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by Maxine Lavon Montgomery (Editor)
This volume sheds a much-needed light on Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) and her ability to depict timely issues in sparkling prose that delves deep into the borderlands, an uncharted in-between space located outside fixed geographic, cultural, and ideological bounds. Prevalent throughout many interviews here is Danticat's expressed determination not only to reveal Haitian immigrant experience, but also to make that nuanced culture and its vibrant traditions accessible to a wide audience.
These interviews coincide with Edwidge Danticat's evolving artistic vision, her steady book publication, and her expanding roles as fiction writer, essayist, memoirist, documentarian, young adult book author, editor, songwriter, cultural critic, and political commentator. Dating from her appearance on the literary scene at the age of twenty-five, the many interviews that she has granted attest to not only her productivity, but also her accessibility to scholars, teachers, writers, and journalists eager for knowledge about her vision. Included in this volume are interviews that range from 2000, covering the publication of her debut work of fiction, Breath, Eyes, Memory, to a personal interview conducted with the volume editor in 2016. In that conversation, which appears for the first time as part of this collection, Danticat provides insight into little-known aspects of her life, art, and politics.
Her candid interviews carry out a careful stripping away of preconceived notions of Danticat, disclosing the private and public life of a first-class writer and intellectual whose countless achievements have assured her an enduring place within contemporary world letters.
Author Biography
Maxine Lavon Montgomery is professor of English at Florida State University, where she teaches courses in Africana, American multi-ethnic, and women's literature. She is coeditor of New Critical Essays on Toni Morrison's God Help the Child and author of A Circle of One: Rituals of Black Girlhood in Africana Women's Novels. She is also editor of Contested Boundaries: New Critical Essays on the Fiction of Toni Morrison, Conversations with Edwidge Danticat, and Conversations with Gloria Naylor, the latter two published by University Press of Mississipp
