Danticat's Novelistic Style

Danticat's writing is quite novelistic in many places throughout "her" autobiography. The point at which I noticed it the most is when she is discussing what happened to her uncle before he leaves Haiti and the short time he spends at that awful place called Krome. I know that she did get some information from her uncle, who attempted to write portions of his story on snippets of paper that she found after his death, but she had to have taken some liberties when writing about her uncle's departure from Haiti. I also realize that she received some verbal information from Tante Zi as well, but still, there are portions of the story that read like any fictional, page-turning novel.

"A half hour into the service, another series of shots rang out. My uncle stepped off the altar and crouched, along with Maxo and the others, under a row of pews. This time, the shooting lasted about twenty minutes. When he looked up again at the clock, it was ten a.m. Only the sound of sporadic gunfire could be heard at the moment that a dozen or so Haitian riot police officers stormed the church..." (page 174).

"...His entire life was now reduced to an odd curiosity, a looting opportunity. He was grateful, however, that no one seemed to know he was there, hiding. Some thought he had actually been killed. Others seemed certain he had fled" (page 189).

Clearly, Danticat could not have known EXACTLY what her uncle was feeling during certain instances in her telling of the story. However, she writes as if she is in his brain, maintaining a third-person point of view that is typcially seen in fictional tales. I really believe that is why Danticat's autobiography has been the hardest to put down for me. Everytime I read it, I honestly thought I was curling up with a wonderful novel. I guess that's one of the great things about writing your autobiography for someone else!

A Shakespearean Snippet

Definition of soliloquy:
an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregarded of or oblivious to any hearers present (often used as a device in drama to disclose a character's innermost thoughts)

And, of course, the actress in me has made it impossible to read autobiographies and not think of Shakespearean soliloquies, which are extremely prominent in many of his works, especially Hamlet. Here is the link to a YouTube video of Kenneth Branagh delivering Hamlet's most famous soliloquy in one of the many film versions of Hamlet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JD6gOrARk4&feature=related

Danticat's Autobiography "Starts with Death"

What makes Edwidge Danticat's "autobiography" different than the other texts we have covered in class is that she immediately claims that she has written the book for her father and her uncle, simply because they can't. I suppose you could argue that Douglass composed his work for someone else (abolitionist propaganda), but he never openly admitted to that fact. Danticat has literally decided to put everything out there in honor of her family. However, I would also like to argue that Danticat has put everything out there for herself as well, especially for the regions of her heart that are still aching from all the pain she has suffered and how much death she has encountered.

Danticat's autobiography begins with the quote: "To begin with death. To work my way back into life, and then, to return to death. Or else: the vanity of trying to say anything about anyone."
-Paul Auster
The Invention of Solitude

The first segment of this quotation is simply a nod toward the idea of purging emotions of pity and depression. There is no doubt that Danticat has suffered much, and I am sure she has felt multitudes of self-pity during many occasions of her life. Danticat writes about many deaths, meaning that she tells the stories of these deaths in order to purge the feelings she has associated with them. For Marie Micheline, for Tante Denise, for Uncle Joseph, for her father (assuming that he dies, for I have not actually read that far quite yet), she must purge what she feels. She will, of course, never forget what these individuals have done for her. She will never forget how much she misses them, but she will learn to live again. She will "work her way back into life." Eventually, of course, she will "return to death," whether it be her own death, or more deaths that she will encounter in life, deaht is always lurking behind every corner. Life and death is really a game of chance. Fate rolls your dice every day.

The last piece of the quotation alludes to the idea that nothing should ever be told about another person until they have lived a full life, until they have seen everything they have been put on Earth to see. "Vanity" in the quote does not indicate pride, a synonym we typically associate with the word, but rather indicates pointlessness or hollowness, a lack of value. The individuals who have died in Danticat's lifetime become valuable in their passing. They have legacies. Their stories NEED to be told, or else they can potentially be forgotten, something that Danticat clearly does not want to have happen.

Speaking to my Memory: Writing Prompt Response

Memory, speak to me! Speak to me about music. Speak to me about the possiblity of death. Are there gods that dictated what happened that day? You were with me waiting to record the day's events in your own personal diary. You were waiting to aid me in remembrance. Did you ask the same questions that I did? Why him? Why cancer? Can it even be cured? How much is he suffering? Whose bone marrow will be his life preserver? I often wonder if you knew what was going to happen already. I wonder if you had already written the happy ending. Had you seen it played out? Did you create those dreams for me, those wonderful dreams of predetermined survival? Did you help save his life? Did we? Together? Memory, was that all he needed, just a little bit of hope? Some prayers? You, Memory, will never permit me to forget the tears, how they felt, steaming hot, coursing down my cheeks. You will never permit me to forget the numbness that overtook every aspect of my being. You'll never allow those feelings to be forgotten. I love you for that. I thank you, because for that reason, his recovery has been all the more rewarding to witness...

Thank you, Memory!

Edwidge Danticat and writing others' lives

"I am writing this only because they can't." - Pg. 26

This very brief passage (some might even call it a line or sentance) seemed worthy of note to me because it reminded me of our discussion of writing preserving lives and memories beyond what actual life or actual memory can do.
Writing, although it can purge our memories of so much that we lose things, also preserves them indefinitely. You can save a life by writing about it, which is perhaps exactly what Danticat was trying to do in this work.
We assume that this sentence means that the two men she's primarily writing about have passed away (although maybe not... maybe they are just not capable of writing this story), so we guess that Danticat's recording of this story is an effort to keep the story (or stories, as may be more accurate) from being forgotten, a way to keep her family from being forgotten.
This reminds me of Nabokov's woe at having given away his memories to fiction, and it reminds us me of Douglass' effort to make others aware of the atrocities of his life and the lives of slaves in general. Does anyone write an autobiography and not try to preserve something? I doubt it. Perhaps we also write autobiographies in order to forget or leave out certain things. After the author dies, that negative incident that was left out will forever cease to exist. So life-writing is an act of preserving while it is also, simultaneously, an act of eliminating.

((place intriguing entry title here))

in response to the prompt: write to one of your memories as though it were a person.


i remember you, rough warm pavement, that loved to stub little toes and scratch little hands, and coerced with sand so that causing little knees to bleed took much less effort than if they were working separately. i remember you like i remember the height of the basketball hoop. i was four and you were ten-thousand feet high. you pushed me while i pushed myself, a globe of pickled orange between my two palms: no bigger than baby maple leaves. up into the air, that familiar space between the ground and the sky; my outline lifted by the innocence of itself in the moment. i remember you too gravity, reeling me down again to meet the concrete warmth of the long driveway pavement lined with argus-eyed day lilies. it was then that the fabric of my knees tore, so easily, as if the worn threads of my seams had ripped. that scary bright color fell out, and small pebbles jumped in; i still have the dark spots to prove it. and i remember you fear; fear of my mother scraping the pre-scars with something antiseptic, and the pain it would cause and hiding in the red, two-story playhouse my father built within the apple trees; a quiet, self-healing, nursing of the surface where my leg bent in half. i remember you painfilled pleasant memory.

Brother, I'm Dying

"I write these things now, some as I witnessed them and today remember them, others from official documents, as well as the borrowed recollections of family members. But the gist of them was told to me over the years, in part by my uncle Joseph, in part by my father. Some were told offhand, quickly. Others, in greater detail. What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time. I am writing this only because they can't."
page 26

autobiography can take many forms, part 2: song

Artist Site

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"Piano Man" by Billy Joel

What do you think? Any other autobiographical songs?

(Please bear with the short commercial at the beginning)

Talking to Myself

In response to Ash's writing prompt on talking to one's self...

I talk to myself all the time. And I mean ALL the time. Occasionally it's out loud, but most of the time my monologues are internal. I don't even realize I'm doing it most of the time. I'm also one of those annoying people who get songs or melodies stuck in my head constantly and can't help but sing (horribley) or hum the tune out loud. I did just that the other night while watching tv with my roommate, until she finally asked me to shut up. I was so wrapped up in my own little world I didn't realize I could be heard! The best places that I have found to have deep conversations with myself are in the shower and while running. Many times, my thoughts are in prayer form, which is really just a compilation of my worries, hopes, and fears, but directed in what I believed to be a helpful direction. Is prayer a one-sided conversation if you don't get a verbal response? Am I really just talking to myself?

Fate and Autobiography

"During the beginning of the summer and all through the previous one, Tamara's name had kept cropping up (with the feigned naivete of Fate, when meaning business)..." - Pg. 228

I found this statement interesting, because it brings up the issue of whether we really control our own lives. We may control our own stories, the telling of our stories, but how much do we control the events that form those stories? Nabokov admits in this passage that he is not the only motivating force behind his life experiences. What does this mean for honesty in his narrative? Does this lend us the idea that perhaps he's telling us how things happened as they seemed to him: in a mysterious, perhaps prearranged, way? Does this make us think he's a quack?

Do you believe in Fate? Destiny? Have you ever noticed the way something or someone, in retrospect, seems to have been present in your life long before you noticed it?

Posting! A response to a writing promt.

How do I talk to myself?

I guess I rarely create active dialogue in my head... but I think I make observations a lot, like "that was dumb" or "what the hell am I doing?" I think I swear in my head a lot, too.

When I was little I used to constantly narrate in my head. When I was actively tinking of something I didn't becuase I couldn'tdo both at once, but whenever I was doing something mindless I would narrate. Itold the sory of my life as it happend. I'd narrate getting dressed in the morning. I'd narrate brushing my teeth. I'd narrate eating breakfast. Sometimes I wonder now how I ever managed to sqeeze in a meangful thought. Perhaps I didn't.

Today, I don't talk to myself much at all. I've never done it outloud, but I guess now I always have a running stream of real thought at all times. In fact, there are many times when I wish I could shut it up.

a prompt thought and a thoughtful prompt

"Just before falling asleep, I often become aware of a kind of one-sided conversation going on in an adjacent section of my mind, quite independently from the actual trend of my thoughts. It is a neutral, detached, anonymous voice, which I catch saying words of no importance to me whatever-" (page 33)
and

"It is certainly not then - not in dreams - but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement , on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction." (page 50)


after our conversation in class on tuesday, i began thinking that perhaps the secure sensation we feel, of looking in the right direction despite the unclear view from our castle tower, might be a type of self-assurance, spoken subconsciously through that seemingly anonymous voice who mumbles to us just before we fall into a state of sleep. <---- is this a periodic sentence? i admit, i was trying. but i'm not sure i'm completley clear on its criteria. i think it should be much longer and illustrative.... anway, i said this thought would be prompt: in summary, i'm now tossing around this idea: we all have a conscious, which speaks to us in a sort of guiding manner (more attainable in 'reality'). and a subconscious, which fuels the essence of our actions (more available in a 'dream'-like state). that, mixed with the above passages, has got me thinking that there might be a way to bridge these contrary scopes of perspective. talking to yourself. Prompt:

when you talk to yourself, because i believe that everyone does in some form, is it outloud or in your mind? what do you say to yourself? is it criticism or positive reinforcement? is there a balance? is it always about something constructive? do you ever talk to yourself about nothing?

what do you get out of talking with yourself.