I’m an awkward academic who thinks, writes, and teaches about US immigration and imprisonment regimes and their growth out of racism, imperialism, and nationalism. I’m strongly motivated by things that I hate. I want to understand how and why we are facing such catastrophic problems, so that we can figure out how to undo them. My work is partly motivated by my personal history as the daughter of immigrants who moved to support their families and survive in the aftermath of war. As a privileged person in the US, I'm not directly affected by the state violence I study. I also know that we're not going to have a future unless we get there together.
Danticat offers a gorgeously written memoir tracing her father’s life as US migrant, her uncle’s life as community leader who stayed in Haiti, and her relationship to both across both countries. The book was motivated by her Uncle Joseph’s horrifying, tragic death in the Krome Detention Center (originally built to detain Haitian refugees and notorious for abuses) after he fled home to claim asylum. But it is much more than a recounting of his death. It is a chronicle of a deeply connected family whose love exceeded borders. I cannot get this book out of my head. It helps my students understand that the violence of US borders is not abstract and cannot be captured in statistics or political rhetoric. It is about real people who navigate seemingly overwhelming obstacles put before them—sometimes building new lives from nothing, sometimes succumbing to the violence of US regimes.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography A National Book Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book
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…
