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Race in The Dew Breaker

Introduction

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danicat was published in 2004, and is a wonderfully fluid account of Haitian lives in 9 separate chapters. The reader has the choice to view the book as 9 standalone short stories or as a complete novel. The term “Dew Breaker” originates from members of the group TonTon Mecoutes, who were known for their cruel torture and murders of Haitian civilians in the thousands, under the regime of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier. The 9 portions to the book are the following:

1.The Book of the Dead,

2. Seven,

3. Water Child,

4.The Book of Miracles,

5. Night Talkers,

6.The Bridal Seamstress,

7. Monkey Tails,

8.The Funeral Singer,

9. and The Dew Breaker.

Each of the 9 stories are portrayals of specific events in the lives of Haitian civilians, although there is at least one or two factors that are used as a literary device used to connect one story to the next. It is a creative way to keep the reader interested, and the Dew Breaker has received a lot of acclaim in a short period of time, being used as part of the syllabus in several educational institutes now. The concept behind 9 separate stories is to show the interconnected lives of the people, which in turn, transform this book into one of love, remorse, hope and rebellion. It also has a profound effect on how the literary world views the political and social changes that have come about since then. In my paper, I will be talking about the stories “Water Child” and “Seven”, and how the stories use the theme of racism in America.

Discussion

In the series of stories, it may seem as though “Seven” is the most unrelated and random, but the author makes a great use of the theme of race in this particular short story. The issue of immigration is also touched upon in this story, as well as the implications of being separated from loved ones and how attitudes may change. It is quite a short story of an old Haitian couple who are going to be reunited with each other after being estranged for seven years. The couple reunites but they cannot ignore the fact of how effective seven years could be in changing ones attitudes and feelings towards another. While they rejoin again in New York, they realize that their lives are utterly unlike from how they were before, especially since there are hardly any similarities between New York and Port-au-Prince in Haiti. This story is unique because it makes use of both the husband and the wife's perspective on how they are treated and how they handle the return of their spouse after so long. The story starts as the husband reads about his wife's return to the other tenants in the apartment; some of the back story is revealed here as the reader finds out how the husband had to wait seven years for the acquirement of a green card, after having overstayed ...