Brother, I'm Dying

Brother I’m Dying is a family memoir by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, originally published in the United States in 2007. Alternating between the author’s past in Haiti and present in the US, this memoir combines personal histories with sociopolitical contextualization to pay homage to Danticat’s father and uncle as well as give voice to Haitian people in their struggle for a peaceful life. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and was chosen as a New York Times notable book for 2007. The edition used for this study guide is by Vintage, published as an e-book in 2007.

Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969, and she spent the first 12 years of her life there. After moving to the United States, she graduated from Barnard College and obtained an MFA from Brown University. She published her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, in 1994, and since then she was part of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists selection, won the Story Prize twice, received the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant, and was awarded the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2017.