During her career, Danticat received multiple awards.  She received the Pushcart Short Story Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying.  In addition to this, Oprah Winfrey chose Breath, Eyes, Memory to be on her television book club in 1998 which helped Danticat's audience to grow larger.  Because of this, she was inspired and continued to write about her Haitian history.  In 2004, The Dew Breaker emerged.  This was a collection of nine short, interconnected stories about the torture going on in Haiti under the rule of Francois Duvalier.  In addition to the previously mentioned honors, Danticat is also a 2009 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 Ford Foundation "The Art of Change" Fellow.  ("ABOUT - Edwidge Danticat.")

* Figure 4: Edwidge Danticat image 2 (see Works Cited)

* Edwidge Danticat video (see Works Cited)

About the Author

Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American author who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 19, 1969.  Her family moved to the United States without her when Danticat was only 4 years old. Her mother and father left her and her brother with their aunt and uncle in Haiti.  In 1981, Danticat finally moved to the United States.  However, since she spent most of her life in Haiti, she struggled to adjust to her new life in America due to her Creole language.  Because of this, she resorted to writing stories as a way to help her through the difficulties that she was facing at such a young age. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Edwidge Danticat.")

In 1990, Danticat graduated from Barnard University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in French Literature.  She continued her higher education at Brown University where she received a Masters of Fine Arts in 1993.  In 1994, her Master's thesis was published as her work now known as Breath, Eyes, Memory.  This work was an autobiographical account discussing several generations of Haitian women and their relationships.  Her collection of short stories titled Krik? Krak! was published on year later and was a finalist for the National Book Award.  She continued her writing career and wrote her second novel, The Farming of the Bones, in 1998 about the massacre of Haitian emigrants by the Dominican dictator.  (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Edwidge Danticat.")