From Chapter 1, Edwidge Danticat makes it clear that her main reason for writing her memoir is to lend her own voice to the two men who have helped shape her life: her father and her uncle. Both died without being able to tell their story, and this memoir is Danticat’s attempt at righting this. She writes:

This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at recreating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time. I am writing this only because they can’t (22).

The theme of lending voice to the voiceless is central to the book in several ways. When she lived in Haiti as a girl, Edwidge first “recited my father’s letters” (19), reading them aloud to family members, and thus becoming her father’s voice in Haiti. As an adult, she recalls this activity as an homage to her father, a way of getting closer to her childish idea of him, and thinks of it as a role she played as a special emissary of her father’s in their

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now