 Photo by Jill Krementz |
Danticat's acclaimed 2004 book, The Dew Breaker, is the subject of this fall's One Book, One New Paltz project, an ambitious multi-event celebration including an author appearance on October 5. "We're very, very delighted that she can come here, says Dean of Liberal Arts Gerald Benjamin, who launched the One Book, One New Paltz project last year. The 12-member committee discussed many titles before choosing The Dew Breaker. "We wanted a book with a broad appeal for different audiences: young people, old people, as well as students," says Benjamin. "The whole point is to get the campus and the community interacting."
Committee member Rachel Rigolino notes that there's a large immigrant population in the Hudson Valley, including Haitian communities in Port Ewen, Spring Valley, and Rockland County. There were other serendipitous connections: Haitian photojournalist Daniel Morel and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jane Regan, just moved to New Paltz, and Vassar College's Haiti Project, which sells Haitian art to raise money for rural schools, was eager to broaden its base. Danticat's book became the centerpiece for a vibrant exploration of Haitian culture, including an exhibit of Morel's photographs, a concert by Roy "Futureman" Wooten in tribute to Haitian composer Le Chevalier de Saint-George, two documentary screenings, a traveling art show by the Haiti Project, and discussion groups at such venues as Elting Memorial Library, the Village Tea Room, and The Bakery.
Danticat couldn't be happier. "Part of my excitement is that when I'm writing these stories, I always hope people will go beyond the book to learn more–especially about the era when this is set, the Duvalier era." (From 1957 to 1986, Haiti was ruled by father-son dictators Francois "Papa Doc" and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and their notoriously brutal enforcers, the Tonton Macoutes.)
The Dew Breaker is a complex and resonant work about the legacy of torture. (The title, from the Creole phrase "choukèt laroze," refers to the early hour at which victims were dragged from their homes.) Some reviewers have called it a novel, others a suite of linked stories. Danticat started by writing the opening story, "The Book of the Dead," in which a young artist takes a trip with her aging father, who reveals his long-buried history: in Haiti, he was not a torture victim, as she's believed all her life, but a torturer.
Danticat wrote the title story to flesh out the dew breaker's background, and soon found that "everything I wrote seemed to relate to that character." Moving forward and backwards in time, from the mountains of Haiti to the US, she constructed her book in discrete sections that reverberate off one another. Novel or stories? Danticat isn't telling. "Because there's so much ambiguity about the character, I like the idea that the form itself is ambiguous," she demurs. "It's up to the reader."
The book offers a complex prism of shattered lives, illuminated from certain angles by love and forgiveness. The New York Times Book Review wrote, "In The Dew Breaker, Danticat has written a Haitian truth: prisoners all, even the jailer." The subject of torture was problematic for some One Book committee members, who worried about reinforcing negative stereotypes about a country already stigmatized by media associations with poverty, political chaos, boat people, and AIDS.
Danticat is no stranger to such arguments. Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, published when its author was just 25, provoked a firestorm of response in the Haitian community. Some accused Danticat of airing dirty laundry in public. "It's a particular issue faced by writers of color, an issue of representation," she says, noting that Alice Walker was similarly criticized for portrayals of violent black men. "People said, 'They already write bad things about us, how can you add to it?'" In a recent interview in the Progressive, the author voiced her discomfort with being cast as spokesperson for a whole culture. "I don't really see myself as the voice of the Haitian-American experience. There are many; I'm just one."
And a very impressive one. Danticat speaks with articulate ease on any topic, and, apparently, in any circumstance: Though young mothers are famously adept at multitasking, not every author could discuss complex topics of culture, race, and perception while changing a diaper. ("Too much information," Danticat laughs into her cell phone, resuming her discourse without breaking stride.)
In fact, choosing a work that explores the far-reaching effects of torture on its perpetrators, victims, and family members seems painfully apt in light of recent revelations about US prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. "I hope it will spark a lively discussion," says Danticat, noting the morning headlines about secret CIA prisons.
Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince in 1969, five years after Duvalier declared himself president for life. Her father emigrated to the US when she was two, and her mother followed two years later, leaving young Edwidge to be raised by her beloved aunt and uncle. At 12, she rejoined her parents in Brooklyn, switching languages from Creole at home and French at school to English.