The Challenges Faced by the Immigrant Artist from Edwidge Danticat’s Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17230/co-herencia.23.45.8644Keywords:
Haitian literature, Edwidge Danticat, diaspora, epic memory, universal communicators, deterritorialized citizenshipAbstract
In this article, we analyze the ways in which Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat describes the roles of the Haitian immigrant artist in her book of essays Create dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. Our central thesis is that Danticat stages how artists navigate the challenges inherent to these roles, building memories grounded in knowledge, beliefs, and traditions through a dynamic dialogue with individuals from her close circle to communicate the history of her people. The methodology employed for this analysis establishes an intertextual dialogue with Albert Camus’s essay “Create Dangerously,” as well as between Danticat’s proposal and theoretical frameworks on memory by Paul Ricoeur, Elizabeth Jelin and Derek Walcott. Through an interpretive study, we demonstrate how these perspectives are drawn upon to propose a deterritorialized Haitian citizenship. The main conclusions highlight how Haitian artists gather the fragments of the island’s epic memory, how they transform into “universal communicators,” and how Danticat performs the labor of memory for Haiti.
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