Danticat, Edwidge << dahn tih KAH, ehd WEEDJ >> (1969-…), is a Haitian-born author known for her fiction about Haitian history and about the life of Haitian immigrants in the United States. Danticat gained fame with her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), about Haitian family life in the United States.
Danticat’s next book was a collection of short stories, Krik? Krak! (1995). Her second novel, The Farming of Bones (1998), described the 1937 massacre of thousands of Haitians who were working in the Dominican Republic. The Dew Breaker (2004) is a novel about the Tontons Macoutes, the brutal secret police who tortured or killed thousands of Haitians during the rule of the dictators François Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier, his son, from 1957 to 1986. Danticat wrote about the earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 in the children’s novel Eight Days: A Story of Haiti (2010). Claire of the Sea Light (2013) is a moving novel about the past and present life of a seven-year-old girl living with her fisherman father in a shack near the sea. Untwine (2015) is a novel for young adult readers about twin sisters in Haiti. My Mommy Medicine (2019) is a children’s picture book in which a little girl describes how she can always count on her mother to help her feel better. Everything Inside, also published in 2019, is a book of short stories.
Danticat was born on Jan. 19, 1969, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her parents immigrated to the United States when she was a young child, and she was raised by her aunt and uncle. She moved to New York City at the age of 12 to join her parents. She received a B.A. degree from Barnard College in 1990 and an M.F.A. degree from Brown University in 1993. In addition to her fiction, Danticat has written plays and a memoir of her family, Brother, I’m Dying (2007). Her nonfiction was collected in Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010). She edited The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States (2001), a collection of essays and poems by Haitian authors; and Haiti Noir (2010), a collection of stories about modern Haiti.
