Interview with Edwidge Danticat-video

In the video interview held at Miami which aimed at knowing more about the historical background Edwige Danticat and her writings, Danticat was born in Port-Au -Prince Haiti in 1965 where she lived with her aunt and extended family but later joined her parents living in Brooklyn, New York when she was aged 12 years. As a child, the most influential people were her parents, the main being her mother, and insist that her parents sacrifice lead to her future success and enable her and her siblings to good learning institutions. When still living in Haiti, she wrote her first short story “A Haitian-American Christmas: Crémace and Creole Theater.”

In New York, she faced some hard time to adapt and be accepted by the other kid, but dealt with it through reading and writing. She wrote her first newspaper article for The Youth Connection, and called the Haitian Christmas and went on writing articles all through high school. In most of her books, she wrote her personal experiences which influenced her. She claims to have her main themes like; immigration, contrasting culture, loss, and suffering. Over the years, her writings have been of different genres like essays, theses, short stories, novels, and works for young adults.

An Interview With Edwidge DanticatBy Jivin Misra In the Interview Edwidge Danticat by Jivin Misra held to discuss some of the elements in her writings, Danticat claims that she started writing “Children of the Sea” when she was an MFA learner at Brown University. When writing, she was focused on the structure and plot in her work; she insists that the story guided the writer to the structure of the work she is writing on, and the use of letters is the most relevant way to tell a story. In her book, she suggests that the woman is writing in a way that would not impose danger to her or her family in case the military authorities who ruled over their country found these letters and the man is writing as a person who at any time could die while at sea.

When writing Children of the Sea, she says she did not do too much research, and most of the information came from her interaction with people. She would listen to the testimonies of the people in church about their experiences. She researched without realizing she was doing it by gathering information from the past experiences of people. She claims that what makes a story a story is that no matter the length, character or other elements; doing what the writer feels like doing and thinks is important for the story is the most important thing