Brother, I’m Dying
Brother, I’m Dying chronicles the lives of two Haitian men. Bookmarks Magazine summarizes the tale this way:
Edwidge Danticat’s father and uncle chose very different paths: the former struggled to make a new life for himself in America, while the latter remained in the homeland he paradoxically loved. In following their lives and their impact on future generations, Danticat’s powerful family memoir explores how the private and the political, the past and the present, intersect. The most poignant section focuses on Joseph’s tragic trip to the United States at age 81, but Danticat also tells a wider story about family and exile, the Haitian diaspora, the Duvalier regime, and post-9/11 immigration policy.
Joseph Dantica cares for Edwidge and her brother for years in Haiti while her father establishes a life for his family in the States. When her father and mother return for the children, she is understandably torn about leaving her uncle, an unfailingly gentle man. Pastor of a Christian church he built himself in the Bel Air district of Port au Prince, willing caregiver not just to his niece and nephew but to numerous others in need of rescue or shelter, Joseph Dantica visits the States many times over the years, but he always returns to his home in Haiti.
At age 81, he is victimized by a ruthless gang and loses everything. He flees to the U.S. and is detained and brutally imprisoned. Misunderstood, deprived of his medications, he dies unexpectedly in a Miami detention center.
The first wave of Joseph Dantica’s destruction occurs in Haiti at the hands of his neighbors. I didn’t understand how so many of them, whom he’d served and cared for for so many years, could turn against him, looting his home and burning his church. Maybe it has to do with the effects of fear and mistrust woven into their consciousness. After following him through so many years of quiet courage and integrity, it was heartrending to see.
The second wave, his treatment at the hands of American immigration officials, is a horror story of institutional cruelty and incompetence. After his funeral, Edwidge’s father offers a comment that sums up the ambivalence toward the U.S. expressed throughout the tale: “If our country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here.”
Like The Kite Runner, Brother, I’m Dying creates a personal connection to a nation and its inhabitants. A memoir as absorbing and beautiful as the best novels, this book is an unsparing introduction to the complex reality of the “poorest country in the western hemisphere.”
Further reading:
- Here’s an article about Joseph Dantica’s death.
- Here are two interviews with Edwidge Danticat about Brother, I’m Dying.
- Here’s a radio program in which Edwidge Danticat is one of the guests. It’s a wide-ranging discussion of the problems facing Haiti both before and after the earthquake.
