Brother, I'm Dying

I had read Edwige Danticat a long time ago and thought her writing a bit too self conscious and ----dare I say it?---lyrical. But someone told me to read Brother I'm Dying and I did and rather liked it. It's a memoir of Danticat's father and uncle; her father goes to the States with her mother and leaves her behind with her younger brother at her uncle's in a poor neighborhood in Haiti. The uncle is a very good person, a pastor in his church and very close to his brother. The whole tone of the book is dispassionate and precise: no preciousness, no lyricism.

Unlike most current memoirs there is no incest or abusiveness, just loving and responsible adults caught in a terrible economic and political situation. It's actually quite good for giving a picture of growing up in Haiti. The odd thing is that the focus is primarily on the men and the women, her mother and her Aunt Denise, are giving scant attention. I imagine she has a memoir planned about the women and the absence was deliberate. The book serves as a just tribute to the two men in her life though.