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Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat, Knopf, 2007, $23.95 cloth, ISBN 9781400041152.
Edwidge Danticat's ominously titled memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, begins with this simple statement of fact: "I found out I was pregnant the same day that my father's rapid weight loss and chronic shortness of breath were positively diagnosed as end-stage pulmonary fribrosis." And just like that, with no sentimentality, Danticat recounts the events that unfurl after these two significant revelations.
Best known for her four works of fiction, Danticat brings to her own family's story a prose that will be familiar to her readers, one that is straightforward, dignified, always intelligent, and never showy:
I write these things now, some as I witnessed them and today remember them, others from official documents, as well as the borrowed recollections of family members. But the gist of them was told to me over the years, in part by my uncle Joseph, in part by my father. Some were told offhand, quickly. Others, in greater detail. What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-creating 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.
This mention of her Uncle Joseph is not incidental; Joseph is her father's brother, and the "brother" of the title. He plays an essential role in Danticat's life, and...