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Overview
"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them."—Create Dangerously
In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus' lecture, "Create Dangerously," and combining memoir and essay, Danticat tells the stories of artists, including herself, who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them. Danticat eulogizes an aunt who guarded her family's homestead in the Haitian countryside, a cousin who died of AIDS while living in Miami as an undocumented alien, and a renowned Haitian radio journalist whose political assassination shocked the world. Danticat writes about the Haitian novelists she first read as a girl at the Brooklyn Public Library, a woman mutilated in a machete attack who became a public witness against torture, and the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and other artists of Haitian descent. Danticat also suggests that the aftermaths of natural disasters in Haiti and the United States reveal that the countries are not as different as many Americans might like to believe.
Create Dangerously is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat's belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.
Editorials
Amy Wilentz
A writer truly and meaningfully immersed in her work is like a paranoid person: every piece of experience seems to echo back to her the subject of her work. So it is with Danticat…[Her] tender new book about loss and the unquenchable passion for homeland makes us remember the powerful material from which most fiction is wrought: it comes from childhood, and place. No matter her geographic and temporal distance from these, Danticat writes about them with the immediacy of love.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
“In order to shield our shattered collective psyche from a long history of setbacks and disillusionment... we cultivate communal and historical amnesia...,” writes novelist Danticat in this lean collection of jaw-breaking horrors side by side with luminous insights. This volume, which grows out of the Toni Morrison lecture series at Princeton, is uneven and inorganic in patches. But in Danticat’s many remarkable stories and pensées from the gut, one locates the inimitable power of truth. Authorship becomes an act of subversion when one’s words might be read and acted on by someone risking his or her life if only to read them. Danticat reminds us that, in a cruel twist of fate, her native Haiti, earthquake-and-poverty-torn, gained independence, in a bloody slave uprising, not long after the U.S. did: our ties, usually unexamined, run painfully deep. Whether eulogizing her family, writing on leading journalist Jean Dominique’s assassination and exiled author Marie Vieux-Chauvet, or discussing “Madison Avenue Primitive” Jean-Michel Basquiat, Danticat documents what it means for an immigrant writer to create dangerously for immigrant readers who read dangerously, awakened and no longer participants in a culture of “historical amnesia.” (Oct.)New York Times Book Review
Danticat is at her best when writing from inside Haiti. . . . As [her] recollections show, her singular achievement is not to have remade the actual Haiti, but to have recreated it. She has wound the fabric of Haitian life into her work and made it accessible to a wide audience of Americans and other outsiders. . . . Danticat's tender new book about loss and the unquenchable passion for homeland makes us remember the powerful material from which most fiction is wrought: it comes from childhood, and place. No matter her geographic and temporal distance from these, Danticat writes about them with the immediacy of love.— Amy Wilentz
San Francisco Chronicle
Danticat is a marvelous writer, blending personal anecdotes, history and larger reflections without turning the immigrant writer into a victim, misunderstood by all.— Sandip Roy
Boston Globe
[Edwidge Danticat's] mission as a writer has been to speak from the diaspora for Haiti's disfranchised and silenced. . . . That responsibility weighs heavily in these essays, which dwell on her personal sorrows as much as those of the Haitian masses. . . . Her unlettered Haitian relatives call her a jounalis, a journalist writing with a purpose. She doesn't let them down.— Amanda Heller
Santa Fe New Mexican
Danticat's prose is spare and piercing; she doesn't waste words. Her ideas are never cloaked in layers of metaphor, yet every sentence has a lyrical, persuasive quality. . . . Within this stirring collection, one theme struck me more strongly than any other: for artists, the drive to create triumphs over everything else. Or it should. . . . Creating dangerously means telling the truth—working without or in spite of fear.— Jennifer Levin
Miami Herald
Whether the topic is Haiti's war of independence, 9/11, the artist, musician and actor Jean-Michel Basquiat, the January earthquake and its aftermath, Danticat writes with a compassionate insight but without a trace of sentimentality. Her prose is energetic, her vision is clear, the tragedies seemingly speaking for themselves.— Betsy Willeford
Color Online
Danticat's writing is inviting, beautiful and honest.National
[Danticat] avoids grandiose claims about the insightfulness of the exile—while honouring the complexity of the immigrant artist's role, with its precariousness and its drive to make connections.— Scott McLemee
Guardian
What is best in this collection are the vivid portraits of the author's childhood in Haiti (and then as a book-obsessed teenager visiting the library in Brooklyn), intermingled with return journeys to visit relatives, collect sacks of coffee and observe the nation changing. There are sharp thoughts on Basquiat, Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haitian earthquake.— Steven Poole
Oregonian
Focused on her medium of 'word art,' though incorporating theater and visual arts, Danticat pieces together a multi-essay response to the creatives' lament . . . how do, why do and should we create, in this at-best messy and at-worst dangerous world?— Kristin Theil
Canberra Times
Have you ever started reading a book which draws you in within the first few sentences and leaves you unable to put it down until the very last word and then, because it amazed and moved you more than anything you can remember, you immediately read it again? . . . Create Dangerously, is one of those books. . . . Danticat is that rare writer who can make you smile as your soul aches. Although Create Dangerously is not an easy book to read it is disturbing and particularly controversial in places it is, nonetheless, a consistently passionate, deeply thought-provoking and highly important book which should be read, reread and then passed on to new hands.— Josh Rosner
Blogcritics.org
Danticat's voice offers a plaintive, entreating call for recognition of the suffering of so many in the world, and of their irrepressible desire to make life more meaningful by embracing art despite it all, no matter the cost.— Kerri Shadid
Geoffrey Philp blog
Throughout Create Dangerously, Ms. Danticat catalogs through personal narratives many of the dilemmas that immigrant writers face: readers and critics who question the 'veracity' of the stories; the accompanying guilt from the accusation of being a 'parasite,' and my personal favorite, the 'intrusion' into the lives of family and friends.Mascara Literary Review
Danticat's essays and her memoir are highly finessed and subtle. She breaches the vertiginous fault lines between the real and the surreal, between writing and archeiropoietos, between lòt bò dlo, and anba dlo. . . . [Create Dangerously] asks us to consider art and literature as vehicles for authenticity and self-expression, however dangerous that might be. This achievement is effortless and utterly compelling, with not one syllable or sentiment below guapa.— Michelle Cahill
Women's Review of Books
That Danticat engages and re-engages [the] complicated, important, and perennial questions of living and creating is one of the many reasons to read this book.— Danielle Georges
Barnes and Noble Review
Whether she is profiling a courageous Haitian photojournalist, writing about a visit to relatives in a rural village, or meditating on the career of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Danticat is always also writing about her responsibilities as a part of what is called, in Creole, the dyaspora. . . . [T]houghtful, powerful.— Adam Kirsch
New York Times Book Review
Danticat is at her best when writing from inside Haiti. . . . As [her] recollections show, her singular achievement is not to have remade the actual Haiti, but to have recreated it. She has wound the fabric of Haitian life into her work and made it accessible to a wide audience of Americans and other outsiders. . . . Danticat's tender new book about loss and the unquenchable passion for homeland makes us remember the powerful material from which most fiction is wrought: it comes from childhood, and place. No matter her geographic and temporal distance from these, Danticat writes about them with the immediacy of love.San Francisco Chronicle
Danticat is a marvelous writer, blending personal anecdotes, history and larger reflections without turning the immigrant writer into a victim, misunderstood by all.Boston Globe
[Edwidge Danticat's] mission as a writer has been to speak from the diaspora for Haiti's disfranchised and silenced. . . . That responsibility weighs heavily in these essays, which dwell on her personal sorrows as much as those of the Haitian masses. . . . Her unlettered Haitian relatives call her a jounalis, a journalist writing with a purpose. She doesn't let them down.Santa Fe New Mexican
Danticat's prose is spare and piercing; she doesn't waste words. Her ideas are never cloaked in layers of metaphor, yet every sentence has a lyrical, persuasive quality. . . . Within this stirring collection, one theme struck me more strongly than any other: for artists, the drive to create triumphs over everything else. Or it should. . . . Creating dangerously means telling the truth—working without or in spite of fear.Barnes and Noble Review
Whether she is profiling a courageous Haitian photojournalist, writing about a visit to relatives in a rural village, or meditating on the career of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Danticat is always also writing about her responsibilities as a part of what is called, in Creole, the dyaspora. . . . [T]houghtful, powerful.Miami Herald
Whether the topic is Haiti's war of independence, 9/11, the artist, musician and actor Jean-Michel Basquiat, the January earthquake and its aftermath, Danticat writes with a compassionate insight but without a trace of sentimentality. Her prose is energetic, her vision is clear, the tragedies seemingly speaking for themselves.National
[Danticat] avoids grandiose claims about the insightfulness of the exile—while honouring the complexity of the immigrant artist's role, with its precariousness and its drive to make connections.Guardian
What is best in this collection are the vivid portraits of the author's childhood in Haiti (and then as a book-obsessed teenager visiting the library in Brooklyn), intermingled with return journeys to visit relatives, collect sacks of coffee and observe the nation changing. There are sharp thoughts on Basquiat, Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haitian earthquake.Oregonian
Focused on her medium of 'word art,' though incorporating theater and visual arts, Danticat pieces together a multi-essay response to the creatives' lament . . . how do, why do and should we create, in this at-best messy and at-worst dangerous world?Canberra Times
Have you ever started reading a book which draws you in within the first few sentences and leaves you unable to put it down until the very last word and then, because it amazed and moved you more than anything you can remember, you immediately read it again? . . . Create Dangerously, is one of those books. . . . Danticat is that rare writer who can make you smile as your soul aches. Although Create Dangerously is not an easy book to read it is disturbing and particularly controversial in places it is, nonetheless, a consistently passionate, deeply thought-provoking and highly important book which should be read, reread and then passed on to new hands.Blogcritics.org
Danticat's voice offers a plaintive, entreating call for recognition of the suffering of so many in the world, and of their irrepressible desire to make life more meaningful by embracing art despite it all, no matter the cost.Mascara Literary Review
Danticat's essays and her memoir are highly finessed and subtle. She breaches the vertiginous fault lines between the real and the surreal, between writing and archeiropoietos, between lòt bò dlo, and anba dlo. . . . [Create Dangerously] asks us to consider art and literature as vehicles for authenticity and self-expression, however dangerous that might be. This achievement is effortless and utterly compelling, with not one syllable or sentiment below guapa.Women's Review of Books
That Danticat engages and re-engages [the] complicated, important, and perennial questions of living and creating is one of the many reasons to read this book.Library Journal
The 12 essays here extend from lectures by Haitian American author Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying), presented at Princeton University, exploring a variety of aspects of Haitian life and culture, including under previous repressive regimes. The themes from essay to essay are somewhat disjointed, although more than one is about truth vanquishing tragedy: "Walk Straight" is a tribute to her beloved Tante Ilyana and a wonderful glimpse into authentic rural Haiti, "Welcoming Ghosts" relates the amazing life of voodoo artist Hector Hyppolite, and "Acheiropoietus" concerns the work of photographer Daniel Moral. Throughout, Danticat's writing is crisp and clear, reminiscent of what the very best essay writing once aspired to be. VERDICT Not just another writer's book about writing, this volume delves into the suffering that affects artists who suspend themselves from time and place to create. Ironically, the Haitian Danticat was initially an immigrant to the United States (at age 12), but her years spent away from Haiti have now made her an immigrant to Haiti. Thus, she is the bridge that suspends dangerously from shore to shore. Her book should be read by students, historians and lovers of well-crafted writing.—Nedra Crowe-Evers, Sonoma Cty. Lib., Santa Rosa, CAThe Barnes & Noble Review
When an earthquake destroyed the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince in January of this year, the celebrated Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat was safely at home in the United States. Specifically, she writes in the title essay of her new nonfiction collection, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, she was "at work" on her writing. Why those quotation marks, which are Danticat's own? They seem to convey a guilty sense that sitting at a desk and making up stories can't be considered real work, especially when her fellow Haitians are dying by the hundreds of thousands. "While we are at work bodies are littering the streets somewhere," she writes. "People are buried under rubble somewhere. Mass graves are being dug somewhere."
Of course, every writer could say the same -- there is always a disaster in progress somewhere in the world, and anyone who devotes her life to "writing, quietly, quietly," as Danticat does, must sometimes wonder about the coexistence of art and atrocity. But when you are an immigrant artist -- like Danticat, who was born in Port-au-Prince and came to the United States at the age of 12 -- you have a special kind of connection to the problems of your home country. And when that country is Haiti, the contrast between your own privilege and your relatives' and friends' poverty can sometimes become unbearable. "My stories do not hold a candle to having lived under a dictatorship for most of your adult life, to having your neighbors disappear and not be able even to acknowledge it," Danticat writes.
This contrast, and the strategies by which Danticat redeems it, are the true subject of the twelve short pieces in Create Dangerously. Whether she is profiling a courageous Haitian photojournalist, writing about a visit to relatives in a rural village, or meditating on the career of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Danticat is always also writing about her responsibilities as a part of what is called, in Creole, the dyaspora. Basquiat, the 1980s art star, was born in New York to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father: can he be considered a Haitian artist? Danticat quotes his demurral -- "I'm an artist who has been influenced by his New York environment" -- but she also compares him with the Haitian painter Hector Hyppolite, whose art teems with symbols drawn from Vodou. Somehow, she writes, "Haiti…was obviously both in Basquiat's consciousness and in his DNA."
In Danticat's own work, there is no doubt about Haiti's centrality: her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory is "the story of three generations of Haitian women." Yet when the book was selected for Oprah's Book Club and reached a huge audience, Danticat found that some Haitian Americans were offended by its portrayal of their culture -- especially the practice of "testing," in which a mother would manually confirm her daughter's virginity. "You dishonor us, making us sexual and psychological misfits," one woman wrote to Danticat; she overheard a man asking bitterly, "Why was she taught to read and write?" The best answer she can give is the phrase of Camus's that provides the title of this thoughtful, powerful book. "Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer."
--Adam Kirsch