Brother, I'm Dying | 
 enlarge | Author: Edwidge Danticat
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 242849
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 1400041155
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400041152
ASIN: 1400041155
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Recycled Library Edition
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Product Description
From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart—her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who “knew all the verses for love.”
And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known.
Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates.But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church,the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe.Instead,he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name—and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic—into the next generation.
Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 A most remarkable memoir September 27, 2008
Edwidge Danticat has crafted a remarkable memoir in this book - the story of two brothers, her father and her Uncle Joseph, their love for their family and most of all her love for both of them.
Dandicat was born in Haiti in 1969. When she was only two, her father left Haiti and moved to New York to work, initially with only a visitor's visa. He left his wife and two children behind. But he didn't desert them. He sent letters, money and gifts. After two years he returned for his wife, but because they would have to work so hard to get ahead in New York, he left Edwidge and her younger brother, Bob, with Uncle Joseph and his wife. For the following eight years, Uncle Joseph became a second father to them.
During the time Dandicat lived with her uncle's family, he developed throat cancer. Following a radical laryngectomy surgery, Uncle Joseph, who had been a Baptist preacher, no longer had a voice. He could only mouth words or write his thoughts out on paper. Edwidge became his translator. When Edwidge was twelve, her parents returned to Haiti with two new little brothers. Initially she did not realize that they had come to take her and Bob back to New York to finally live with them as a family. Edwidge would not see her aunt and uncle again regularly until she was grown.
When her father was diagnosed with terminal pulmonary fibrosis, Edwidge called Uncle Joseph and he came to be with his brother. Although his son also lived in New York, Joseph still refused to immigrate. When his three-month visa was up, he again went back to Haiti. He planned to finish work on some projects and then perhaps move to New York. But by that time immigration rules had become very restrictive. Although he had been threatened and his church burned down, U.S officials didn't want him as an immigrant. His troubles were horrific and Dandicat tells about them with grace and much sympathy.
This is both a joyful book and a sad one. There is much love and joy in the family, but the political realities of Haiti and the realities of immigration policies toward Haitians in 2004 are both horrific and in many ways incomprehensible. This would be a wonderful selection for book group discussions.
Armchair Interviews agrees.
the human costs of immigration September 2, 2008
Edwidge Danticat has made a name for herself chronicling the lives of Haitian immigrants in the States as well as in the home country. In this autobiographical book, she writes eloquently of her own life. In 2004, she finds out she is pregnant while at the same time she gets the news that her father Andre is dying of cancer. Danticat's parents emigrated to the US on their own initially, leaving Edwidge and her younger brother in the care of Andre's brother Joseph and his wife. Danticat thus has deep and enduring ties to two sets of parents. During the duration of her pregnancy, her uncle is fighting his own battles in Haiti, targeted by the regime for his outspokenness as a pastor.
On hearing of his brother's illness, Joseph Dantica travels to United States, only to be held at the point of entry in the States when he innocently and honestly lets the immigration officials know that he requests political asylum. In post 9/11 America, anyone and everyone with a less than stellar past is fair game, and Joseph becomes a victim of the heightened security situation in the States.
The author weaves her life story beautifully with those of her father and uncle - one in which birth and death, loss and gain, the personal and the political intertwine. If immigration is one of the compelling narratives of the 20th century, this book shows us the human costs of that narrative.
An Amazing Haitian-American Journey September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a heart wrenching true tale of a Haitian family whose members experience of various ups and downs come together to make a dreadfully sad yet inspiring story. This family goes through so many dire situations, in which their lives seem so close to being over numerous times throughout the story, that you begin to have more belief in them surviving . The author, Edwidge Danticat, who is telling the story of her family, is a truly wonderful writer. Instead of showing too many of her emotions, she lets the reader learn about her family and create their own emotions regarding the story. This memoir is an unforgettable tale of a loving family who support each other in every way possible, but still seems to always be going through tragic times.
This novel mainly focuses on Edwidges' uncle, Joseph, and father, Mira. Both of them suffer severely, but at the same time prove to be very strong willed people who want nothing more then to get better. Edwidges father, Mira, has pulmonary fibrosis which gives him a dreadful cough. This disease also affects the appetite, so he is rarely able to eat. As a result, he becomes extremely skinny. One day while Edwidge, her mother, and father are in their house, Mira requests to have some plain rice and a glass of cold water. This gets both Edwidge and her mother very excited because her father had not been voluntarily eating since the beginning of his illness. When the food was prepared, Edwidge carried it in to her father on a tray. As she was setting the tray down on her fathers lap, she accidentally spilled the cold water all over him, triggering a fit of loud moaning because of the very cold water on his thin body. After that, he was in too much pain to eat. Edwidge felt terrible about putting him through so much pain and making him upset but when she apologized he said "It is not as much that I wanted it that I wanted to want it." That statement shows a lot about her father's strength and will to survive.
Danticat also touches upon issues with immigration services in America. The uncle who has lived in Haiti his whole life decides to leave once gang and war issues become apparent near his house. Unfortunately, after traveling to America, he is not allowed into the country even though he has a Visa and has previously visited America numerous times. He is held at Krome, a prison for immigrants to stay at until getting deported. There, Immigrant Services are harsh to him and do not allow him to take his medication. They don't understand his medical needs and think that he is taking a voodoo potion. This leads him to a dire situation. This book sheds light on problems that immigrants face in America.
This book has the power to make you rejoice or cry. It has good insight into immigrants problems in America and is written in amazing detail. The authors story is overflowing with her love and affection for her family. It is a wonderful book that I would recommend to anybody.
A Good Book, Yes, But Also an Important Book August 17, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Edwidge Danticat is possibly the best American fiction writer of the younger generation. Her novels and story collections have cut a broad swath through the history of 20th century Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Their virtues include lyric and narrative pleasures, a plainspoken and elegant voice, intelligence and intelligibility, and the bridging of two cultures separated by language and mutual misunderstanding.
With Brother, I'm Dying, Danticat expands upon the gift for nonfiction she first demonstrated in her book about carnival in Jacmel. This time, she tackles memoir by way of family history, a private story that stands in for hundreds of thousands of other private stories and has deep public policy implications. Through the Dantica and Danticat families, we get an up-close-and-personal look at the terrors of Haitian history from Papa Doc to the present, alongside the beauties of place and people too often underexplored in newspaper accounts of Haiti.
The book's velocity increases toward the end, when Danticat's uncle is run out of Port-au-Prince by street gangs, only to encounter the surprisingly deadlier American immigration system. This part of the story is the most deeply felt section of a deeply felt book, and the reader wants to scream with outrage and the indignities Danticat's uncle suffers, and especially at the unwillingness of the immigration authorities to respond humanely to his illness, his difficulties in communicating, or his family's quite reasonable requests that he receive proper medical and legal attention.
I find myself grieving now, after finishing this book, and I want to know what I can do to make my country more compassionate. Certainly, Haitians receive shabbier treatment than almost any other ethnicity in our immigration and legal system, and, like Danticat, I find myself wondering why, and suspecting that it might be a manifestation of the worst prejudices we have not yet laid to rest.
It is true that books can be about virtuous things without being very good, but the urgency the reader feels about the book's subject owes much to the extraordinary power of the writing. If Danticat were a writer who chose subject matter of a lesser intensity, I believe that more critics would write about the sentences, the structural choices, the wise management of information in her books. That they do not is a testament to the power of the stories she chooses to tell, and her ability to get out of the way and give character and story center stage rather than the pyrotechnics of language which she is certainly capable of exhibiting.
 Brother, I 'm Dying August 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Edwidge Danticat is a talented writer. In Brother, I'm Dying, she weaves a family story in with the history of Haiti with wonderful results. The book is touching on both counts; with Danticat dealing with the illness of her father and with the turbulence in Haiti where several members of her family still live. Heartbreaking and powerful. Highly recommended.
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