Description: Legendary Haitian author Depestre combines magic, fantasy, eroticism, and delirious humor to explore universal questions of race and sexuality.
Brief description: EDWIDGE DANTICAT was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the editor of Haiti Noir, Haiti Noir 2: The Classics, and the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory (an Oprah's Book Club selection), Krik?Krak! (a National Book Award finalist), The Farming of Bones (an American Book Award winner), and the novel-in-stories The Dew Breaker. She has also written several young adult novels, children's picture books, and a travel narrative, After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2007 winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant. Watch Out for Falling Iguanas is her latest children's picture book.
Review Quotes: The sights and sounds of Haiti's vibrant carnival season invigorate this tale of vodou and Haitian culture . . . The truth of Hadriana's fate proves more poignant than horrifying, but in Depestre's hands, this incident is a touchstone of a culture in which distinctions between the empirical and spiritual are obscured, and whose traditional celebrations and beliefs introduce an element of the mythic into the everyday. Eroticism and humor course through his narrative. Depestre's intimacy with his subject matter and his familiarity with the people he portrays--the story is set in his hometown, at the time when he was 12 years old--give readers an insider's look at Jacmelian culture.-- "Publishers Weekly"