The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [0]
Title Page
Epigraph
Praise
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
SEVEN
WATER CHILD
THE BOOK OF MIRACLES
NIGHT TALKERS
THE BRIDAL SEAMSTRESS
MONKEY TAILS - (FEBRUARY 7, 1986/FEBRUARY 7, 2004)
THE FUNERAL SINGER
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
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WEEK 12
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WEEK 14
THE DEW BREAKER CIRCA 1967
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Edwidge Danticat
Copyright Page
Maybe this is the beginning of madness . . .
Forgive me for what I am saying.
Read it . . . quietly, quietly.
—OSIP MANDELSTAM
Acclaim for Edwidge Danticat’s THE DEW BREAKER
“Breathtaking. . . . With terrifying wit and flowered pungency, Edwidge Danticat has managed over the past 10 years to portray the torment of the Haitian people. . . . In The Dew Breaker, Danticat has written a Haitian truth: prisoners all, even the jailers.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Danticat [is] surely one of contemporary fiction’s most sensitive conveyors of hope’s bittersweet persistence in the midst of poverty and violence.”
—The Miami Herald
“Thrillingly topical. . . . [The Dew Breaker] shines. . . . Danticat leads her readers into the underworld. It’s furnished like home.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Stunning. . . . Beautifully written fiction [that] seamlessly blend[s] the personal and political, [and] asks questions about shame and guilt, forgiveness and redemption, and the legacy of violence . . . haunting.”
—USA Today
“Fascinating. . . . Danticat is a fine and serious fiction writer who has slowly grown as an artist with each book she has written.”
—Chicago Tribune
“In its varied characters, its descriptive power and its tightly linked images and themes, [The Dew Breaker] is a rewarding and affecting read, rich with insights not just about Haiti but also about the human condition.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“[The Dew Breaker] is, most profoundly, about love’s healing powers. From its marvelous descriptions of place to the gentle opening up of characters, this is a book that engages the imagination.”
—Elle
“With her grace and her imperishable humanity . . . [Danticat] makes sadness beautiful.”
—The New York Observer
“Danticat has an emotional imagination capable of evoking empathy for both predator and prey.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“With characteristic lyricism and grace, Danticat probes the painful legacy of a time when sons turned against their fathers, children were orphaned, and communities were torn apart.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Delicate and poetic. . . . Danticat [is] more than a storyteller, she’s a writer. . . . Her voice is like an X-Acto knife—precise, sharp and perfect for carving out small details.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Filled with quiet intensity and elegant, thought-provoking prose. . . . An elegiac and powerful novel with a fresh presentation of evil and the healing potential of forgiveness.”
—People
“[Danticat] fuses the beauty and tragedy of her native land, a land her characters want to forget and remember all at once.”
—Ebony
“In these stories Edwidge Danticat continues to speak eloquently for those who in losing their sorrowful homeland have lost their voices.”
—The Boston Globe
“Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat presents simple truths . . . this, the novelist seems to be saying, is how you understand; here is the primer for survival.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
My father is gone. I’m slouched in a cast-aluminum chair across from two men, one the manager of the hotel where we’re staying and the other a policeman. They’re both waiting for me to explain what’s become of him, my father.
The hotel manager—MR. FLAVIO SALINAS, the plaque on his office door reads—has the most striking pair of chartreuse eyes I’ve ever seen on a man with an island Spanish lilt to his voice.
The police officer, Officer Bo, is a baby-faced, short, white Floridian with a potbelly.
“Where are you and your daddy from, Ms. Bienaimé?” Officer Bo asks, doing the