Author Edwidge Danticat examines what it means to live after trauma in 'Dèy'
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In December of 2017, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat was a mall in south Florida when a loud gunshot broke through the holiday shopping chatter. Believing that a mass shooting was underway, Danticat ran with her fellow shoppers in utter terror. Eventually, she learned the shooting was a hoax. But the trauma that experience provoked was very real.
She works some of that trauma out in her new novel, "Dèy." Taken from the Creole word for “mourning,” the story follows a young mother, Magnolia, who survives an actual mass shooting. But the story is more about what happens next. How do you carry on when your life is marked by a before and an after? How can trauma be contained when life, inextricably, goes on?
“Surviving isn’t the end of the story,” Danticat writes. “It’s where a different one begins.”
Danticat returns to Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk with Kerri Miller about why she wanted to weave joy into a book about grief and how trauma is processed best with those you love.
Guest:
Edwidge Danticat is the author of many books, including “Breath, Eyes, Memory” and “Claire of the Sea Light.” Her new novel is “Dèy.”
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