For the remainder of Fall 2009 I am honoring Edwidge Danticat, a prize winning Haitian-American author who has been awarded a 2009 MacArthur Fellowship.

Danticat's prominence in contemporary literature began with the success of her 'debut' novel Breath, Eyes, Memory. You can read selections of Breath, eyes, memory, on Google Books. [Remember preview versions limit the number of times a work can be viewed while blocking printing.]  Some of her other novels are Krik? Krak!, The Farming of Bones and The Dew Breaker. Her works have been translated to Spanish, German, Polish and French.

A Barnard College graduate with an MFA from Brown University, Edwidge Danticat has written many short stories, essays and magazine articles (cf. the 2005 New Yorker article Reading Lessons). Her second children's book Anacaona, Golden Flower, is a fictionalized diary that chronicles the rise to power and literary accomplishments of Taino queen Anacaona. The queen ruled Xaragua, the last Taino kingdom to fall in the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola. 

Danticat's most recent work, Brother I'm Dying, is a memoir chronicling the visits of death and birth to her 'front door' in 2004.

The article Famous Haitians from The Haiti Support Group website honors the most prominent female Haitian novelist, Marie Chauvet. For a recent English translation of Chauvet's signature work locate a copy of Love, anger, madness : a Haitian trilogy, translated by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokurof, with an introduction by Edwidge Danticat. You can learn more about Chauvet by reading the article Haitian Women Underground: Revising Literary Traditions and Societies by Régine Latorture in  Journal of Haitian Studies Vol. 5-6.
 
Contact me in person at the Ernest J. Allen Library (EJA) at Palomar's Escondido Center or the San Marcos campus  Library (LL211B) to discuss service, collection or instruction issues for EJA and our planned North Center campus. You can also reach me via email or by telephone (Mon & Thur ext 8229; Tues & Wed ext 3695).

Visit my course blog to learn about the course I will teach in Spring 2010, LT110 Library Operational Skills/Technical Services.