Edwidge Danticat’s Visions of Haiti
The media supplies the majority of our knowledge on International countries, such as Haiti. Edwidge Danticat’s writings provide an enlightening sense of the Haitian culture we are not usually exposed to. This author shows us the character of Haitian society, and the impact on the people who live there. Danticat favors main characters who are Haitian emigrants or the children of emigrants, conflicted by their individual identity and their traditional culture. A common theme in these works is how national culture affects personal identify, both directly and indirectly. The author does an amazing job of showing the complexity of the culture in Haiti, even when the facts can be morbid, or horrifying for
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The story here also presents a dualistic depiction of Haitian culture, emphasizing both the family-oriented aspects that Danticat takes comfort in as a child, but also the dire sociopolitical circumstances that create a great deal of suffering and grief. She states early on that in order to portray an accurate depiction of such a complicate society, she must “look forward and back at the same time” in her narrative (Danticat 2004, p. 25-26). The dualism is further cemented by the proximity of birth and death imagery in the narrative: “my father is dying and I’m pregnant” (Danticat 2004, p. 14-15). Ultimately, Danticat concludes that both the Haitian culture she left, and the American culture she emigrated to contain aspects of repression: she has to speak both for her father and uncle because they are equally repressed – “I am writing this only because they can’t” (Danticat 2004, p. 26). The most significant symbolic representation of this is perhaps when Joseph refuses to leave Haiti because his father fought in the resistance against American occupation decades ago, even though the modern Haiti landscape is a hellish one where gangs threaten him with decapitation. When he does travel to America though, he is treated no better: he is detained by customs, ignored, and ultimately dies forgotten in a prison cell. This act thematically equates the two societies once