late post for jessica: writing prompt

Pick a memory and give it a voice. Talk to it as if it were a person.

APS for Jenna

Brother, I'm Dying, page # 41
"However, time was of the essence, so he had no choice but to travel without her, even though he feared that he might die and never see her again."

What did the white man say? page # 44
"The best place for me to make my announcement would have been at the family meeting the week before. This is probably what both my parents would have accepted, and preferred, rather than spitting something out adn scurrying off. But that night I couldn't look into my father's face and--though I knew it would come very natually to him and my mother both--ask taht they be happy for me."

Where's the Title?

I wanted to bring to attention the actual part in the book where the title gets its name.

"My uncle heard a crackling as my father's phone was picked up. 'Hello," my father said, his voice creaking anxiously. No good news could ever come at this hour of the night, he told himself.
My uncle pressed his lips as close as he could to the mouthpiece to whisper these three words: 'Frè, map mouri.' Brother, I'm dying.
'What's wrong?" my father asked.
'Gòj,' he replied. Throat."
-p. 41

I believe Jackie brought up the simplicity in the words, such as "Brother, I'm dying" or "My wife is dead." I believe this is really important to notice, especially here when the reaction isn't as emotional as one might expect. What fascinates me is how Danticat uses her translations as yet another barrier to separate herself from the book as we have seen throughout. I see her using the exact language first with the simple translation following as this split shows us the situation as it happened and the situation as we would understand. Unless the reader is familiar with the language, the translations are important after that brief moment of being left in the dark as we try to unfold what the Uncle was saying.

A Connection

verba volant, scripta manent -- spoken words fly away, written words remain."

“To write vulnerably is to open a Pandora’s box. Who can say what will coming flying out? When I began, nine years ago, to make my emotions part of my ethnography, I had no idea where this work would take me or whether it would be accepted within anthropology and the academy.” The Vulnerable Observoer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Ruth Behar. 1996

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.

Language and Death

Throughout the text death is expressed through language. I suppose that's rather obvious because its a text, however how it is expressed is interesting. When someone is dying or has passed away Edwidge's family expresses it without using excess words. "Brother I am dying." "My wife is dead." This then led me to think about whether or not our society uses and over abundance of words to discuss death, as though somehow to make it easier?
Perhaps this is a bit of rambling..but I was certainly struck with the almost abruptness the topic of death is brought up.

New Beginnings

"As my head bobbed up and down, I felt my old life quickly slipping away. I was surrendering myself, not just to a country and a flag, but to a family I'd never really been a part of...'You're now free to be with your parents. For better or for worse'...I wondered if he (the consul) knew something we didn't."

I can't imagine how hard this would have to be, to leave everything that you've ever known, your home, family, country, to go and live with people that are your parents only in the biological sense. All this at eleven years old would be too much for some to handle. It does remind me of Mary McCarthy, when she had to move in with grandparents that she didn't know because her previous life as she knew it, had ended.
At the same time that it was the ending of Edwidge's old life, it was the beginning of something totally new. Even though neither she, nor her brother, really knew what life was going to be, they went ahead with the change anyway.

Story-Telling

I think Danticat's method of using stories as a mirror for events happening in her own life is very effective.

For example, Granme Melina's Rapunzel-like story (on page 69) of "a beautiful young girl whose mother, fearful that she might be abducted by passersby, locked her inside a small but pretty little house by the side of the road while the mother worked in the fields until dusk." Danticat explains how this story was really a reflection of how Granme Melina must have felt, who was in her 90's and just waiting to die, or to be let out of the house.

Danticat does this again on page 116 when she recalls another of Granme Melina's stories about the old horse and the goat. It's a reflection of her current situation with her brothers; she and Bob are on one team and their brothers Kelly and Karl are on another. Because Edwidge and Bob were born in Haiti and lived their lives without their parents, and Kelly and Karl were born in America and lived everyday with them, they were strangers to each other. Technically, Edwidge and Bob were the oldest, but Kelly tells them, "they say you two are older than me...but it's not true. I'm the oldest." Because he was older than Karl and never knew Edwidge or Bob, he was accustomed to being the oldest child in the house. With the horse and goat, the goat assumes he is older than the horse by saying "Can't you see I have a beard and you don't? Aren't beards a sign of old age?" Danticat follows this by saying "Kelly's time with our parents was his beard."

The use of stories to reflect real-life situations is helpful in these instances to explain how Granme Melina and Kelly were feeling. It is also helpful in showing the reader the culture in which Danticat grew up in and the importance of story-telling. Both stories evoke a sense of understanding and empathy within the reader for these characters as well. With Rapunzel, I felt bad for Granme Melina, and with the goat, I felt bad for Edwidge and Bob but understood where Kelly was coming from. It's a great example of the importance of symbolism and stories in understanding something that might not otherwise be so easily explained.

"There was an odd stillness to the neighborhood, the houses merging with the murky shadows in the dark. As they guided him up and down the hills and inclines of the winding neighborhood alleyways, he felt like a blind man being led through a labyrinth." - Pg. 191, Brother, I'm Dying.

I think this is a very accurate description of what it feels like to move around after devistation or extreme upset. Everything seems far away, muted, behind an invisible curtain. It's hard to connect with the world around you.

It's also a sensation I get when I'm up very early in the morning and it's not quite light out, or when I'm up very late. Boundaries seem farther away, and you feel like you're floating.