As a former Florida resident, I know all too well about the struggle between Haitian and Cuban immigrants particularly. What’s considered american soil and just how badly the struggle remains between who can be sent back and who can stay. Race plays such a major in all of it. It feels like I can still hear the protests now, or see the faces of small children dressed in white and detained in filth. Or I can think back to the stories of my close friends whose parents, cousins, close loved ones were still at home and how many were raped and beaten by U.N. Officers, the price of being a detainee. These stories unfortunately come as no surprise and I’m happy that Edwidge decided to write this memoir because she is a voice people will listen to and if nothing else the book will forever be a love letter to her father, uncle and brand new daughter.
I felt the walking spirits all around her with her initial juxtaposition of preparing to birth the new life of her first daughter and preparing to end a life with a father’s sickness. The thronging pain of her uncles’s untimely death rippled throughout the pages and carried the manuscript. I thought of her emotional difficulty to choose all the time between Haiti, New York, and Miami and what each city meant for her. I fall in love thoroughly with the fathers of this book because they are so loving, indebted to their children, and so very honest with their emotions and the children soak it up “Papa,” she whispered, her mouth now so close to his ears that her breath burned his lobes. “Papa, even though men cannot give birth, you just gave birth tonight. To me.”
Record Keeping becomes a way to stay alive, to keep the truth possible and more real than contrived. I love that amidst the horror occurring throughout the book especially in the chapter Hell, Joseph records the sounds, the blood, everything he experiences to one day create a book. When I imagine that Joseph wanted to write a book tears come to my eyes I’m glad Edwidge took the time to collect these emotions and create the book on behalf of all characters involved, dead and alive. The act of exile is so very difficult to perform, to maintain but also so very necessary a life and death act. And even so close to death Joseph escapes only to find another political death in America he did not have to die. Edwidge dashes out like a sharp machete into one turmoil of madness, to the next. Keeping us all allured by the dream state of thoughtfulness she takes to telling each thing.
He’s faking it. . .I read the transcript record of each moment of Joseph’s life almost like a poem, she records each movement of his life from the time he arrives in Miami until the moment of his death I’m am dashed almost beautifully by the sharp knife of his unncessary death and the meticoulousness of which she takes on of knowing each and every act performed on him, each word that’s said to him, the responses, how the vomit and pee stains cover his honorable body and even what each thing means medically when he does arrive at a hospital. “Vomit shot out of his mouth, his nose, as well as teh tracheotomy hole in his neck. The vomit was spread all over his face, from his forehead to his chin, down the the front of his dark blue Krome-issued overalls There was also vomit on his thighs, where a large wet stain showed he had also urinated on himself.” As if, she, were there herself. In my heart I was Maxo and I murdered each and every officer for allowing my father to choke and protest “he’s just faking.”
For me, in this text time almost happens with a memory or a walk into the next major moment. There are always footsteps, or noises, even the name of a relative who is relative to the next event. She shifts almost painlessly from one moment to the next I feel like I am walking around inside her head especially when she says things like “We spent most of the night awake, cradling along with my large belly this horrendous news that those who most loved my uncle were not yet aware of.” I don’t know what else she could have called this text I thought the title and the chapter titles like “Hell” or “Let the Stars Fall” were very appropriate and also gave me leadway to accept the books, its trials, and all its pain. I think her form is different from anything we’ve seen in our previous memoirs its clear she’s also doing a very document study of her uncles last moments but she is also so directly connected with the cords of her baby and husband in tow. I think she took us through major events and then broke down the bread crumbs little by little throughout each chapter. It was an interesting way to perform the craft of time and space.
