Brother, I'm Dying | 
 enlarge | Author: Edwidge Danticat
Publisher: Vintage
Category: EBooks
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $4.96 (33%)
Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 10041
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated.
In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I'm Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 Well crafted and worthwhile but hard to engage June 6, 2009
A. M. Guest
Stories of Haiti and its people are important but marginalized in most of the US. This book tells one such story in a spare and elegant way through the experience of Edwidge Danticat's family. The family, and by implication Haiti itself, is portrayed as a complex mixture of vibrancy, bad luck, love, and victimization. The US stirs that mixture in both big and small ways--through government policies and human relationships. The book ultimately provides a worthwhile representation of how immigrant families can love the opportunities of the US--the father as a cab driver able to establish his children for thriving lives as writers and financiers--while resenting the costs--the petty bigotry of immigration officials inured to an uncle's genuine desperation. And of how such a family can love Haiti--the uncle as a voiceless preacher tending to a loving flock--while fleeing the desperation--the mobs of para-military youth that use violence as a pathetic grasp at small feelings of power.
But while the book was worth reading, and while I grew to admire the crafting of the writing over its course, I was also a bit disappointed. Perhaps part of my disappointment may be because I have heard and read much acclaim for Danticat's writing and for this book in particular. I may have expected too much. But the first third of the book read as slow and self-indulgent. Though the family's story is ultimately quite engaging, the reader is not given an opportunity to understand why we should care as much as the narrator. Further, though Danticat herself tries to stay out of the way of the story of her father and uncle, that effort ends up feeling a bit hollow. By only inserting bits about her own role as dutiful, loving, and conflicted, the author reads as more naive than the sophistication of her prose suggests.
 Three stories, two countries, interwoven May 15, 2009
M. Feldman (Bowdoin, Maine, USA)
This is a fine memoir, well worth reading. Other reviews have summarized the story of the two brothers, so I will simply add that because Danticat is a novelist, she has a superior eye for detail. Thus, she is able to convey, clearly and unsentimentally, a sense of what life is like in Haiti: the long and difficult process of getting medical care for her uncle Joseph's throat cancer, the menace of unpredictable political violence, the simple meal of sweet coffee and dimpled bread a poor woman offers Joseph when he seeks shelter in her home. Using the reports available to her, Danticat also powerfully recreates the disturbing scene when Joseph becomes ill in the office of the U.S. Customs officials who are holding him in Miami. Just as compelling is her depiction of a much smaller moment, when she brings her dying father, who can eat little, a bowl of rice perfectly cooked by his wife.
universal themes, real emotion March 20, 2009
Christine Dilacqua (San Jose, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read an excerpt of this in The New Yorker before the book was published. The excerpt intrigued me for being so well written and so full of feeling. I remembered that excerpt when I heard an interview with the author on Fresh Air and read the book in late 2007. This is a beautifully written memoir, full of details of daily life and feelings exchanged between family members. The author's story of her uncle's detainment by US immigration is heartbreaking. I think of this whenever I hear of another unfortunate person who dies while in custody and lacking medical care.
An interesting memoir about family relations, immigration and Haiti March 9, 2009
Tanya Griffin (Wilkes-Barre)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book was a wonderfully written story about family relations. It did drag a bit in a few spots and I would have liked to hear more about Haiti overall. Not just the violence and the US and UN activities in the country. The ending was so shocking I did not believe it and found myself embarrassed at the treatment of the individual by our governments policies (I don't want to give it away) so I can't elaborate. Truely a tragedy that one would not wish upon their worst enemy.
Moving yet not devastating January 31, 2009
SS (Chicago)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is not as heartwrenching as it sounds from the title. I was a bit afraid to read it, but once I took the plunge I couldn't put it down. The prose is direct and simple, but beautiful. The story is of family, and like any story of family, has sadness. But it is more heartwarming than heartbreaking.
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