Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat is best known as a fiction novelist and short story writer, but her memoir, written in 2007, was inspired by the head-on collision of both tragedy and joy in her life, occurring on the same day. Danticat learned that she was pregnant with her much-prayed-for first child; on the same day, she also learned that her father was in the final stages of his life, and was dying from pulmonary fibrosis, a disease of the heart. He was both the inspiration and the reason for the memoir; as he was unable to communicate any more with his brother who still lived in Haiti, Danticat penned a family memoir so that she could let the relatives still living in Haiti what had happened in their lives since their emigration, from her perspective. After all, she had been raised by her uncle from the age of four, when her parents left for America in search of the American dream, and had lived with him until she was twelve, and her parents felt they were ready for her to join them. In her memoir she details first loves, relationships, her marriage and her pregnancy.
Danticat always excelled in creative writing at school and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Brown University, her thesis becoming her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory. This catapulted her into the literary world by virtue of its selection for Oprah Winfrey's book club.
Like most of her work, this memoir centers around specific themes, including national identity, Haiti, and the complex relationship between a mother and a daughter. Brother, I'm Dying received both the National Book Award and the National Critics Circle Award in 2007, following up this success with a Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2008.
