sandra Kitt, Rita Laken, Miles Marshall Lewis, Pat Picciarelli, Abraham Rodriguez Jr., S.J. Rozan, Steven Torres, and Joe Wallace.

S.J. Rozan was born and raised in the Bronx and is a lifelong New Yorker. She’s the author of eight novels in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of the stand alones Absent Friends and In This Rain forthcoming. Her books have won Edgar, Nero, Macavity, and Shamus awards for best novel. She’s at work on another series novel, Shanghai Moon.

Chicago Noir (By:)

Chicago Noir is a legitimate heir to the noble literary tradition of the greatest city in America. Nelson Algren and James Farrell would be proud. Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby If ever a city was made to be the home of noir, it’s Chicago. These writers go straight to Chicago s noir heart. Aleksandar Hemon, author of Nowhere ManBrand new stories by: Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeff Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer. The city of Chicago has spent much time and money over the last decade marketing itself as a tourist friendly place for the whole family. It’s got a shiny new Millennium Park, a spaceship in the middle of Soldier Field, and thousands of identical faux brick condo buildings that seem to spring from the ground overnight. Chicago’s rough and tumble tough guy reputation has been replaced by a postcard with a lake view. But that city’s not gone. The hard bitten streets once represented by James Farrell and Nelson Algren may have shifted locales, and they may be populated by different ethnicities, but Chicago is still a place where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival. The stories in Chicago Noir reclaim that territory. Chicago Noir is populated by hired killers and jazzmen, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies. It’s the Chicago that the Department of Tourism doesn’t want you to see, a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. These are stories about blocks that visitors are afraid to walk. They tell of a Chicago beyond Oprah, Michael Jordan, and deep dish pizza. This isn’t someone’s dream of Chicago. It’s not even a nightmare. It’s just the real city, unfiltered. Chicago Noir.

Baltimore Noir (By:Laura Lippman)

Brand new stories by: David Simon, Laura Lippman, Tim Co*ckey, Rob Hiaasen, Robert Ward, Sujata Massey, Jack Bludis, Rafael Alvarez, Marcia Talley, Joseph Wallace, Lisa Respers France, Charlie Stella, Sarah Weinman, Dan Fesperman, Jim Fusilli, and Ben Neihart.

Laura Lippman has lived in Baltimore most of her life and she would have spent even more time there if the editors of the Sun had agreed to hire her earlier. She attended public schools and has lived in several of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods, including Dickeyville, Tuscany Canterbury, Evergreen, and South Federal Hill.

Los Angeles Noir (By:Denise Hamilton)

Brand new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Hector Tobar, Patt Morrison, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Scott Phillips, Diana Wagman, Lienna Silver, Brian Ascalon Roley, and Denise Hamilton. Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series. Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Willa Cather awards. The Los Angeles Times named Last Lullaby a Best Book of 2004, and it was also a USA Today Summer Pick and a finalist for a Southern California Booksellers Association 2004 award. Her fourth Eve Diamond novel, Savage Garden, is a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Southern California Booksellers Association award for Best Mystery of 2005.

Wall Street Noir (By:Peter Spiegelman)

Brand new stories by: John Burdett, Peter Blauner, Charles Ardai, Henry Blodget, Twist Phelan, Larry Light, James Hime, Jason Starr, Lauren Sanders, Tim Broderick, Reed Farrel Coleman, Jim Fusilli, Mark Haskell Smith, and more.

Peter Spiegelman is the Shamus Award winning author of Black Maps Knopf, 2003, Death’s Little Helpers Knopf, 2005, and Red Cat Knopf, 2007, which feature private detective and Wall Street refugee John March. Spiegelman is a twenty year veteran of the financial services and software industries, and has worked with banks, brokerage houses, and central banks in major markets around the world. He lives in Connecticut.

Mexico City Noir (By:Paco Ignacio Taibo II)

Brand new stories by: Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Eugenio Aguirre, Eduardo Antonia Parra, Bernardo Fern ndez Bef, scar de la Borbolla, Rolo D ez, Victor Luiz Gonz lez, F.G. Haghenbeck, Juan Hern ndez Luna, Myriam Laurini, Eduardo Monteverde, and Julia Rodr guez. Paco Ignacio Taibo II was born in Gij n, Spain, and has lived in Mexico since 1958. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, which have been published in many languages around the world, including a mystery series starring Mexican Private Investigator H ctor Belascoar n Shayne. He is a professor of history at the Metropolitan University of Mexico City.

Haiti Noir

Includes brand new stories by: Edwidge Danticat, Rodney Saint Eloi, Madison Smartt Bell, Gary Victor, M.J. Fi vre, Marvin Victor, Yanick Lahens, Louis Philipe Dalembert, Kettly Mars, Marie Ketsia Theodore Pharel, Evelyne Trouillot, Katia Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zoboi, Nadine Pinede, and others. Haiti has a tragic history and continues to be one of the most destitute places on the planet, especially in the aftermath of the earthquake. Here, however, Edwidge Danticat reveals that even while the subject matter remains dark, the caliber of Haitian writing is of the highest order.

The Future Dictionary of America

This book was conceived by Safran Foer Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Dave Eggers as a way to bring over a hundred authors together to promote progressive causes in the November 2004 election. The book is an imagining of what a dictionary might look like about thirty years hence, when all of the world’s problems are solved and our current president is a distant memory. The book is by turns funny, outraged, utopian, and dyspeptic. Over 150 writers contributed to the book, including: Stephen King, Robert Olen Butler, Glen David Gold, Richard Powers, Susan Straight, Sarah Vowell, Billy Collins, C.K. Williams, Colson Whitehead, Donald Antrim, Jonathan Franzen, Edwidge Danticat, Edward Hirsch, Joyce Carol Oates, Katha Pollitt, Padgett Powell, Paul Auster, Anthony Swofford, Julia Alvarez, Susan Choi, Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, and Art Spiegelman. Hardcover editions of the book will also include a CD compilation, with all new songs by the best musicians working. Among them: David Byrne, R.E.M., Death Cab for Cutie, Moby, Sleater Kinney, Flaming Lips, Tom Waits, Yo La Tengo, Bright Eyes, They Might Be Giants, Elliott Smith, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.