Review: E. Danticat's Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work
In Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, author Edwidge Danticat analyzes what it means to be an immigrant artist. She denotes her struggle as a growing artist being denied full identity as a Haitian (the country from which she and her family are) by her fellow countrymen. She also coerces her audience to see that the developing country of Haiti is not so unlike the “so-called developed country,” to use Danticat’s description, of the United States of America. Interestingly, this collection is not strictly argumentative. The author uses the more contemporary strategy of story-telling in a way that convinces the reader when they least expect it of something they were not aware was in question. The piece is thus a largely accessible, crafty mix of personal and impersonal experience, of history and the present.
Throughout this work, Danticat uses a myriad of historical references to place the reader in time and location easily, allowing the reader to feel secure enough to take in each piece with little to no resistance. This is how the author cleverly springs her point on the reader. In “Another Country” the author writes about Hurricane Katrina and one the most recent iconic American experiences, the September 11 Terrorist Attacks. She begins by placing the reader in the realm of natural disasters, alluding briefly to tsunamis in Thailand, floods in South Africa, tropical storms in Haiti before rolling up her sleeves and tackling Katrina aftermath head-on. She divulges:
In the weeks that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landing, I, immigrant writer and southern coastal city resident, heard many Americans of all geographical persuasions, pundits and citizens alike, make the case that the types of horrors that plagued Katrina-ravaged New Orleans—the desperation of ordinary citizens, some of whom resorted to raiding stores to feed themselves and their families; the forgotten public hospitals where nurses pumped oxygen into dying patients by hand; the makeshift triage wards on bridges and airports; the roaming armed gangs—are more in line with our expectations of the “third world” than the first.
At this, Danticat purposefully starts to juxtapose some aspects of American life with those of places like Haiti. She goes on to describe the “country within a country” in America:
The poor in the richest country in the world… should not be poor at all. They should not even exist. Maybe that’s why both their leaders and a large number of their fellow citizens don’t even realize that they actually do exist.
She ends the piece with:
Among the many realities brought to light by Hurricane Katrina was that never again could we justifiably deny the existence of this country within a country, that other America, which America’s immigrants and the rest of the world know much more intimately than many Americans do, the American that is always on the brink of humanitarian and ecological disaster. No, it is not Haiti or Mozambique or Bangladesh, but it might as well be.
And there it is. She’s made her point and by the time she plainly states it, she’s already convinced the reader when he wasn’t paying attention. She’s already caused the reader to agree with her, to feel an alliance with Haiti (Mozambique, Bangladesh, et al). Danticat writes in a way that compels her audience to let its guard down. Her position as immigrant artist, looking simultaneously from the outside in and the inside out, allows the author the unique perspective she offers in this book.
Throughout the book, Danticat refers to herself repeatedly as an immigrant artist. She never says where she is not considered so. In fact by the end of the work it is clear that no matter where she is, be it her permanent residence of the US or home in Haiti, she is perpetually immigrant. She divulges her early self-consciousness as one such writer to Haitian nationalist and radio personality, her friend Jean Dominique. “My country, Jean,” I said, “is one of uncertainty. When I say ‘my country’ to some Haitians, they think I mean the United States. When I say ‘my country’ to some Americans, they think of Haiti.” She tells of the attitude help by many of her countrymen towards her: “What do you know? You’re living outside. You’re a dyaspora.” We see as the book progresses and the author grows and matures that Danticat has come to terms with her self-consciousness. In “Another Country” she offers:
One of the advantages of being an immigrant is that two very different countries are forced to merge within you. The language you were born speaking and the one you will probably die speaking have no choice but to find a common place in your brain and regularly merge there.
It is clear that not only has the author reconciled the her status as immigrant writer but has come to celebrate it.
In this work, the author simultaneously explores what it means to be an artist—particularly of the immigrant variety-- and attempts to reconcile the paradoxical position of being from a place where fellow natives do not view you, wholly at least, as one of their own. Through tactical story-telling Danticat also attempts to convince her readers that the often referred to as third-world country, Haiti, isn’t so unfamiliar to those of us who only know of it what we see in the news. She argues that the business of Haiti is not irrelevant to us elsewhere in the world, especially in the United States of America by revealing the parallelism between this mighty country and our southern neighbor. Rich with historical detail and a few peeks into the author’s personal life, this book is a powerful and moving must-read.