Visiting Writer Edwidge Danticat
Award winning author Edwidge Danticat is one of only a handful of contemporary novelists of Haitian heritage writing in English. Danticat did not begin learning English until she moved from Haiti to New York City as an adolescent. Her talents in this second language were evident in her award-winning 1994 debut, Breath, Eyes, Memory. In this work, as well as her equally lauded 1995 short story collection, Krik? Krak!, Danticat focuses on the lives and losses of Haitians, both at home—where poverty, political repression, and fear were everyday hindrances for decades—and as transplants to urban America, where Haitians face similar poverty, compounded by racism.
In addition to her reading and book signing, the author visited two classes. The students had the opportunity to ask questions about her life and her writing.
