Title: Brother, I'm Dying
Author: Edwidge Danticat
Memoirist Edwidge Danticat discovers she is pregnant with her first child on the same day that she learns that her father is dying of lung disease, which causes her to look back on her childhood in Haiti and her experiences living with the uncle who served as her foster father.
Delving right into Brother, I'm Dying immediately after finishing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao made me feel a little bit like I was doing a survey course on literature from immigrants from the island of Hispaniola, which, from these two books, seems like both a beautiful and a terrifying place to live, where dictators run amok, and the regular folk live in terror. As Edwidge Danticat carries her first child, she reflects back on the lives of the two men who raised her, her father and uncle and recounts the way that death took both of them. It's sort of a weird subject for a book-- part pregnancy journal, part international news story (the uncle's death), part hospice memoir, part coming-of-age story, but it really works here. Hats off to Edwidge Danticat for making a subject that sounds really nebulous on paper work out to be a beautiful, cohesive homage to the important father figures in her life.
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