Edwidge Danticat Visits her Haitian Roots: the prize-winning, young novelist from Haiti and Brooklyn spoke frankly in this interview given in Miami, Florida, in June 2003. Danticat is the first Haitian woman to compose a novel entirely in English, and she is also the first author to bring the Haitian/American experience to American literature. In our conversation she talked about the dictatorship in Haiti, the experience of being separated from her parents for eight years, racism, valuing the self, her sense of mystery, the creative process, writing, her audience, and her dreams, and she ends with a reading from her second novel, Krik? Krak!. This book, foretells the power of Danticat's latest works, The Dew Breaker, an intense story of family, dislocation and torturers during the notorious Duvalier regime, and her compelling memoir, Brother, I'm Dying.
DVD: Edwidge Danticat Visits her Haitian Roots
Details: English only, 40 minutes
Release date: fall 2005
See video clip >> (1.7 MB QuickTime)
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Excerpt: I think there is a sense of mystery everywhere, in everything that surrounds us. I think in Haiti or in other parts of the world we see thatwe almost take it for grantedthere is a sense of the continuity of your ancestors, or just of a world beyond the one we're in, and that there are other forces that interact in our lives other than the ones we see. That's something I've always felt: a kind of continuity in my life; that I'm not here, just here; that I didn't just sprout. The writer Maya Angelou has said that we didn't grow out of the ground like grass; we grew out of it like roots. We're deeper. There's more to us than the surface and I've always taken that for granted. I think part of that has to do with the fact that I grew up in Port-au-Prince, and had these competing forces. I grew up with my uncle who is a Baptist minister. You could easily be at church and all of a sudden there is a rara band going on outside. Some of the biggest vodou temples were in that same area. I think of the idea of the magical realism. For us, the world is like a realist magic.
Endorsements: "I would use Edwidge Danticat Visits her Haitian Roots to introduce various cross-cultural issues in my composition courses. Ms. Danticat is engaging and this conversation raises issues that would encourage my students to reflect on their own experiences as
second language learners in the U.S."
Robin Quizar, Professor of ESL Composition,
Metro State University, Denver, Colorado
"This film is a moving and accessible introduction to the agonizing history of Haiti, told through the sad and loving eyes of one of her daughters. A celebration of a creative and courageous woman, the film has inspired many who have seen it to become personally involved with our organization to help communities in Haiti."
Melissa Mahaney, Executive Director, Colorado Haiti Project, Inc.
"I watched your interviews from Ethnic Expressions from the Mosaic of the Americas. They were wonderful and very inspiring. I felt like an active participant in the interviews I watched. These cassettes will be useful in Cameroon at the university level. Accept my special congratulations for a job well done."
Dorothy Enanga Mokenge Matute, Principal, Government Secondary School, Limbe, Fako Division, Cameroon
"'Edwidge Danticat Visits Her Haitian Roots' is a wonderful pedagogical tool. Ann Armstrong Scarboro's conversation with this Haitian-American writer covers topics that are central to the writer's world. The expression of Danticat's views concerning exile and the discussion of her personal trajectory towards the realm of literature make her written texts more immediate and understandable. I have used this film in the classroom and introduced it in my book club."
Mildred Mortimer, Department of French and Italian, University of Colorado, Boulder
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