51 pages • 1 hour read
Edwidge DanticatBrother, I'm Dying
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 11-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “For Adversity”
Chapter 11 Summary: “Brother, I Can Speak”
In 1983, Uncle Joseph comes to New York for a checkup. Edwidge and Bob join their father to meet him at the airport, and once they all embrace, father asks him, “‘Do you see your children?’ […] as though he’d been waiting a long time to say it” (114). Edwidge accompanies Joseph to the doctor’s, because “unlike anyone else, I could now doubly interpret my uncle, both from silence to voice and Creole to English” (115). The doctor presents him with a voice box, a machine that will help his vocal cords produce sound, so Joseph can speak for the first time in years, in a metallic, robotic voice.
That summer, Joseph sells the old house in Haiti and builds a new one behind the church and the school. Marie Micheline, now 37, works as a head nurse in a neighborhood clinic. She has three boys with two different men and raises them on her own. Uncle Joseph has a soft spot for her: “Perhaps because he had rescued her not once, but twice, he loved her even more deeply, more unconditionally” (117).
On Joseph’s 63rd birthday, February 7, 1986, President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees Haiti, “leaving a military junta in charge of the country” (118). A new president, Leslie Manigat, assumes power on February 7, 1988, so “my uncle’s birthday had become the official date for Haitian presidential inaugurations and swearings in” (118). Namphy deposed Manigat after four months, and then Prosper Avril deposed Namphy. Duvalier loyalists attempted a coup at Avril, causing hostility within the army.
During a skirmish in Bel Air, Marie Micheline dies of a heart attack as a bullet narrowly misses her. Edwidge’s uncle and aunt are devastated, and Tante Denise claims, crying, that “watching the bullets fly, the violence of her neighborhood, the rapid unraveling of her country, Marie Micheline had been frightened to death” (121).
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Angel of Death and Father God”
General Avril resigns in 1990, and a young priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, wins the elections. Seven months later, after a military coup, he leaves Haiti, and the army cruelly punishes his sympathizers. In 1994, he returns to Haiti with the help of the US under Bill Clinton during Operation Uphold Democracy.
Joseph keeps a tally of all the people killed in Bel Air as a way of paying his respects. Edwidge’s father tries to persuade him to move to New York, but he refuses, saying, “Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back” (124). In 1994, both his son Maxo and Edwidge return to Haiti for the first time. Edwidge notices how the city has “assembled and disassembled” over time (124), but “very little had changed” (125). Tante Denise has had a stroke, and “she, like those buildings, had been disassembled while I was gone” (126). When she recognizes Edwidge, she pulls her on her lap and tells her one of Granmè Melina’s stories, about God and the Angel of Death: A woman refuses to give water to God because he plays favorites and creates people to be unequal, as opposed to the Angel of Death, who comes for each equally.
Chapter 13 Summary: “You’re Not a Policeman”
In February 2003, Tante Denise dies of a stroke, aged 81. Edwidge arrives in Haiti with her father for the funeral. While her father has only been back two other times, Edwidge has made the trip frequently: Every time her work allowed, she would visit Bel Air and Tante Denise, who no longer left the house. By this time, Edwidge and her family have become naturalized US citizens.
During the cab ride into Bel Air, police officers with guns stop their car and demand a bribe, which the cab driver then adds to the fare. Uncle Joseph is grief-stricken, and “finding a lamppost on the occasional street corner, he would wrap his arms around it and weep” (132). Edwidge’s cousin Richard is organizing the funeral, and she learns he has political ambitions and fears repercussions. President Aristide won a second term in 2000 under suspicious circumstances. Richard is an anti-Aristide activist, and many of the pro-Aristide gangs want him dead.
Fearing the gangs, the family does not hold a wake, except for close family, who spend the night remembering Denise. At the funeral, as the mourners walk to the cemetery, shots ring out, and the crowd briefly disperses. Edwidge is frightened: “My heart was beating fast, a pool of sweat gathering on my face. Was this how Marie Micheline felt before she died?” (138).
Chapter 14 Summary: “Brother, I Leave You with a Heavy Heart”
In August 2004, Uncle Joseph comes to New York to visit his brother, who is in the hospital. Edwidge, now close to her second trimester, arrives from Miami. Seeing her father in the hospital bed shocks Edwidge, as “his body was even smaller than the last time I’d seen him” (141). The next day, her father comes home, but he has to stop working and starts using oxygen. As part of his new routine, he “pray(s) out loud as though conducting a boisterous one-sided conversation with God” (142). The brothers share stories of Haiti, which excite Edwidge: “More, please, I wanted to say. Please tell me more. Both of you, together, tell me more. About you. About me. About all of us” (143).
At the end of September, Uncle Joseph leaves for Haiti. Edwidge feels that “maybe I should have convinced my uncle to stay. Maybe it would have helped, done my father some good, helped them both” (146). As he leaves, he kisses his younger brother, “like a grown man kissing a sick child, partly with love, but mostly out of fear” (147).
In October, Edwidge and Fedo learn that she is carrying a girl and that she has a low-lying placenta, which might cause problems at birth. At the same time, two calamities plague Haiti: Tropical storm Jeanne has struck a large city, leaving many dead, and the protests in Bel Air have become “a daily event” (150). In 2004, the UN organizes a stabilization mission, which causes uproar with local gangs. Edwidge’s father is worried that he has not heard from his brother in a week, which is atypical.
Part 2, Chapters 11-14 Analysis
Part 2 of the memoir bears the title “For Adversity,” again quoting the Old Testament, this time from the Book of Proverbs, a section of the Bible that deals with issues of ethical values and the purpose and meaning of human existence. The quote refers to the fact that we can lean on our family at times of great need and trouble, and it reinforces Danticat’s concept of the familial bond that exists within her family despite the distance and the very different lives her father and her uncle have led.
In Chapter 11, the author supplies another powerful metaphor that contrasts her uncle losing his voice in Part 1 of the memoir: He gains the ability to express himself vocally thanks to a modern device the he acquires during his visit to the US. Danticat subtly underscores the fact that her uncle would never had lived through his throat cancer diagnosis had he not traveled to the US, and furthermore, after having lost his voice, he would not have been able to get it back. Even though his voice sounds different, Uncle Joseph is immensely happy. He will be able to continue with his mission, and the whole episode represents an extended metaphor of how a person must strive to find a new voice once they have lost theirs, just as the people of Haiti are striving to reach peace and a sense of safety. The author here connects the ideas of the individual and the collective as a strong reminder that changes start from one person and gain momentum.
In the same chapter, Danticat recounts the death of Marie Micheline, who dies of fright during one of the endless skirmishes in Bel Air. Through the unexpected manner of her death, the author suggests that lives in a country that is rife with unrest and civil wars bear little value. People live under constant stress and fear, and their health suffers. Thus, in the memoir, Marie Micheline’s death becomes a symbol of all the people struggling within societies that have not reached a democratic ideal of peaceful and safe existence, one not circumscribed by pain, stress, poverty, and fear of the uncertain future.
Chapters 12 and 13 serve to emphasize the political circumstances that lead Haiti into an endless spiral of trouble and strife. Danticat uses the fact that her uncle keeps a tally of all the people killed or injured in the riots and fights as a sobering reminder that for the people of Haiti, violent death is an everyday occurrence. In such unstable societies, where politicians fight for power only to be ousted by others in a never-ending chain of political intrigue, violence, and thirst for power, a human life loses its intrinsic value. The author emphasizes the effect on the everyday lives of ordinary people through the scene in Chapter 13 when, after Tante Denise has died, the police stop their cab and demand a bribe to let them go. Edwidge’s uncle cannot even grieve in peace, because there is no peace around him, and in consequence, as he is a deeply ethical man, there is no peace within him. The family cannot hold a wake for Edwidge’s aunt for fear of being caught in gang wars, and Edwidge experiences the kind of existential fear she presumes might have cost Marie Micheline her life. This fear is a constant in the lives of the people of Haiti and many other countries torn by civil wars.
In Chapter 14, the author juxtaposes negatively charged events that concern the two brothers, thus further deepening the atmosphere of unease and dread that she started building in the last chapters of Part 1. Her father is getting sicker, losing weight and his old personality along the way, while Uncle Joseph fails to contact them, and they fear that his disappearance might mean he has been killed. Danticat utilizes a classic cliffhanger at the end of the chapter, leaving the reader uncertain of what is happening to Joseph. In addition to all their hardships, a tropical storm has hit Haiti, a fact that creates a sense of irony. During this time, Edwidge’s pregnancy (and the potential danger of having a low-lying placenta) almost fall into the background, as trouble and fear seem to win over the promise of a new life.
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