Edwidge Danticat

Jennifer Gonnerman interviewed Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying.

Their first exchange:

JG: What was the hardest part of your book to write - and why was it so challenging?

ED: The hardest part was reading the government documents involved in my uncle's death.

Every encounter he had with a government official seemed so unfriendly, so distant, so cold. You have a feeling that no one was responding to him as a person, as a human being. It was also very difficult to write about my father's death. Obviously there was so much emotion involved.

I had been with my father just a few days before he died. This is not in the book but when I left him to return to Miami with my daughter before he died, he said to me, "When you come back, you might be able to see me, but I won't be able to see you."

Soon after that, he stopped eating and drinking and he died seventy-two hours later.

Read the entire Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue