Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (The Toni Morrison Lecture Series)

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Review "The most powerful book I've read in years. . . . A call to arms for all immigrants, all artists, all those who choose to bear witness, and all those who choose to listen."--Dave Eggers "A singular achievement. . . . A tender new book about loss and the unquenchable passion for homeland."--The New York Times Book Review "Danticat writes with a compassionate insight but without a trace of sentimentality. Her prose is energetic, her vision is clear, the tragedies seemingly speaking for themselves."--The Miami Herald "Danticat is a marvelous writer, blending personal anecdotes, history and larger reflections without turning the immigrant writer into a victim, misunderstood by all."--The San Francisco Chronicle "Powerful. . . . [Danticat] acknowledges that the prospect of writing about tragedies and vanished cultures is a daunting one, yet she is not daunted: she accepts that by some accident she exists and has the power to create, and so she does."--NewYorker.com's "The Book Bench" From the Inside Flap "This is the most powerful book I've read in years. Though delicate in its prose and civil in its tone, it hits like a freight train. It's a call to arms for all immigrants, all artists, all those who choose to bear witness, and all those who choose to listen. And though it describes great upheaval, tragedy, and injustice, it's full of humor, warmth, grace, and light."--Dave Eggers, author of "Zeitoun" and "What Is the What""Edwidge Danticat is a great literary artist. She is also a grand cultural critic whose wisdom and compassion loom large in this magnificent book."--Cornel West, Princeton University"Edwidge Danticat's prose has a Chekhovian simplicity--an ability to state the most urgent truths in a measured and patiently plain style that gathers a luminous energy as it moves inexorably forward. In this book she makes a strong case that art, for immigrants from countries where human rights and even survival are often in jeopardy, must be a vocation to witness if it is not to be an idle luxury."--Madison Smartt Bell, author of "Toussaint Louverture: A Biography""Create Dangerously" is an intelligent and passionate book on the role of the immigrant artist. As in her fiction, the lucidity and humility of Edwidge Danticat's prose has a quiet force. This book is as much a testimonial to the spirit of resistance and defiance as it is an elegy for those who have died and disappeared; it is as much a provocation to the artist as it is a book of mourning."--Saidiya V. Hartman, author of "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route" About the Author Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times notable book; Brother, I'm Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Miami.