Showing posts with label brother I'm dying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brother I'm dying. Show all posts

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying

In weaving together a tale about her family's past, Danticat has fused elements of biography and autobiography to tell a story that seems to be simulaneously subjective and objective. Although this book has obvious personal implications for Danticat, she places herself as more of a "witness" to the events in the text, sworn to tell truth only to the best of her ability. Stating at the end of the book that "what [she] really wanted to say was that the dead and the new life were already linked, through [her] blood, through [her]", Danticat again places herself in the role of the seeker or the link that ties the narrative together; she's an object of the narrative, not the subject.
This seems to be indicative of the struggles contained in life writing as a genre which stretches notions of truth, authority, and accountability.