(Boston, April 10, 2009) – Edwidge Danticat, born in Haiti and widely regarded to be the leading Haitian-American author today, will make a rare appearance on Wednesday, April 22, at UMass Boston. The 1:30 p.m. event will be a live, big-screen teleconferenced interview with the Haitian-American author, and the public is invited.
The event is part of The Big Read: Boston, a national reading initiative presented by UMass Boston’s public radio station, WUMB 91.9FM. Danticat wrote the insightful foreword to the 2006 edition of "Their Eyes Were Watching God," the classic novel that has been chosen as the centerpiece of The Big Read and around which more than 100 events have been unfolding leading up to the program's conclusion in May.
Danticat is perhaps best known for her novel, "Breath, Eyes, Memory," in which she speaks of four generations of Haitian women who must overcome their poverty and powerlessness. She says that memories of her time in Haiti are still quite strong in her mind, and that her love of Haiti and all things Haitian continue to be a deep influence in her writing.
Born in Port-au-Prince in 1969 and raised by an aunt because her parents had moved to Brooklyn, NY, Danticat absorbed the Haitian practice of storytelling, common at the time because presentation of oral literature emphasized community inclusion. Her books, written after she had moved to Brooklyn to rejoin her parents, transport the reader into the heart of Haiti's culture. As a child growing up in a dictatorial state, Danticat says, "I always dreaded the pounding I heard at some of my neighbors' doors at night, when many were yanked from their beds never to be seen again." She has been a strong advocate for detainee rights and the elimination of torture in her homeland and has testified in this regard before Congress.
The realization that she could write and had stories to tell blossomed after she graduated from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn and entered Barnard College in New York. There, she received a BA in French literature and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from Brown University.
At UMass Boston, Danticat will be interviewed from her home in Miami on a large teleconferencing screen set up in the Venture Development Center, 3rd Floor, Wheatley Hall. The moderator will be Barbara Lewis, director, UMass Boston Monroe Trotter Center for the Study of Black Culture. The event will begin at 1:30 p.m. Space is limited; RSVP in advance required at 617-287-6900 or bigread@umb.edu.
For further information about all the other events underway in celebration of “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” visit the WUMB web site at www.wumb.org/thebigread. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.
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