Ann Page this book brought tears

"I wanted very much to be in New York with my father, so I closed my eyes and imagined myself there. I am sitting on the edge of his bed and we're watching the Price is Right on television. Unsure of the answers, we guess wildly but still get all of them right anyway. This makes my father so happy that he rises out of bed and starts to dance. At first he dances like a ballerina in slow motion, but then he increases his pace until he's jumping up and down, bouncing on and off his bed." p. 207
I think this passage is especially beautiful because of the raw emotion that is expresses. Edwige so desperately wishes her father to be well again, and in this passage she images he has become well enough to dance. I think that all people who have lost someone can relate to those moments in time when you dream of them being well. Those brief and beautiful moments when all is as it was when it was perfect.

This part is because I just loved this book... The most touching line of the book..
"I think now that my father waited for me to leave. That he did not want me to hold Mira with one hand and his corpse with the other." This line also sums up the entire journey of the novel.

Logic vs. Feeling

....hmmm, pertinent? Wednesday's quote: "Better to be without logic than without feeling." Bronte. What do you think?

Ann Page

"A few weeks back [Richard] was coming home late one night when someone flagged down his car, ordered him to roll down the window and pressed a gun to his temple. He heard the slow clicking of the trigger and quickly identified himself. When he heard Richard's name, his would-be assassin begged his forgiveness saying, 'Chief, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was you. You buried my mother a few months back.'" pg. 151

"Another hour went by with no shooting. A few church members arrived for the regular Sunday-morning service. 'I think we should cancel today,' Maxo told his father when they met again at the front gate. 'And what of the people who are here?' asked my uncle. 'How can we turn them away? If we don't open, we're showing our lack of faith. We're showing that we don't trust enough in God to protect us.'" pg. 173-74

"Besides, he was still hoping that the situation might somehow be resolved. He could talk to the dreads,...and explain. After all, before they were called dread or even chimeres, they were young men, boys, many of whom had spent their entire lives in the neighborhood. He knew their mother, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles and aunts." pg. 182

The intersection of political/personal, public/private:

"During his life, my uncle had clung to his home, determined not to be driven out. He had remained in Bel Air, in part because it was what he knew. But he had also hoped to do some good there. Now he would be exiled finally in death. He would become part of the soil of a country that had not wanted him. This haunted my father more than anything else." - Pg. 250, Brother, I'm Dying

This passage illustrates, for me, the way that the political intersects with, and interrupts, the personal in Danticat's autobiography. This passage sums up the way that the political issues in Haiti had a profound effect on Joseph Dantica's life. Although he was not personally involved in the political battles (both real and metaphorical) that took place during his life time, Edwidge Danticat's uncle was forced to become a part of them through actions of other people. He was forced to be buried in New York, after spending his whole life refusing to move there. He was forced out of his own home, out of his own life in many ways, because of political actions. In a very real way, politics interrupted his personal life, his own actions, the actions of those around him.