Congratulations to Haitian american author Edwidge Danticat’s. According to online sources, writer and filmmaker Easmanie Michel is working to bring Danticat’s short story “Caroline’s Wedding” the silver screen.
Another black woman win is (hopefully) about to be added to the big screen. In addition to Amma Asante’s Belle already gracing theaters right now and Lupita Nyong’o teaming up with Chimamanda Adichie for an Americanah adaptation, Edwidge Danticat is preparing for her work to make its screen debut.
Writer and filmmaker Easmanie Michel is working to bring Danticat’s short story “Caroline’s Wedding” to theaters. The story is part of Danticat’s 1995 book Krik? Krak!. The plot involves tensions between two Haitian-American sisters in Brooklyn in the home they share with their tradition driven Haitian mother.
Part of what makes Danticat’s stories so powerful is her attention to detail and how she chronicles the richness and complexity of Haitian culture often from a woman’s perspective. Danticat and other black woman storytellers like her bring a certain depth to our (black women’s) stories that is frequently missing in other narratives. Continue Reading Here
Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. When she was two years old, her father André immigrated to New York, to be followed two years later by her mother Rose. This left Danticat and her younger brother Eliab to be raised by her aunt and uncle. Although her formal education in Haiti was in French, she spoke Kreyòl at home. While still in Haiti, Danticat wrote her first short story about a girl who was visited by a clan of women each night. At the age of 12, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, to join her parents in a heavily Haitian American neighborhood.
As she was an immigrant teenager, Edwidge’s accent and upbringing were a source of discomfort for her, thus she turned to literature for solace. Two years later she published her first writing, in English, “A Haitian-American Christmas: Cremace and Creole Theatre,” in New Youth Connections, a citywide magazine written by teenagers. Continue Reading Here
