Best Selling Books by Edwidge Danticat

The 20th anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat''s groundbreaking debut, now an established classic--revised and with a new introduction by the author, and including extensive bonus materials At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti—to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence. In her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti—and the enduring strength of Haiti’s women—with vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people’s suffering and courage.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • "Unforgettable tales of families and lovers—from Haiti to Miami, Brooklyn, and beyond—often struggling with grief, loss, and missed connections.” —Vanity Fair • REESE''S BOOK CLUB PICK A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives. A baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography A National Book Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated. In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I''m Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.

We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”--or torturer--s an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America’s most essential writers. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Edwidge Danticat''s Claire of the Sea Light.

"Composed in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 2010, this inspired child''s-eye view will leave no reader or listener unmoved." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) From the New York Times-bestselling author and National Book Award finalist comes a brilliantly crafted story of hope and imagination—a powerful tribute to Haiti and children around the world . . . While Junior is trapped for 8 days beneath his collapsed house after an earthquake, he uses his imagination for comfort. Drawing on beautiful, everyday-life memories, Junior paints a sparkling picture of Haiti for each of those days—flying kites with his best friend or racing his sister around St. Marc''s Square—helping him through the tragedy until he is finally rescued. Love and hope dance across each page—granting us a way to talk about resilience as a family, a classroom, or a friend. "An uplifting story, told in the ingenuous voice of Junior, a boy pulled from the rubble of his former home eight days after the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince in January 2010 . . . a moving celebration of hope, determination, and resilience." — Publishers Weekly "Focusing on one child who survived the 2010 disaster in Haiti, this beautiful and touching picture book is a true testament to the spirit of the people of this nation." — School Library Journal "Their moving storytelling personalizes the dramatic news stories of the disaster with a close-up, fictionalized narrative of one child''s experience." — Booklist

From the acclaimed author of "Krik? Krak!". 1937: On the Dominican side of the Haiti border, Amabelle, a maid to the young wife of an army colonel falls in love with sugarcane cutter Sebastien. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror unfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins.

From the national bestselling author of Brother, I’m Dying and The Dew Breaker: a “fiercely beautiful” novel (Los Angeles Times) that brings us deep into the intertwined lives of a small seaside town where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing. Just as her father makes the wrenching decision to send her away for a chance at a better life, Claire Limyè Lanmè—Claire of the Sea Light—suddenly disappears. As the people of the Haitian seaside community of Ville Rose search for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed. In this stunning novel about intertwined lives, Edwidge Danticat crafts a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores the mysterious bonds we share—with the natural world and with one another.

The series dedicated to the immigrant experience in modern America starts off with a moving novel of one family''s struggles in Haiti and New York. It is election time in Haiti, and bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. During a visit from her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Espérance and her mother are nearly killed. Looking at her country with new eyes, Celiane gains a fresh resolve to be reunited with her father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape of her new home are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents'' struggle to earn a living, her brother''s uneasy adjustment to American society, and her own encounters with learning difficulties and school violence. "The excellence of the writing and the resilient outlook of both first-person fictions set a high standard for this series." — The Horn Book "The author captures the color and texture of Haitian life as well as the heroine''s adjustment to New York. While readers may want to hear more about her experiences in Brooklyn, they will appreciate the truthfulness of the family''s struggle to reconnect." — Publishers Weekly

Nine powerful stories about life under Haiti''s dictatorships: the terrorism of the Tonton Macoutes; the slaughtering of hope and the resiliency of love; about those who fled to America to give their children a better life and those who stayed behind in the villages; about the linkages of generations of women through the magical tradition of storytelling.

From the bestselling author of Everything Inside comes a vivid, timely story, moving from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami, of a woman whose sense of self and family are called into question when she gets caught in a random act of violence one sunny Florida day. “Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?” These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she’s safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë’s father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she’s spiraling toward herself; and her father’s affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti. Can love or family protect us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in one’s heart? Which side will prevail for Magnolia? Pulled between these questions, each of which involves a high-stakes choice—Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after—Magnolia is a narrator who is “yon pati koukouy, part firefly”: flitting and shimmering between different worlds. Taking as its title a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy is a profoundly warm and moving novel about the importance not only of sharing grief but also of inseverable family ties. Brave and striking, Dèy is one of Danticat’s most powerful and deeply affecting works yet, told with her signature “unfaltering voice and evocative beauty” (The Boston Globe).

With new introduction from Booker-prize-winning Bernardine Evaristo ''A vision of female solidarity which transcends place and time'' Sunday Times Edwidge Danticat''s groundbreaking debut. At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti - to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence. In her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti - and the enduring strength of Haiti''s women - with vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people''s suffering and courage.

The New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist delivers a powerful Royal Diaries volume with the story of Haiti''s heroic queen. With her signature narrative grace, Edwidge Danticat brings Haiti''s beautiful queen Anacaona to life. Queen Anacaona was the wife of one of her island''s rulers, and a composer of songs and poems, making her popular among her people. Haiti was relatively quiet until the Spanish conquistadors discovered the island and began to settle there in 1492.The Spaniards treated the natives very cruelly, and when the natives revolted, the Spanish governor of Haiti ordered the arrests of several native nobles, including Anacaona, who was eventually captured and executed, to the horror of her people. "A gripping story that shows European invasion from a native Caribbean viewpoint . . . readers will connect with Danticat''s immediate, poetic language, Anacaona''s finely drawn growing pains, and the powerful, graphic story that adds a vital perspective to the literature about Columbus and European expansion in the Americas." — Booklist "Explores the life of a proud, young Taíno woman as she grows into rulership, love, and motherhood . . . The arrival of Columbus''s explorers marks a major turning point in the novel, and Danticat shifts from a languid, poetic style to a tense, high gear that makes it difficult to put the book down." — Historical Novel Society

A collection of exceptional new essays by one of the most significant contemporary writers on the world stage Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience. From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs. Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation—we’re alone now, we can talk. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.

Waking up in the hospital seriously injured, Giselle reflects on her past choices to evaluate how her friends, her family and especially her identical twin have defined her existence.

A New York Times Notable Book A Miami Herald Best Book of the Year In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile. Inspired by Albert Camus and adapted from her own lectures for Princeton University’s Toni Morrison Lecture Series, here Danticat tells stories of artists who create despite (or because of) the horrors that drove them from their homelands. Combining memoir and essay, these moving and eloquent pieces examine what it means to be an artist from a country in crisis. BONUS MATERIAL: This edition includes an excerpt from Edwidge Danticat''s Claire of the Sea Light.

My Mommy Medicine is a picture book about the comfort and love a mama offers when her child isn''t feeling well, from renowned author Edwidge Danticat. Whenever I am sick, Or just feel kind of gloomy or sad, I can always count on my Mommy Medicine. When a child wakes up feeling sick, she is treated to a good dose of Mommy Medicine. Her remedy includes a yummy cup of hot chocolate; a cozy, bubble-filled bath time; and unlimited snuggles and cuddles. Mommy Medicine can heal all woes and make any day the BEST day! Award-winning memoirist Edwidge Danticat''s rich and lyrical text envelops the reader in the security of a mother''s love, and debut artist Shannon Wright''s vibrant art infuses the story with even more warmth. A Parent''s Choice Recommended Award Winner 2019 2020 Bank Street College of Education Best Children''s Books of the Year List

Danticat moves outward from the shock of her mother''s cancer diagnosis and sifts through her own writing life and personal history, all the while shifting fluidly through works of literature which circle the many incarnations of death, from individual to large-scale catastrophes. She ends with a heartrending prayer in the voice of her mother.