Comments on: The Dew Breaker

By: Chinemerem Eze

Chinemerem Eze — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:09:25 +0000

With the Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat shows that she is really a seasoned storyteller. Each of the stories can stand independently on their own and she was still able to use all of them to tell one story. Knowing that The Dew Breaker is actually based on real events that happened in Haiti,is really touching. By using this medium to narrate a particularly trying time for a Nation, Danticat was able to narrate the gruesomeness that probably would never have been told, in a very open manner that gets the entire picture across to the reader.Its interesting how the characters all managed to start their lives over again in different ways in New York…. all of them having run away from Haiti. Its understandable that Edwidge would let her characters settle in New York as she grew up in Brooklyn herself. I must say anyway that most times, I did find some of the individual stories too listless for my liking. However The Funeral Singer is probably my best story ..maybe because of its pace or the lively show of camaraderie the girls put up given their predicament.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:42:19 +0000

I thought the Dew Breaker was a pretty awesome book. It was easy to read yet compelling. Danticat was able to efficiently convey the essence of the Haitian crisis. The stories were heart warming. Through the fictitious stories she made the reader understand history. Because the stories are interconnected it was hard to put the book down-I always wanted to see the next connection Danticat would reveal.

By: Colette

Colette — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:54:57 +0000

This book took me a lot longer to read than I anticipated. Everytime I opened the book I would fall asleep. I don’t think that it was because of the stories, because I like stories told from many different viewpoints. It might have been because it’s written in the present tense.
I liked “The Funeral Singer” the most, probably because I read it in the morning and didn’t fall asleep, so the story went by much faster than the others.

By: sara

sara — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:48:55 +0000

I thought Danticat’s Dew Breaker was an excellent account of the time period because it was not only engaging through the various interrelated stories, but it was also fairly accurate historically. At first, I was somewhat unsure about the connections between the stories aside from the fact that the father appeared in some way. However, when we made those maps in class, it was obvious that just about every character was related in some way.
I think the best story was definitely the last because this story seemed to put all the pieces together. Though the plot may have seemed a little far-fetched, I still think it was engaging and well-crafted.
By revealing a lot about what Haitians faced at this time through a series of interrelated accounts, I think Danticat makes a creative, informative and well-presented novel. Danticat effectively reveals various accounts of this same historical period by relating all of the stories to one another. However, the only story I was sort of unsure about was “the Bridal Seamstress” because its characters aren’t as easy to distinguish.
Danticat also creates a connection between Brooklyn and Haiti. What is interesting is that though all of these people are in a completely different place where no one knows about their past, each person still must cope personally with what they have done, or what has been done to them.

By: Rakhilya Muslumova

Rakhilya Muslumova — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:46:00 +0000

I thought the novel showed the differences in mentality between different cultures and generations very well. This was especially evident in the story when the parents and thier daughter go to Christmas day mass and this is a very important experience for the mother while it isn’t for the father and daughter, judging by the way they dress and behave during the occasion. This and other incidents made the book very easy to relate to, for me at least, which made me enjoy the book.

By: Victor

Victor — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:50:32 +0000

I love how cohesive this story turned out to be, how every story somehow fit together in the end. I had originally assumed this book was a series of short stories, but was pleasantly surprised to find that all the stories matched up. The end was rather depressing though. I enjoyed many of the reoccurring themes and ideas that rooted into culture, race and history. How you can take someone out of their homeland, but never the homeland out of the person. I particular like the references to the actual historical aspects such as the funeral statue. Over all I’ve enjoyed the dew breaker and can’t wait to see Dantcat speak!

By: gpapadopoulos

gpapadopoulos — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:38:28 +0000

This was the first time I have read a book in the style that Danticat used, making numerous short stories fit together and explain one main plot line. The Jonathan Letham book was similar in having many short stories about his life but it was more of a collection of random events. This book collected all of the stories, using different narrators and various characters to very cleverly explain the plot line. It was nice to see how all the different characters related to one another and reading carefully and picking out the small details truly made the book a lot better when seeing the relationships the characters shared. It was very helpful to see the character web on the board as well as it helped me to see some of the connections i missed at first glance. Danticat’s stories are also historically accurate, I looked for the history of Haiti and found that Papa Doc Duvalier was truly the “leader till death” of Haiti that enforced all the strict policies and then left his son, Baby Doc, the country after he died. I found most of the short stories very interesting and found a few that I could not connect well with the rest of the plot however all together it was a very unique and gripping book.

By: Derya

Derya — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:01:16 +0000

The Dew Breaker isn’t at all like what I expected. It’s interesting, shocking and a bit confusing at first, but the style makes it worth reading once the pieces come together. Danticat definitely highlighted imported issues about Haiti that seems to get ignored or forgotten about compared to larger nations. Even in h.s., I was exposed to the history of Russia, Japan, China, India, US…, but never Haiti.

I think The Dew Breaker is very well written. The book is filled with suspense and irony. The most shocking scene to me was the one about Danny and the barber (Ka’s father). Danny always expected his barber to sweat, feel uncomfortable and recognize who he was, but Danny always ended up being the one who felt awkward and scared.

I started reading the book annoyed and confused, but I ended it wanting to know more about the characters.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:03:15 +0000

I thought The Dew Breaker was a good book, but I wouldn’t categorize it as “the best book ever”. This mainly ties into that hydrid genre issue that you bring up between a short story and a novel. The problem for me is that the stories are connected, but they jump around a lot between characters, location, and time period. There doesn’t seem to be a real flow in the events that happen. Sure, she reveals enough information in previous chapters for character connections in the latter chapters, but time wise, it was confusing to figure out.

Though I’m shifty about my opinion of the book, I can’t argue with the fact that it does address some important issues regarding culture (the massive prescence of the Haitian-American community right here on Flatbush), and life. Danticat presents to her readers how small the world actually is and the inability to successfully escape your past altogether because it is bound to come back to haunt you. Especially in the case of Beatrice in “The Bridal Seamstress”. I personally believe that she is hallucinatory and that the prison guard character isn’t really there at all; she’s just delusional. Though I believe the issue of “it’s a small world” is exaggerated greatly in this book, it can happen. Karma will track you down and bite you in the a** (=D , for a lack of better words). Thus is life, and I truly believe that. This shows how much baggage someone could have in life that he/she has been dragging around in life. To which effect, it does bring about the question of how well you think you know someone because I don’t think anyone really would have pictured Ka’s father as a dew breaker, who tortured people back in Haiti.

I didn’t really see the connection between Brooklyn and Haiti other than the fact that everyone in the story was a decendant of Haiti. In her depiction of Haiti, as in “Night Talkers”, everyone seemed to know everyone else and were like one gigantic non-related family. When Aunt Estina died, everyone was there in a huge group, whether or not Dany really wanted them there or not. Although all the characters seemed to end up together in Brooklyn, the “one large family” ideal is kind of hard to picture in the US, unless you live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. People can disagree, but I don’t really see a place like Brooklyn as a place where you can walk down the street and know everyone. People say “Hi” to one another, but they don’t really know the person, unless they were a part of their daily routine.

It’s certainly interesting to read about a community that I didn’t know of in Brooklyn, thought it’s not surprising with the high immigration numbers into the US in not only recent years, but for many, many years up to date. The stories help to convey the bad state of life back in Haiti and to inform people about this issue, to which many might have just easily ignored.

What I actually didn’t understand was from the “Night Talkers” segment of the book. I’m actually typing off the top of my head right now, but that girl, Ti-Fahm (?), why did she seem shocked when he asked for her name? Does it have something to do with the culture itself? Because I don’t really see it much as a gender issue.

By: emily

emily — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:27:25 +0000

The Dew Breaker serves as a good way to show one’s culture through storytelling. The different chapters each show a different aspect of the culture and the history of Haiti. The stories are captivating and keeps me reading until I get to the end of each chapter. Some of the events that happen in the chapters such as in “The Book of the Dead” and “Monkey Tails” surprise me with their sharp twist in the plot.
At first, I thought the chapters were separate stories, but I soon discovered that they were connected one way or another. “The Dew Breaker” certainly can be considered a hybrid of short stories and a novel, but the connection should be made more clearly. It was kind of confusing to piece together the connections between the chapters and the connections didn’t stand out as important. However, the ending does a good job at wrapping up loose ends, connecting the beginning with the ending. In the beginning of the book, I thought the book was a short-story kind of book and didn’t realize it was suppose to be a novel until it was pointed out in class. Therefore, the relevance of each chapter should be pointed out somewhere in the book so the readers can comprehend them.
The book certainly expresses important ideals. It shows the history of Haiti through a number of people’s eyes, giving us different aspects of the revolution and difficulties that Haitan people go through. In each chapter, it enables us to see into the culture of Haiti and experience it through the many characters and the events.
Writing this book is a great way to show a Brooklyn-Haiti connection. There are certain things that we can relate to in the book and how it differs from their culture. It also shows why people immigrate from Haiti to Brooklyn. By using this Brooklyn-Haiti connection, their culture can be seen by others who have no idea of the history of Haiti. It is a great way to do away with the ignorance of the readers who have no idea of what Haiti is all about. To read “The Dew Breaker” can help establish people’s view of the world around them and not let them only focus on the country that they live in.