Table of Contents

I. LITERARY BEGINNINGS

Editors’ Introduction
A Literary Life and Legacy: Danticat’s Writerly Inheritances
Jana Evans Braziel, Western College Endowed Professor, Miami University, USA
Nadège T. Clitandre, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

“All Geography Is Within Me”: Writing Beginnings, Life, Death, Freedom, and Salt
Edwidge Danticat

Interview with Edwidge Danticat
Nadège T. Clitandre, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA


II. ON VIOLENCE AND VIOLATED BODIES: BIOPOLITICS IN DANTICAT’S TEXTS

Reconstructive Textual Surgery in Danticat’s Krik? Krak! and The Dew-Breaker
Judith Misrahi-Barak, University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France

“I Might Lose All My Life”: Brother, I’m Dying and (Black) Immigration Discourse in the US
Myriam J. A. Chancy, Hartley Burr Alexander Chair in the Humanities, Scripps College, USA

“Alleys, Capillaries, Thorns”: The Violated Terre-Natale of Ville Rose
Jana Evans Braziel, Western College Endowed Professor, Miami University, USA
III. ON DEATH AND DYING: NECROPOLITICS IN DANTICAT’S TEXTS

Losing Your (M)Other: Danticat’s Narratives of Un/Belonging and Un/Dying
Simone A. James Alexander, Seton Hall University, USA

Lòt bò dlo: Producing Haitian Spaces of Death and Diaspora in Danticat’s The Dew Breaker
Anne Brüske, Heidelberg University, Germany

Death and the Maiden: Writing Death in Danticat’s Fiction
Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo (PhD), The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus


IV. TIFI AK FANM, GIRLS AND WOMEN

“Somebody, Anybody Sing a Black Girl’s Song…”: Danticat and Haitian Girlhood
Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, Boston College, USA

The Good Daughter: Danticat’s Migrating Memories
Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, University of the West Indies, Saint Augustine

“I Am the One Telling It”: Resilient Children & Shadow Texts in Danticat’s Picture Books
Cara Byrne, Case Western University, USA



V. ECRI ANGAJE: POLITICAL WRITING: DANTICAT AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

Haiti Faces Difficult Questions Ten Years After a Devastating Earthquake
Edwidge Danticat

Create Dangerously: A Poetics of Writing as Memorial Art; The Text as Echo Chamber
Anja Bandau, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany

Haiti’s Past, Present, and Uncertain Future: Danticat’s New Yorker Column as Platform for Public Intellectualism
Maia Butler, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, USA
Megan Feifer, Medaille College


VI. FOOD, HAITI, AND HAITIAN CULINARY/LITERARY INHERITANCES

Edwidge Danticat's Kitchen History
Vale´rie Loichot, Emory University, USA

“A People Do Not Throw Their Geniuses Away”: Danticat’s “Kitchen Poet” Literary Antecedents
Wilson C. Chen, Benedictine University, USA

Scattering and Gathering: Danticat, Food, and (the) Haitian Experience(s)
Robyn Cope, Binghamton University, USA



VII. THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Sea, Stone, Sky, And Cemetery: Vodou’s Divine Nature and Religious Archetypes in Danticat’s Krik? Krak! and After the Dance
Kyrah Malika Daniels, Boston College, USA

“So Much Had Fallen into The Sea”: An Ecocritical Approach to Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light
Kristina Gibby, Utah Valley University, USA

“Aha!”: Danticat and Creolization
Carine Mardorossian, State University at Buffalo, USA

Memory and The Possibilities of the Short Story Sequence in Krik? Krak!
W. Todd Martin, Huntington University, USA


VIII. HAITI, THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, AND TRANSNATIONAL HISPANIOLA

‘Neither Strangers Nor Friends’: Transnational Hispaniola and the Uneven Intimacies of The Farming of Bones
John D. Ribó, Florida State University, USA

“Walk too far in either direction and people speak a different language”: Navigating Hispaniola in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones and “Nineteen Thirty-Seven”
Ramon Ant. Victoriano-Martinez, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada



IX. CRITICAL SOURCES

Bibliography of Writings by Edwidge Danticat

Bibliography of Literary Criticism on Edwidge Danticat

Biographical Notes



Index

Promotional Information

A complete and up-to-date reference guide to contemporary scholarship on the Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat, with chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars.

About the Author

Jana Evans Braziel is Western College Endowed Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University, USA. She is the author of five books, including Duvalier’s Ghosts: Diaspora, and US Imperialism in Haitian Literature (2010) and Diaspora: An Introduction (2008).

Nadège T. Clitandre is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, USA. She is author of Edwidge Danticat: The Haitian Diasporic Imaginary (2018) and founder of Haïti Soleil, a non-profit organization that focuses on engaging youth and building community through the development of libraries in Haiti.

Reviews

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat is a true first. It is a collection of luminous essays written by first-rate international writers and a welcome addition to the existing scholarship on a prolific Haitian American author known for her skill at handling numerous genres.
*English Studies*

This edited collection is a comprehensive analysis of Danticat’s writing from multi-themes, multi-genres, and multi-dimensions. Through exploring insightful intertexts and situating her work carefully in context, this collection emphasizes Danticat’s significant contribution to Black literature and represents new directions in the study of her works.
*Contemporary Women's Writing*

The book highlights various points of entry into Danticat’s impressive oeuvre and would be a fantastic component of a course on the author. It should definitely be owned by every academic library.
*H-Net Reviews*

Edwidge Danticat continues to be a shining light in contemporary literature, her brilliance radiating through and beyond Haitian, Caribbean, and American writing. This exciting new volume will be an essential guide for scholars, students, and general readers. Chapters range through themes as diverse as death, disaster, food, girlhood, creolization, and memory, and together are as rich and diverse as Danticat's own ever-evolving body of work.
*Martin Munro, Eminent Scholar and Winthrop-King Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University, USA*

The Handbook to Edwidge Danticat is an extraordinarily rich and varied exploration of the kaleidoscopic arc of Danticat's writings. Its unrivaled comparative and interdisciplinary scope, with pivotal contributions from a broad range of her most insightful and committed readers, as well as the author herself, marks a definitive and essential contribution to our understanding of Edwidge Danticat's lyrical exploration of Haitian cultural and diasporic experience.
*Professor Nick Nesbitt, Princeton University, USA*

A timely compilation of essays; a beloved talented writer! This amazing combination enriches our libraries but above all our joy in reading and teaching the work of our lovely Edwidge Danticat. Described by many as a Caribbean griot because of her love for stories and their histories, and her ability to tell and write them, the literary world of this major exponent of Caribbean and Black Women's writing in international contexts is brought into our myriad spaces of political and intellectual consciousness.
*Carole Boyce-Davies, Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Africana Studies and English Africana Studies, Cornell University, USA*