Nadège T. Clitandre

Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat is one of the most recognized writers today. Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was an Oprah Book Club selection, and works such as Krik? Krak! and Brother, I’m Dying have earned her a MacArthur "genius" grant and National Book Award nominations. Yet despite international acclaim and the relevance of her writings to postcolonial, feminist, Caribbean, African diaspora, Haitian, literary, and global studies, Danticat’s work has not been the subject of a full-length interpretive literary analysis until now. In Edwidge Danticat: The Haitian Diasporic Imaginary, Nadège T. Clitandre offers a comprehensive analysis of Danticat’s exploration of the dialogic relationship between nation and diaspora. Clitandre argues that Danticat—moving between novels, short stories, and essays—articulates a diasporic consciousness that acts as a form of social, political, and cultural transformation at the local and global level. Using the echo trope to approach Danticat’s narratives and subjects, Clitandre effectively navigates between the reality of diaspora and imaginative opportunities that diasporas produce. Ultimately, Clitandre calls for a reconstitution of nation through a diasporic imaginary that informs the way people who have experienced displacement view the world and imagine a more diverse, interconnected, and just future.

The Haitian Diasporic Imaginary

Edwidge Danticat

Jana Evans Braziel

Edwidge Danticat's prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21st-century literary culture. Across such novels as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Farming the Bones and short story collections such as Krik? Krak! and most recently Everything Inside, essays, and writing for children, the Haitian-American writer has throughout her oeuvre tackled important contemporary themes including racism, imperialism, anti-immigrant politics, and sexual violence. With chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars, this is the most up-to-date and in-depth reference guide to 21st-century scholarship on Edwidge Danticat's work. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat covers such topics as: · The full range of Danticat's writing from her novels and short stories to essays, life writing and writing for children and young adults. · Major interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives including from establishing fields fields of literary studies, Caribbean Studies Political Science, Latin American Studies, feminist and gender studies, African Diaspora Studies, , and emerging fields such as Environmental Studies. · Danticat's literary sources and influences from Haitian authors such as Marie Chauvet, Jacques Roumain and Jacques-Stéphen Alexis to African American authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Caribbean American writers Audre Lorde to Paule Marshall. · Known and unknown Historical moments in experiences of slavery and imperialism, the consequence of internal and external migration, and the formation of diasporic communities The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Danticat's work and key works of secondary criticism, and an interview with the author, as well as and essays by Danticat herself.

Nadège T. Clitandre

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