Immigrant and Black in Edwidge Danticat'sBrother, I'm Dying

Abstract

The history of Americans' treatment of newcomers has proven especially fraught in the case of black immigrants who remain categorized as part of black America, a community that, from Frederick Douglass to Black Lives Matter, has consistently had to fight for the rights and recognition of U.S. citizenship. 1 Unlike Latinx and Asian migrants, black immigrants may more readily "look" American, and yet they look like black Americans, with all the risks that incurs. What does acceptance mean for black immigrants? Does it mean acceptance as black Americans, and if so to what extent do they remain outside the parameters of full citizenship? 2 When I think about these questions, I immediately turn to Edwidge Danticat's memoir, Brother, I'm Dying (2007). 3 Like many memoirs of migration, Danticat introduces us to her family divided between Haiti and the United States and her fraught journeys between the two. It is a memoir filled with ambivalence, controlled rage, trauma, and anticipation. On the one hand, Danticat herself represents the possibility of inclusion for new immigrants in the United States. She is the author of multiple novels, including the Oprah Book Club selection Breath, Eyes, Memory, and she received a McArthur Genius grant in 2009. She is among the most visible Haitian Americans in the United States. On the other hand, her memoir traces her father's fatal diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis and her uncle's senseless and cruel death in the Krome detention center outside Miami after fleeing political violence. For the last several years, I have chosen to end my U.S. immigration survey classes with Danticat's memoir precisely because it illustrates the tension immigrants often find between acceptance and opposition in the modern United States. I also want my students to feel shock and horror at Joseph Dantica's brutal and seemingly unnecessary death. Dantica possessed a multiple entry visa into the United States, but when he arrived at the Miami airport, he uttered the word "asylum." The bureaucratic and punitive machinery began to crank, and he died in U.S. custody soon afterward. The book's tragedy rests in Danticat's powerlessness to save him. Each time I re-read the book preparing for class, I find myself in tears, and to be honest, I hope Danticat provokes an equally emotive reaction in my students. I want them to be moved. 4

Crossing racial predicaments and reconstructing identity: The biopolitics of race in Edwidge Danticat's works

“…The most typical example is the U.S. government's exclusion and mistreatment of Haitian asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants. As Lipman comments, “the U.S. government has never welcomed immigrants from Haiti, a black republic born of violence, plantation slavery, revolution, and anti‐slavery uprisings” (Lipman, 2019, 73). The relationship between the United States and Haiti has long been problematic.…”