Our favorite books of 2007: by Elizabeth DiNovella.
Author | DiNovella , Elizabeth |
Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying is tender, funny, and sad--everything I enjoy in a memoir. It's also a stinging indictment of the U.S. government's immigration policy.
Danticat's parents immigrated to the United States from Haiti when she was a small child, leaving her and her brother Bob in the care of her Uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor. Danticat joined her parents in Brooklyn eight years later, and while she was happy to be reunited with her parents, she still deeply missed her "second father." As an adult, Danticat traveled often to Haiti and kept close ties to her family there, even as the political situation deteriorated.
As she explains in her cover story this month, her uncle lived in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, the site of much unrest during the tumult surrounding the (second) ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
On the fateful day of October 24, 2004, the Haitian army used her uncle's church roof as a place from which to shoot at people. The government reported two dead during the operation, but more were killed.
Gang leaders wanted revenge. They mistakenly thought Joseph volunteered his roof. He was actually hiding inside the church, which he decided to open for services that Sunday morning, despite the ongoing chaos. It took Joseph several days to escape his neighborhood undetected.
By chance, Joseph had been planning a trip to Miami that week, to visit some churches. He had a plane ticket. He had a valid visa. He asked for political asylum when he entered the United States. He landed in jail.
Danticat, through Freedom of Information requests, secured the documentation of her uncle's treatment. The handling of Joseph's case was appalling. From the get-go, he was treated as a criminal.
"Was my uncle going to jail because he was Haitian?" Danticat asks, pointing out the discrepancy of treatment between Cuban and Haitian refugees. "This is a question he probably...
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