Stories of Loss, Survival & Love from Haiti

“Perhaps, like me, you’re tired of hiding. Perhaps, like me, you’re tired of being afraid.” —The Dew Breaker.

This Sunday, I’m continuing our series on notable Caribbean women writers with a focus on Edwidge Danticat, the Haitian-American author whose work captures trauma, migration, and resilience with heart-wrenching clarity. Born in Port-au-Prince in 1969, Danticat has chronicled the Haitian diaspora with a personal yet universal touch. Her work explores political upheaval, displacement, and generational trauma in strong characters who bear their legacies with dignity and defiance.  Danticat emigrated to the US at age 12, reuniting with parents who had left years earlier. Her writing often reflects the loss and pain of missed time with loved ones. “There are silences that are harder than the days I knew her absence,” she writes in Breath, Eyes, Memory, echoing the quiet agony of those caught in the crossfire of migration.

Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), tells the story of Sophie Caco, sent from Haiti to the US to reunite with her estranged mother and confront a legacy of generational trauma. The novel navigates the tension between Haiti’s rural traditions and the alienating landscape of American life, capturing the complexities of the immigrant experience, a theme Danticat returns to often. In Krik? Krak!(1995), Danticat gives voice to ordinary Haitians—mothers, daughters, revolutionaries—enduring dictatorship and exile. Stories like “Children of the Sea,” an epistolary narrative between lovers torn apart by political unrest, reflect both brutal realities and the persistence of hope. “We are all drowning slowly in the same ocean,” she writes, her prose spare and resonant. The Dew Breaker (2004) cemented Danticat’s place in contemporary literature. It weaves together the lives of Haitian immigrants tied to a former torturer for the Duvalier regime.

The novel explores guilt, survival, and unresolved pain, adding depth to her exploration of trauma. Danticat’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying (2007), confronts these themes directly, recounting her father’s death in America and her uncle’s tragic end in a US detention centre. The memoir, a finalist for the National Book Award, offers a deeply personal yet politically charged examination of family, exile, and systemic injustice. Danticat’s work often parallels that of Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid, writers who explore fractured identities and dislocation. Like Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Kincaid’s Lucy, Danticat’s characters grapple with cultural alienation and the psychological scars of migration. Yet, amid the pain, Danticat’s stories are not devoid of hope. Her characters’ small acts of resistance and dignity shine through. “All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, not too much, not too little,” she writes in Breath, Eyes, Memory, highlighting the tender resilience in even the darkest moments.

Excerpt from “Breath, Eyes, Memory” by Edwidge Danticat: Credit: Penguin Random House, Canada.

“One by one the men began to file out of their houses. Some carried plantains, others large Negro yams, which made your body itch if you touched them raw. There were no men in Tante Atie’s and my house so we carried the food ourselves to the yard where the children had been playing. The women entered the yard with tins of steaming ginger tea and baskets of cassava bread. Tante Atie and I sat near the gate, she behind the women and me behind the girls. Monsieur Augustin stacked some twigs with a rusty pitchfork and dropped his ripe plantains and husked corn on the pile. He lit a long match and dropped it on the top of the heap. The flame spread from twig to twig, until they all blended into a large smoky fire. Monsieur Augustin’s wife began to pass around large cups of ginger tea. The men broke down into small groups and strolled down the garden path, smoking their pipes. Old tantes—aunties—and grandmothers swayed cooing babies on their laps. The teenage boys and girls drifted to dark corners, hidden by the shadows of rustling banana leaves.

Tante Atie said that the way these potlucks started was really a long time ago in the hills. Back then, a whole village would get together and clear a field for planting. The group would take turns clearing each person’s land, until all the land in the village was cleared and planted. The women would cook large amounts of food while the men worked. Then at sunset, when the work was done, everyone would gather together and enjoy a feast of eating, dancing, and laughter. Here in Croix-des-Rosets, most of the people were city workers who laboured like Tante Atie in baseball or clothing factories and lived in small cramped houses to support their families back in the provinces. Tante Atie said that we were lucky to live in a house as big as ours, with a living room to receive our guests, plus a room for the two of us to sleep in. Tante Atie said that only people living on New York money or people with professions, like Monsieur Augustin, could afford to live in a house where they did not have to share a yard with a pack of other people. The others had to live in huts, shacks, or one-room houses that, sometimes, they had to build themselves. In spite of where they might live, this potluck was open to everybody who wanted to come. There was no field to plant, but the workers used their friendships in the factories or their grouping in the shared houses as a reason to get together, eat, and celebrate life. Tante Atie kept looking at Madame Augustin as she passed the tea to each person in the women’s circle around us. “How is Martine?” Madame Augustin handed Tante Atie a cup of steaming tea. Tante Atie’s hand jerked and the tea sprinkled the back of Madame Augustin’s hand. “I saw the facteur bring you something big yesterday.” Madame Augustin blew into her tea as she spoke. “Did your sister send you a gift?” Tante Atie tried to ignore the question. “Was it a gift?” insisted Madame Augustin. “It is not the child’s birthday again, is it? She was just twelve, no less than two months ago.” I wondered why Tante Atie had not showed me the big package. Usually, my mother would send us two cassettes with our regular money allowance. One cassette would be for me and Tante Atie, the other for my grandmother. Usually, Tante Atie and I would listen to our cassette together. Maybe she was saving it for later. I tried to listen without looking directly at the women’s faces. That would have been disrespectful, as bad as speaking without being spoken to. “

— End of Excerpt Copyright © 2015 by Edwidge Danticat Other works by Edwidge Danticat include Claire of the Sea Light (2013), set in a Haitian fishing village, and Everything Inside (2019), a collection of short stories about love, loss, and family. Danticat’s accolades include a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Ira Mathur is a Guardian Media journalist and the winner of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction for her memoir, Love The Dark Days. Author inquiries: irasroom@gmail.com Website: www.irasroom.org.