DWYER MURPHY interviews EDWIDGE DANTICAT
Author Edwidge Dantica PHOTO/Jonathan Demme
The MacArthur Award winner on immigration reform, returning to Haiti in her new book, and why Wikipedia is still “micro-categorizing women writers.”
Almost a decade has passed since Edwidge Danticat’s last work of book-length fiction, The Dew Breaker. In the meantime, she’s written a memoir (Brother, I’m Dying—National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award nominee), received a MacArthur “genius” grant, edited the Best American Essays and Haiti Noir collections, delivered a Toni Morrison Lectures series that was turned into a celebrated book (Create Dangerously), and, in successive years, received honorary degrees from Smith and Yale. She’s been so busy it’s almost easy to forget what a homecoming her new book is. After the long wait, Claire of the Sea Light has just been released by Knopf.
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Guernica: We get a host of characters and voices in this book, but there seems to be a special affection reserved for Claire, the title character. How did you first find her?
Edwidge Danticat: Claire came like a vision, really. It was the year after The Dew Breaker came out. This was a painful time for me. My father was dying from pulmonary fibrosis. My uncle Joseph had just died in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security while seeking asylum in the U.S. My oldest daughter Mira was born soon after that. I started writing a memoir about all these deaths and a birth, a book called Brother, I’m Dying. And right about that time I saw a documentary about orphans in Haiti. Or rather, not quite about orphans. It was about kids who have parents, but their parents bring them to an orphanage so they can have a better life. One of the aid workers in the documentary said that the parents do this because these people are not that attached to their kids.
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