"Brother I'm Dying" by Edwidge Danticat

One of my favorite moments in the novel is when Edwidge and her brother Bob are sleeping in the room with her brothers that she hardly knows. Kelly, the third child, asks if Bob and Edwidge are adopted. They are new arrivals to the Danticat family even though they are older than Kelly and Karl, the youngest. Bob explains to Kelly and Karl that both he and Edwidge are really “spies from space.” Kelly and Karl naturally accept this farfetched reasoning as to why they are there in their home, but Karl’s statement and classification of both he and Edwidge as “spies” really does encompass the role and perception of their travels to the United States. They are truly spies in the way that they try to gather as much information about their new home as possible, without being noticed as “different” or as immigrants.

As I was reading through the chapters of the text I couldn’t help but feel as if I were a “spy” of sorts; eavesdropping on personal conversations between Edwidge and her dying father. A tale that I feel I wouldn’t have the strength or courage to write about so eloquently. This text moved me and reminded me of the heartache immigrant families’ encounter as they cross borders from one world to another.

I, as the spy, fell in love with the whispered voice of Uncle Joseph, the senior brother of Edwidge’s father. Joseph was the stubborn one who refused to leave his home even though it was under threat by military factions in Haiti. Joseph was the one who rescued Marie Micheline, the adopted stepdaughter from her abusive husband, a Tonton Macoute; Marie later died from the sound of gunshots fired. Joseph was the one who buried his wife as guns rang out in the cemetery during the procession. And, finally, Joseph became Alien 27041999 buried in Queens, New York in a “country that had not wanted him.”

James Baldwin wrote: “The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.” When Joseph died at the hands of inadequate medical intervention and bureaucracy, the ‘vesture of his adopted land’ was covered in discriminatory practices and ignorance towards migrants from Haiti in particular.

The life of Edwidge’s father, ‘Mira’, as a “gypsy” cab driver mirrors the life of so many different immigrants who come to the United States to make a better existence for themselves and their family. He, like many others who have been assaulted and robbed by patrons, feels that he has no “right” to protest. They are undocumented and therefore cannot draw attention to themselves because they may lose what little they have gained in their new world. Undocumented immigrants may want to adopt their new land, but Edwidge Danticat shows in “Brother, I’m Dying” that both parties have to be willing to go through all of the processes associated with that adoption, making certain that everyone is comfortable with the new “family” being created.

"Brother I'm Dying" by Edwidge Danticat