The first readings were “Create Dangerously” and “The Other Side of the Water” by Edwidge Danticat. In these readings, Danticat discusses the importance of art and writing as a subversive act. She begins the piece with the example of two men, Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin, who were executed by the government of dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The story of their murder is told and is a way that the reader gets a very vivid image of the scene. Then she explains that through writing this, she falls under a tradition of writers stretching back through history. She compares this recounting of disobedience to that of Adam and Eve within the bible. In writing this legend about the two men, she is continuing their struggle and their subversive mission, keeping it alive through the minds of her readers.
She has a great admiration for fellow writers like Albert Camus, especially those who create dangerously. By this she means people who write or create art to break the silence about a topic. In creating a discourse about these topics that are not discussed, they are acting in a subversive manner since there are often forces trying to keep those topics out of discourse. By discussing the crimes of the Duvalier regime they are brought into the light and is in a scene fighting against these crimes.
She also writes about the interesting idea that a dead body must have documentation in order to cross a border. I had never though about this idea before but it makes sense since the movement of bodies must be tracked. But at the same time it is strange that even in death, people are treated like outsiders and aliens. This ties into a theme that Danticat writes a good amount about, and that is the treatment of the dead. A connection she always makes when discussing this idea is to the Egyptians and the way they treated their dead, through their religious ideas and physically through mummification. It it also mentioned frequently throughout The Dew Breaker, since the father character has a fascination and almost an obsession with Ancient Egypt.
We also began our reading of The Dew Breaker also by Edwidge Danticat. In the previous reading Danticat describes this novel as “a book about a choukèt lawoze, or a Duvalier-era torturer, a book that is partly set in the period following the Numa and Drouin executions.” The novel begins with the story of Ka and her father. Ka’s parents originally are from Haiti and she feels a very strong to Haiti despite never having gone there and hearing very little from her parents about it. Danticat like in her previous pieces includes heavy themes. For her entire life, Ka’s father had told her that he had gone to prison and received his scar there. But in reality, he had been the one watching over the prisoner and had killed people during that period of his life. This changes her opinion of him greatly. This past was what pushed him and his wife to leave Haiti. As many immigrants, they wanted to leave something behind and start over in the United States.
