Intersection of Cultures: Edwidge Dandicat
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969, writer Edwidge Dandicat moved to the United States to join her parents who had emigrated to the U.S. when she was young. The early separation from her parents would have a lasting effect on young Dandicat as would her arrival in the U.S. in 1981. Finding it difficult to adjust to American dress and manners, the newly arrived girl found solace in books. The separation she felt would become a theme in her later works. The 1994 novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory was developed from her Master's thesis at Brown University and is excerpted in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. As pointed out by Gates and his fellow scholars, Dandicat's novel reflects the discomfiture at living between cultures, of feeling separation from one's homeland and the reticence at accepting the new and strange environment. He writes, "Written in imagistic and lyrical prose, Breath, Eyes, Memory follows its protagonist as she moves between her Ha...