Brother, I'm Dying

Brother I’m Dying is a family memoir by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, originally published in the United States in 2007. Alternating between the author’s past in Haiti and present in the US, this memoir combines personal histories with sociopolitical contextualization to pay homage to Danticat’s father and uncle as well as give voice to Haitian people in their struggle for a peaceful life. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and was chosen as a New York Times notable book for 2007. The edition used for this study guide is by Vintage, published as an e-book in 2007.

Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969, and she spent the first 12 years of her life there. After moving to the United States, she graduated from Barnard College and obtained an MFA from Brown University. She published her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, in 1994, and since then she was part of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists selection, won the Story Prize twice, received the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant, and was awarded the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2017. She has also received several honorary doctorates (including from Smith College and Yale University).

In New York, in 2004, the 35-year-old Edwidge learns that she is expecting her first child the same day she learns her father is suffering from an incurable illness. Meanwhile, in Haiti, her native country, her Uncle Joseph, a preacher and an educator, is attempting to keep peace among local gangs, rioters and the United Nations mission sent to alleviate the political tensions.

Edwidge recalls her upbringing in Haiti, where she and her younger brother, Bob, lived with her Uncle and Tante Denise as first her father, and then her mother, immigrated to the US in search of a better life. Her uncle loses his voice after surgery to remove throat cancer, and little Edwidge becomes his interpreter, helping him deal with everyday things. Life in Haiti, a former French colony and US protectorate, is hard—the country is poor and destabilized by constant political upheavals and changes of governments—but Edwidge feels safe in the nook of her family, even though she misses her parents, with whom she has intermittent contact. Her parents visit only once, after having obtained resident status in the US, to secure visas for Edwidge and Bob. Edwidge then learns she has two more siblings, brothers Kelly and Karl, who were born in the US, and she feels jealous of them for enjoying their parents’ proximity. Finally, at age 12, Edwidge leaves for the US to start a new life.

In the present, someone falsely denounces the 81-year-old Uncle Joseph as a collaborator with the UN forces, and local gangs burn his church and school, forcing him to flee the neighborhood of Bel Air, where he has lived since 1946. He enters the US with his son, but instead of using a valid tourist visa, he asks for temporary asylum. The border police apprehend both men, question them, and send them to the infamous Krome detention center. Edwidge, who is living in Miami, tries to get in to see them but fails. Joseph’s health deteriorates rapidly, the officials fail to take the necessary precautions, and he dies alone in the prison ward of a hospital.

Meanwhile, Edwidge’s due date is nearing as her father’s health worsens. She gives birth to a daughter whom she names Mira after her father. She visits her family with her newborn child, and her father meets his namesake. Several days after Edwidge returns to Miami, her father dies in his sleep.