I throughly enjoyed Edwidge Danticat’s book of short stories, Everything Inside. [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] There are no wasted words in Everything Inside; she writes with both economy and urgency, never resorting to glib aphorisms and never shying away from difficult questions. In the old days, when a baby was born, the midwife would putthe baby on the ground, and it was up to the father to pick up the child andclaim it as his own. Indeed, #ReadWithMC reviewers could tell Danticat made sure each word was thoughtfully chosen, each story painstakingly crafted, in an effort to transport readers into the world of her hometown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.Because who has time to read a whole novel anyway?With eight stories in the collection, it is hard to zone in on one that truly floored me because every single one of these stories I rated either 4 or 5. These stories are explored in a such a real way and vulnerable way.Editors handpick every product that we feature. has evolved in Everything Inside to a newly sober mode of storytelling that, for the most part, eschews the breathtaking in favor of the … This collection draws on Danticat's exceptional strengths as a storyteller to examine how migration to and from the Caribbean shapes her characters, whether they're scrounging up savings to pay ransom for a … By Edwidge Danticat Throughout the stories in “Everything Inside,” Edwidge Danticat’s birthplace, Haiti, emerges in an almost mythic fashion. It all comes to a head the day of the grandson’s baptism. All Rights Reserved.By {{ user }} • Commented on {{ date_time }}We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!An extraordinary career milestone: spare, evocative, and moving.In her first collection of short stories in more than a decade, Danticat tackles the complexities of diaspora with lyrical grace.Pre-publication book reviews and features keeping readers and industry influencers in the know since 1933.This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright.It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!Share your opinion of this book
I found Danticat’s writing to be forthright and striking. —@jennareadsbooks
In the old days, she said, I would havepronounced my father dead with my bereavement wails to our fellow villagers,both the ones crowding the house and others far beyond.” But despite the momentous nature of the occasion, her heart fails to be stirred. I can’t recommend this collection enough! Edwidge Danticat pulls no punches in Everything Inside: Stories, her latest collection of short stories following those who balance on the precarious line between Haitian and American. But this is a minor criticism of a beautiful book, which ends with the tender description of the final thoughts of a dying Haitian refugee — of “the airless sensation of his body” and of his love for his wife and child.When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.In the story called “In the Old Days,” the daughter of a dying man arrives in Haiti to meet him for the first time, having been born after he and her mother separated and divorced. is a master of economy; she has always possessed the remarkable ability to build singular fictional worlds in a matter of sentences. At one point, the mother is apparently delusional, at another seemingly reflecting on the same moment as if she had been coherent the whole time. I like every single story. Danticat knows Haiti and I know when I pick up her book, I will be longing for a place I have never visited. Layering unsentimental, clear writing with resonant imagery…Everything Inside is [a] hallmark of Danticat’s mastery of prose—of the way she coaxes beauty from pain.” —Joanie Conwell, Los Angeles Review of Books “A masterful collection, beautifully wrought and elegantly told.” —Yvonne C. Garrett, The Brooklyn Rail All of them! I envied it, coveted it.”But if, as these stories demonstrate, Haiti takes, other stories reveal how much it also gives.
What is revealed is a world with which many of us are familiar through the news, but are ignorant about the interiority of.Thestories that Danticat tells give the reader insight into the humanity of apeople who are deeply wounded, disrespected, vilified, ridiculed, exploited,and dehumanized. When it was time to take the dead out of the house, theywould be carried out feet first, through the back door, and not the front, sothey would not know to return, their babies and young children would be passedover their coffins so they could shake off their spirits and wouldn’t behaunted for the rest of their lives.
This ability to make the reader uncomfortable is,for me, another mark of a great writer.Thesecond story, “In the Old Days,” is about a young woman who is called to thedeathbed of a father she has never known by her father’s wife, Nadia. In her article, “Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Everything Inside’ gathers moving stories about the Haitian diaspora,” Colette Bancroft (Tampa Bay Times) offers an in-depth review of Danticat’s latest collection of short stories, on the shelves next week [see previous post Everything Inside…