Danticat, Edwidge

Born in Haiti, in 1969, writer Edwidge Danticat is renowned for her literary works, including novels and short stories, periodical articles, a Haitian travel book, a memoir, and two children's books. As one of only a small number of Haitians who write in English, which is not her native language, her controversial social commentaries describe life in Haiti.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and has a long history of colonial exploitation, political turmoil, and more recently exploitation through globalization. Writing through her own experiences, interviews, and her insightful understanding of sociopolitical issues related to oppression, race, and gender, her work gives voice to Haitians in living in Haiti and abroad.

The daughter of working class parents, André and Rose Danticat, who had both immigrated to the New York by the time Edwidge was 4, Edwidge was not reunited with her parents until she left Haiti to join them at the age of 12. During the intervening years, Edwidge and her younger brother Eliab were raised by her father's brother, her beloved “second father” Uncle Joseph, a charismatic minister, and his wife her Tante Denise.

Educated at Barnard College, a women's liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University, she earned a B.A. in French Literature, after which she completed her M.F.A. in creative writing at Brown University in 1993. Her thesis eventually became her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, for which she won the 1994 Fiction Award from The Caribbean Writer.

Thus far, Danticat has won several other prestigious awards including the American Book Award for The Farming of the Bones in 1999, and the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Brother, I'm Dying, a family memoir focusing on the relationship between her father and his brother Joseph, and her love for them both. Among Danticat's other works are Krik? Krak! (1996), a National Book Award finalist, and The Dew Breaker (2004). She also edited The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures (2000), and The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States (2001).

Danticat's powerful and passionate writing reflects and expresses her own and her family's experiences of political violence in Haiti during the oppressive François Duvalier regime, poverty, family love and loyalty, and the strength and resiliency of the Haitian people.