Committee (1964–1966). In 1973, Danner was
among 18 prominent black women poets invited
to read from her works at the Phillis Wheatley Po-
etry Festival, organized by poet and novelist MAR-
GARET WALKER and held at Jackson State College
(now University).
Writing over several decades, Danner was a
meticulous poet who made a significant contri-
bution to African-American literature and to
the Black Arts Movement. Like that of GWENDO-
LY N BROOKS, MARI EVANS, NIKKI GIOVANNI, SONIA
SANCHEZ, and LANGSTON HUGHES, Danner’s work
addresses issues that connect African Americans
to their heritage and culture. Danner died in Chi-
cago on May 1, 1986.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aldridge, June M. “Margaret Esse Danner.” In Dic-
tionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 41: Afro-Ameri-
can Poets Since 1955, edited by Trudier Harris and
Thadious M. Davis, 84–89. Detroit: Gale, 1985.
Carson, Sharon. “Danner, Margaret Esse.” In The Ox-
ford Companion to African American Literature,
edited by William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Fos-
ter, and Trudier Harris, 199–200. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1997.
Bailey, Leonard Pack, ed. Broadside Authors and Art-
ists: An Illustrated Biographical Directory. Detroit:
Broadside, 1974.
Loretta G. Woodard
Danticat, Edwidge (1969– )
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 19, 1969,
to André and Rose Danticat, Edwidge Danticat
spent formative childhood years living with a be-
loved aunt and uncle in Haiti under the Duvalier
dictatorship until 1981. The danger of being a
writer under his dictatorship seeped into her writ-
ing style, creating a tension between the brutal hon-
esty of her stories and the lyricism of her prose.
When Danticat was two, her father left for New
York to begin a better life; her mother followed two
years later, in 1973, to join him. In 1981 Edwidge
and her brother came to Brooklyn, New York,
where her father worked as a cab driver and her
mother was a textile worker. She and her brother
arrived to find two new brothers. She notes, “When
I first came [to America], I felt like I was in limbo,
between languages, between countries” (Farlay, 1).
Her liminal experience and status augmented the
incandescent quality of her writing.
Quiet during junior high and high school, Dan-
ticat turned to writing to express herself and her
coming of age in English rather than in her native
Creole and school-learned French. She wrote in
journals and began writing for a local newspaper.
The native Creole flavored her English in ways that
proved helpful to her writing career. She planned
to become a nurse or a doctor, but the pull of the
written word proved too strong. She earned a
bachelor of arts degree in French literature from
Barnard College; as an undergraduate, she began
writing stories that eventually became part of Krik?
Krak! (1995), her second book, which explores the
lives of Haitians and Haitian Americans before de-
mocracy in Haiti.
She later earned a master of fine arts degree
from Brown University (1993), out of which came
her first book, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). Of
this book, she says, “I first started writing [it] when
I was still in high school after writing an article for
a New York City teen newspaper about my leaving
Haiti and coming to the United States as a child....
The story just grew and grew and as it grew I began
to weave more and more fictional elements into
it and added some themes that concerned me.”
These themes includemigration, the separation of families, and how
much that affects the parents and children who
live through that experience,... the political
realities of Haiti—as a young girl felt and in-
terpreted them—and how that affected ordi-
nary people, the way that people tried to carry
on their daily lives even under a dictatorship
or post-dictatorship. Finally, I wanted to deal
with mother-daughter relationships and the
way that mothers sometimes attempt to make
themselves the guardians of their daughter’s
sexuality.” (“conversation”)Danticat, Edwidge 129