Interview with Edwidge Danticat

Interview with Edwidge Danticat, a well-known Haitian-American writer. Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and lived there with her aunt before joining parents in Brooklyn, New York at age 12. She wrote her first short story while still living in Haiti, and two years after moving to New York, she published her first story in English, “A Haitian-American Christmas: Crémace and Creole Theater.” She earned a B.A. in French literature from Barnard College and an M.A. in creative writing at Brown University, where she wrote her thesis Breath, Eyes, Memory, a novel about four generations of Haitian women that was published in 1994. In 1996, she published Krik? Krak!, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and became an Oprah Book Club selection. Danticat has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Langston Hughes medal. Her writings deal with Haiti, personal stories, immigration, loss, suffering, and contrasting cultures, and her well-known works include novels, short stories, essays, and works for young adults. In addition to the books listed above, some of her other well-known works include The Farming of Bones (1998), The Dew Breaker (2004), and Brother, I’m Dying (2007), and Claire of the Sea Light (2013).