From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heartβher father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
Knopf
September 2007
On Sale: September 4, 2007
288 pages ISBN: 1400041155 EAN: 9781400041152 Hardcover Add to Wish List
From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her Γ’β¬Εsecond father,Γ’β¬Β when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who Γ’β¬Εknew all the verses for love.Γ’β¬Β
And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home sheΓ’β¬β’s ever known.
Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother IΓ’β¬β’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: EdwidgeΓ’β¬β’s firstborn, who will bear his nameΓ’β¬βand the familyΓ’β¬β’s stories, both joyous and tragicΓ’β¬βinto the next generation.
Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and familyΓ’β¬βof two menΓ’β¬β’s lives and deaths, and of a daughterΓ’β¬β’s great love for them both.
Media Buzz
PBS News Hour - October 21, 2010 Fresh Air - NPR - September 26, 2007 All Things Considered - September 15, 2007
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