21010: Corbett: Bob Corbett review of Edwidge Danticat: THE DEW BREAKER

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From Bob Corbett

I recently read Edwidge Danticat's new book, THE DEW BREAKER during the
period of intense activity on this list concerning what was happening in
Haiti.  At that time you may recall at least 1/2 dozen reviews of this
book, maybe more.  It was only with great discipline that I kept myself
from reading any of those before I read the book for myself.

Below is my own set of comments on the book.  If you would like to see it
in a somewhat nicer format see:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/danticat-dew.html

But the review is here below:

THE DEW BREAKER
By Edwidge Danticat.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
242 pages.

Comments by Bob Corbett
March 2004

As the novel opens the young Brooklyn-base Haitian artist, Ka, is in
Florida to deliver a wooden sculptor she has made. The customer is a
wealthy successful Haitian entertainer and the subject of the sculpted
piece is her father. It is a great shock to Ka when he destroys the
statue, claiming his is not worthy of being so immortalized, and tells her
his deep secret past of being a prison guard, a very cruel and brutal one,
under Papa Doc. Eventually he left Haiti, came to the U.S. and began a new
life. He had only told his wife of his past, and its not fully obvious if
he told her all of it. Ka, who has both adored her father and despised
Haitis torturers (nearly confronting a man in church she thinks may be
Emmanuel Constant), is devastated by the shock and burden of this
revelation.

Thus begins a series of loosely connected stories of others who have some
relationship to state-sponsored torture in Haiti. The book is billed as a
novel, but the form is quite intriguing. Its not quite a novel in the
sense of a single main story which guides the whole, even if there are
numerous sub-plots. Its not quite a book of short stories, where every
individual story is relatively separate from the others, and
self-contained. Rather, this is a quite creative piece which sort of
blends the form of the novel and the form of the short story into a rather
special book. A number of the chapters in the book did appear as
independently published pieces, one as early as 1986.

The book carries a 2004 publication date, however, my copy, an advanced
readers copy, I received in 2003. Also, quite a few initial reviews of the
book appeared in early 2004 before the February uprising in Haiti which
led to the overthrow of the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Since
that uprising and its success, many new reviews of this book have appeared
in the past month. Knowing I would soon be reading the book myself, I
havent read any of those reviews, so I dont know whats being said about
the volume.

It is relevant to me that I read this work in middle March 2004 at the
apex of the successful attack on Aristides government. In the daily e-mail
list which I run, there were hundreds of stories of the situation in
Haiti, and of Haitis problems. These stories were in such astonishing
contrast to Danticats book that I was as much taken with the contrasts as
with the book itself.

The newspaper accounts, while naming the specific leaders of the
opposition, and always naming Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his leading
supporters, tended to stay at a relatively general level of description
and analysis. The subject of these newspaper accounts was always, in some
vague sense or other, Haiti, even Haiti since 1804 independence.

Danticat on the other hand deals very little with Haiti. She deals with
the terrible burden and horrible acts of Kas father. She dwells on her
mothers difficult life trying to forget her husbands past and believe in
the new man. She presents the confused young man who comes to recognize
the guard who killed his own parents, but doesnt really want the violence
of revenge nor the life of crime that implies. And on and on Danticat
deals with insight, sensitivity, emotive power and the individual reality
of the peoples response to this torture; it what it does to their lives.

State-sponsored torture and brutality are a part of Haitis 200 year
history. Danticat, staying much more within the realm of her own
experience, deals only with the torturers from Papa Docs time on. She
draws on some famous cases which have appeared both in newspaper accounts
and famous books on Haiti. But, she gives us a more detailed fictionalized
account, and always takes us into the feelings of the characters she
presents.

The title, The Dew Breaker, comes from a Creole phrase which refers to
those who break the serenity of the grass in the morning dew. It is a
Creole nickname for torturer. We learn that name in a very touching
account of an old demented woman in the chapter, The Bridal Seamstress.
This is the story of a young reporter assigned to do a brief human
interest story of a well-known Haitian seamstress in the U.S. who makes
beautiful bridal gowns, but is now retiring. The reporter is bored with
the story and wishing for meatier topics. The seamstress lets slip that a
dew breaker not only lives on her block, but follows her around wherever
she lives. Shes sure its because when she (frequently) moves she writes
her friends. She plans to move one last time, telling no one where she
will be. In this way she dreams of peace from the fear of this man. The
reporter decides to investigate this story of the dew breaker and goes to
the home to discover it vacant. A neighbor tells her its been vacant for
many months. Yet, during the interview and especially in the seamstresss
account of her fear of the dew breaker, we get the deep deep feeling sense
of what it would be like to have lived in with that terror all ones life
and have it never go away.

Edwidge Danticat is an extraordinary writer. She gives us real people with
damaged lives rooted in the long tradition of torture in Haiti. One story
of Danticat teaches me more than dozens of abstracted news stories which I
happened to be reading daily at the same time taking out more important
time to get in touch with the human reality of such suffering. As time
goes on I know from my past I will forget the details of the uprising and
overthrow. I think the lives of Danticats cast of characters will remain
with me forever.