Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Major/Program
English
First Advisor's Name
Dr. Donna Weir Soley
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee chair
Second Advisor's Name
Dr. Anne Castro
Second Advisor's Committee Title
Committee Member
Third Advisor's Name
Dr. Michael Grafals
Third Advisor's Committee Title
Committee member
Keywords
Edwidge Danticat, Trauma, Silences, Vodou framework, Haitian culture, Death, Haitian diaspora, Haiti/U.S. Relations, Lyric, Resilience
Date of Defense
6-14-2022
Abstract
Edwidge Danticat’s work has been praised for the visceral, deeply personal ways she writes violence, suffering, death, and loss, leading scholars to theorize that dehumanization is a central motif in the Haitian and Haitian diasporic experience. This causes Haiti to be generally considered, as Jerry Philogene describes, “a socially dead space”. Danticat ventures into this “socially dead space” in her recent memoirs, reflecting on the traumatic experiences of her two paternal figures, her father and Uncle Joseph, her complex feelings around her mother’s death, and the value of Haitian art in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Danticat creates a language, I have coined as lyrical rapturing, that interrupts her narrative with prose that expresses her own residual pain from her personal traumas, triggering new processes of healing. This thesis will show how my theory of lyrical rapturing occurs in Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, The Art of Death, and Create Dangerously: the immigrant artist at work. By reflecting past works such as Breathe, Eyes, Memory, Danticat creatively theorizes the internalized process that helps her to continue to create despite the weight of such grief. Her lyrical rapturous language creates a blueprint of Haitians’ resilience and the cultural spirit that undergirds it, in the face of unfathomable devastation.
Identifier
FIDC010825
Recommended Citation
Piard, Johanna M., "Lyrical Rapturing in Danticat’s Work: Transcending Haitian Cultural Silence through Narrative" (2022). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5109.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5109
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Religion Commons
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