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Conversations with Edwidge Danticat

Conversations with Edwidge Danticat

Edited by Maxine Lavon Montgomery
Series: Literary Conversations Series

Hardcover : 9781496812551, 224 pages, July 2017
Paperback : 9781496818409, 224 pages, May 2018

Collected interviews ranging from the 2000 publication of this award-winning Haitian-American author's debut work of fiction, Breath, Eyes, Memory, to a personal interview conducted with the volume editor in 2016

Description

This volume sheds a much-needed light on Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) and her ability to depict timely issues in sparkling prose that delves deep into the borderlands, an uncharted in-between space located outside fixed geographic, cultural, and ideological bounds. Prevalent throughout many interviews here is Danticat's expressed determination not only to reveal Haitian immigrant experience, but also to make that nuanced culture and its vibrant traditions accessible to a wide audience.

These interviews coincide with Edwidge Danticat's evolving artistic vision, her steady book publication, and her expanding roles as fiction writer, essayist, memoirist, documentarian, young adult book author, editor, songwriter, cultural critic, and political commentator. Dating from her appearance on the literary scene at the age of twenty-five, the many interviews that she has granted attest to not only her productivity, but also her accessibility to scholars, teachers, writers, and journalists eager for knowledge about her vision. Included in this volume are interviews that range from 2000, covering the publication of her debut work of fiction, Breath, Eyes, Memory, to a personal interview conducted with the volume editor in 2016. In that conversation, which appears for the first time as part of this collection, Danticat provides insight into little-known aspects of her life, art, and politics.

Her candid interviews carry out a careful stripping away of preconceived notions of Danticat, disclosing the private and public life of a first-class writer and intellectual whose countless achievements have assured her an enduring place within contemporary world letters.