Thalia Book Club: Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying

The author discusses her National Book Award-nominated, deeply personal new memoir with Academy Award–winning filmmaker and friend Jonathan Demme.


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Performance playlist:

Reading
Edwidge Danticat

Conversation
Edwidge Danticat and Jonathan Demme

A Discussion with the Audience

Edwidge Danticat’s memoir Brother, I’m Dying was a National Book Award finalist this year. She is also the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first annual Story Prize; and After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures. Danticat came to the United States from Haiti in 1981 at the age of twelve. She earned a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award. She received her MFA from Brown University and currently lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.

Jonathan Demme is the director of numerous critically acclaimed films, such as Melvin and Howard, a winner of the Best Director Award from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; The Silence of the Lambs, which earned him an Academy Award; Philadelphia, nominated for the Golden Berlin Bear; Beloved; and the forthcoming Dancing with Shiva. He has directed and produced many documentaries about Haiti. Most recently, he completed The Agronomist, about a Haitian radio journalist who was assassinated on the steps of his radio station. Previously, he directed Haiti: Dreams of Democracy, Haiti: Killing the Dream, Tonbe Leve and Courage and Pain. His other documentaries include Swimming to Cambodia, Cousin Bobby and New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward.