The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat

My insomnia is extremely unsettling right now. I spend night after night returning home from my job that keeps me out til 2:20 and exhausted emotionally but I get into bed and worry about the state of my world and how it is crumbling around me and doesn't even feel like it's my doing. Can I be held responsible for others and my interactions with them? I must be.

So when, last Friday when I had been awake for 30 hours and was crazily staring into my phone begging my roommates to give me a wake up visit the next morning, I started The Dew Breaker based off the advice of a website telling me to do quiet activities. It didn't work but I read half of Seven and eventually got myself 5 hours of sleep.

I have never finished a Danticat book til now, having picked up and put down Breath Eyes Memory before I even get to the first few pages, which is not its fault but mine - the brain rumbles towards other media to consume consume consume. I once again mention Junot Diaz because of my distinct memory of an interview they did together after Oscar Wao came out wherein my only knowledge of Haiti beyond kicking out/murdering the French colonizers and by Diaz's pen, that Trujillo committed a genocide. That's pretty fuckin' ignorant/limited. There are also so many countries that we ignore and forget the people of unless we have to address them directly in front of us, and we never do it all, how could we and why would we bother. Not questions, and not answers.

In any case, it is easy to read a piece and think you have totally understood the history of a place and those who are connected in some way to its ongoings. That's kind of pointlessly vague of yourself, j, and you can't keep doing that. I mentioned place-thought and am back at my understanding of it again here. Inspiration to do something with what you learn means you gotta check your sources, know your limits, and set your expectations to follow through. No coward gonna make moves with intent other than you, coward.

The Dew Breaker is about a man who took place in the murder and torture of poor and political dissidents (isn't being poor being a dissident?) and is now a father in America (New York specifically and Brooklyn more specifically than that but I don't know the geopolitics of New York beyond the basics). All stories react to his actions in the past. I thought about the order of telling this story as Danticat arranged it, sort of similar to how a chunk of There, There was writ as a story before it, but I cannot imagine either as segmented work that would be better arranged otherwise. The beginning I questioned at first - it reveals the twist - and the end provides one I'm not entirely sure is paying off enough - but the midsection of the book, particularly Night Talkers, The Funeral Singer, and The Book of Miracles bring out a lot of themes of violence, desire to "move on," and the irreparable damage and trauma of situations that come with both. I need to read more into hauntology but it feels relevant to here by what I understand. Specifically as it refers to the article "Specters and Spooks: Developing A Hauntology of The Black Body" of which I haven't read but have a distinct memory of hearing good things about it. The last story is extremely visceral in its part 1 and 3 is a warning, beyond mentioning violence they portray it in more specific terms here and it is jarring to have to accept even a fictional body undertaking that destruction.

Of course there are the uprisings ongoing that only by chance is relevant to some context of what this book is about. Or at least how the book portrays the removal of Presidents/the use of state violence. This book is good and Danticat was always going to be a writer I liked. I am starting Frankissstein right now but don't think I'll get through it. Genre is genre is genre even if it's a "creative retelling". What does she mean by "Yet I wish I had a cat."?? It's too new to turn to someone to understand it and I am sleepy to understand all things.