Conversations with Edwidge Danticat

Maxine Lavon Montgomery

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781496818409, 9781496812551
• eBook ISBN: 9781496812568
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Biografías literarias

This volume sheds a much-needed light on Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) and her ability to depict timely issues in sparkling prose that delves deep into the borderlands, an uncharted in-between space located outside fixed geographic, cultural, and ideological bounds. Prevalent throughout many interviews here is Danticat's expressed determination not only to reveal Haitian immigrant experience, but also to make that nuanced culture and its vibrant traditions accessible to a wide audience.

These interviews coincide with Edwidge Danticat's evolving artistic vision, her steady book publication, and her expanding roles as fiction writer, essayist, memoirist, documentarian, young adult book author, editor, songwriter, cultural critic, and political commentator. Dating from her appearance on the literary scene at the age of twenty-five, the many interviews that she has granted attest to not only her productivity, but also her accessibility to scholars, teachers, writers, and journalists eager for knowledge about her vision. Included in this volume are interviews that range from 2000, covering the publication of her debut work of fiction, Breath, Eyes, Memory, to a personal interview conducted with the volume editor in 2016. In that conversation, which appears for the first time as part of this collection, Danticat provides insight into little-known aspects of her life, art, and politics.

Her candid interviews carry out a careful stripping away of preconceived notions of Danticat, disclosing the private and public life of a first-class writer and intellectual whose countless achievements have assured her an enduring place within contemporary world letters.

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Adams, Martha

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi

Adisa, Opal Palmer

adolescence of ED in New York: Katharine Capshaw Smith on; neighborhood; reading and writing; schools; self-perception; writing inspired by. See also migration of ED to United States

adolescent readers. See young adult readers

Adorno, Theodor

advice to artists and writers

African American communities: Haitian American communities and

African diasporic heritage

After the Dance

age

agriculture

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud

AIDS

Akashic Books

Alexander, Flex

Alexis, Jacques-Stephen: General Sun, My Brother; In the Flickering of an Eyelid

All Souls’ Rising (Bell)

Alvarez, Julia

ambivalence

American exceptionalism

American literature

American Revolution

Americans for Immigrant Justice

Americas Quarterly

Amour, colère, folie (Vieux-Chauvet)

Anacaona

Anacaona, Golden Flower

Anderson, Sherwood

André, Richard

Angelou, Maya

anger

Ansa, Tina McElroy

anthologies

Antigone (Morisseau-Leroy)

Antigone (Sophocles)

Antunes, António Lobo

apartheid, South African

Apopka, Florida

Apple

Aragi, Nicole

Arcade Fire

Archimedes

Arendt, Hannah

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand

art, Haitian

Art of Death, The

As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)

Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars

asylum seeking. See exile

asylum sought by ED’s uncle. See Dantica, Joseph

audience, young adult. See young adult readers

audience of ED’s works; ED’s family; ED’s younger self; Haitian Americans; Haitians

Audubon, John James

Aunt Rezia and Other Stories (Lahens)

aunts of ED. See Dantica, Denise; Tante Ilyana

authenticity

awards, ED on

awards, interviewers on

Baby Doc. See Duvalier, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”

Baldwin, James

Balf, Todd

Bambara, Toni Cade

Barnard, Anne

Barnard College

Barthes, Roland

baseball manufacturing

Basketball Wives

bateys (sugar plantation towns)

Battle of Savannah (American Revolution)

Beacon Best of 2000, The

Beast of the Haitian Hills, The (Marcelin)

Beauséjour

Bedtime for Sara

Beekman, Bernadette

Behind the Mountains

Belafonte, Harry

Bel Air, Port-au-Prince

Bélance, Alèrte

Bell, Madison Smartt

Bello, Maria

Bellow, Saul

Beloved (Morrison)

Beltifi

Benjamin, Rachel

Benoit, Patricia

Berger, Rose Marie

Best Nightmare on Earth (Gold)

Beyond Borders

Bible

bidonvilles

Bien-Aimé, Taina

“Bilingual Blues” (Pérez Firmat)

bin Laden, Osama

Birnbaum, Robert

birthright of ED

Black Milk (Shafak)

blackness

Boat, The (Nam Le)

boldness

“Book of the Dead, The”

borderlands

border of Dominican Republic and Haiti

botanicas

boycotts

Boyer, Faidherbe “Fedo” (husband of ED)

Boyer, Leila (second daughter of ED): in ED’s fiction; ED’s wishes for; effect on ED

Boyer, Mira (first daughter of ED): in ED’s fiction; ED’s mothering of; ED’s pregnancy with; ED’s wishes for; effect on ED; grandfather Andre and; reading ED’s books

bravery

Breath, Eyes, Memory: characterization in; criticism of; as ED’s “first child”; ED’s parents on; Erzulie in; folklore and fakelore in; Maxine Montgomery on; mother–daughter relationship in; Oprah Winfrey and; place in oeuvre; sequel to; st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Edwidge Danticat
• Edwidge Danticat
• Splintered Families, Enduring Connections: An Interview with Edwidge Danticat
• An Interview with Edwidge Danticat
• Up Close and Personal: Edwidge Danticat on Haitian Identity and the Writer’s Life
• An Interview with Edwidge Danticat
• Edwidge Danticat: The Create Dangerously Interview
• Edwidge Danticat Responds to the “Five Questions pour Ile en Ile” (in Creole, English, and French)
• Edwidge Danticat: In Conversation
• Writing in Exile Helps Authors Connect to Home
• We Are All Going to Die
• The Nuance of Noir: An Interview with Edwidge Danticat
• Create Dangerously: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat
• Edwidge Danticat: The Interview
• Haitian Youth Illuminated in Claire of the Sea Light
• The Art of Not Belonging
• Maneuvering Myself around a Scene: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat
• A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat
• The Dominican Republic and Haiti: A Shared View from the Diaspora
• A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat
• Edwidge Danticat Tells the Story behind Untwine
• Putting Together the Fragments: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat
• Additional Resources
• Index