Exile in Edwidge Danticats Brother Im Dying - Essay Example

Exile in Edwidge Danticat's 'Brother I'm Dying' This paper examines the reality of immigration as a form of exile for those who are coming from another country into the United States, for instance. This paper posits that it is on the back of the suffering of those who migrate to another country, through self-imposed or necessary exile, that the success and happiness of later generations are built. To be in exile is to suffer and to be in a state of limbo, disconnected from home and never quite being at home anywhere, even as the exiles dream of a better future not for themselves but for their children and their children's children (Kakutani; Row; Hong; Danticat). It is important to note that for the father Mira there was an actual sense of being exiled from Haiti, as evidenced by the way he kept close ties with his brother who was left there, in Joseph, and in the way he summed up the result of his long life. He was there in the US to raise his family, not because he wanted to, but that circumstances essentially beyond his control meant that he had to go to the US in order that his family may live and be spared from the horrors of life in Haiti. This is made clear from the way Mira, for instance, summed up the frustration that he felt when his brother Joseph was buried not in Haiti, where he and his brother felt really at home, but in Queens, in a foreign land where, from his words, he seemed to have felt like an outsider. His sentiments were that his brother Joseph should not have been even staying in the United States, and Joseph should not have been buried in Queens. If their homeland, Haiti, according to him, were given the opportunity to be the kind of country that he imagined it could be, then not he, Mira, his family, and certainly not his brother Joseph would have wanted to stay in America. This is of course speaking not from the material level, on the level of the economic and material opportunities that America offered, but from a more spiritual perspective, from a man who was keenly aware that there are more vital things that all the material wealth in the world cannot compensate for. Yes America was the land of opportunity and the land of milk and honey for many people, but for people like him, who make the sacrifice to live in America when their hearts are in their homelands, such things do not matter when confronted with the death of their loved ones, and with their own deaths as well. There is another reality that transcends the outside reality of material wealth and integration with American society for the children. For the parents, it is that other reality that loom large. It is the reality as the father Mira sensed it everyday, thinking of his family and carving out a marginal living on the streets of America, as a cab driver. To be sure the children have done well, and suffer fewer psychic devastation from not having had to be separated from a homeland different from America, except in the case of the Edwidge, who spent the first 12 years of her life in Haiti, and who feels an affinity for Joseph, who she looked up to as a father figure not unlike her real father Mira. The children have done well, and we imagine that their children's children too, the grandchildren of Mira, will likewise do well. Yet it is on the back of the experience of exile of their parents, of Mira and of Joseph, that such well-being of the children and the future generations of their family in America have been secured. It is a steep sacrifice that would lead to the sad and somewhat absurd death of Joseph, detained by the very authorities to which they entrusted their future. It is this absurd state of affairs too, that would lead to the death of Mira, and to the posthumous and final exile of their mortal remains from Haiti. This sense of exile is reinforced by the fact that both brothers would be joined in death, not in Haiti, but in Queens, where they would lie side by side in their graves. Up to the point of death they would suffer the fate of exiles who must sacrifice and who must be witness to their fate not through their own liking but in order that their children may have better futures. That future is something that they could not have in Haiti, and torn though they are between their love for their homeland and their need to protect themselves and their children from harm, there is much there in the fate of the two men that is sad and terminal (Kakutani; Row; Hong; Danticat). Looking at the fate of the two brothers too, we see that they are two sides of the same coin. One, Joseph, resisted what his brother Mira, embraced, and that is the impulse to find a better future not for their own sake but for the sake of the people they love, and due to the hardships and the growing impossibility of living sanely in the land of their birth. Joseph's response was to dig himself deep into the ground in Haiti, and to involve himself deeply in the affairs of his own church. That equated to living the kind of life that Mira was not able to live, the exploration of what it meant to stay in Haiti. Given the violence that pervaded there, that eventually forced Joseph to flee to America, at an advanced age, one can see too that the same fate could have befallen Mira and his family. On the other hand, for Mira, the scars are not so much physical but psychic in nature. True, that decision had its blessings too, in that Mira saw his family and his grandchildren specifically and had a vision of a life that is somewhat better for them, now that they had planted their roots in America on the back of his self-sacrifice living with the scars of exile. On the other hand, near death, Mira saw too that such exile meant an old age and a death for himself and for his brother removed from something that is deeply ingrained and vital in their souls. They felt dislocated and unmoored in their dying days, as if Mira's move away from Haiti and into the life that he led into America robbed him of something that was essential to that stage in his life. He looked back at his life of exile with some bitterness, and in death he found no satisfaction in his own and in his brother's being buried in America rather than in Haiti (Kakutani; Row; Hong; Danticat). Works Cited Hong, Terry. “Review: Edwidge Danticat's 'Brother, I'm Dying' a memoir of death”. San Francisco Chronicle SFGate. 9 October 2007. Web.13 April 2013. . Kakutani, Michiko. “A Haitian Tragedy: Brothers Yearn in Vain”. The New York Times Books. 4 September 2007. Web. 13 April 2013. Row, Jess. “Haitian Fathers”. The New York Times Sunday Book Review. 9 September 2007. Web.13 April 2013. . Read More