Edwidge Danticat, the author of Krik? Krak!, is a Haitian-American writer. Unlike Naomi Shihab Nye who was born in the United States, Danticat was born in Haiti and came here at the age of 12. Like Nye, however, Danticat writes to pass on stories, to reaffirm history, identity, cultural memory. The title of her book comes from a tradition of storytelling passed down from elders in the Haitian community: "We tell the stories so that the young ones will know what came before them. They ask Krik? we say Krak!" This tradition preserves the stories in a collective, communal, memory: "Our stories are kept in our hearts."
This theme of story, speech, writing, and communication are found throughout the book. In the first story, for example, there are two narrators, writing in separate journals (although ostensibly writing to each other as well.) The male narrator is wanted by the government as a traitor because he spoke his mind on the radio. That results in his current situation where all communication is hidden from public view. In fictionalizing these two diary writers, though, Danticat reinstates their intended correspondence as public language -- writing to resist silences placed on them by outside forces. (The author talks more about the importance of voicing these silenced voices in the epilogue, which we are reading for next week.) Language is seen in this first story as dangerous, but also powerful. Think about the relation of language to other forces of power in the story like government, violence, love, family, etc. What part does language play? What can it accomplish?
In the first story, also pay attention to the two speakers, their different writing styles, and the stories they tell (for themselves and for others). Also, consider why Danticat begins her collection with this specific story, putting her own voice somewhat in the background by foregrounding the two 1st-person narrators. Why give us a glimpse of their private and personal communication? At the same time, the individual narrators are also somewhat depersonalized as they are unnamed, anonymous. Why is this? What is the effect of that tactic? Is there a connection to the comment on page 3 that there are "lots of people in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves"? How does that statement relate to Danticat's purpose in writing?
