Mothers and Daughters Between Two Cultures in Short Fiction by Edwidge Danticat

Beteckning: Akademi för Utbildning och Ekonomi Avdelning för humaniora Mothers and Daughters between Two Cultures in Short Fiction by Edwidge Danticat Kristine Abrahamsson Mars 2011 Examensarbetet/uppsats/15poäng/C-nivå Engelska Engelska C Supervisor: Dr. Elizabeth Kella Examiner: Dr. Alan Shima Table of Contents 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 Background 4 2.1 Analysis of “New York Day Women” 7 2.2 Analysis of “Caroline‟s Wedding” 11 3. Conclusion 20 2 1.1 Introduction In this essay I examine the Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat‟s1 representation of mother and daughter relationships between two cultures in two of the stories in her short story collection Krik? Krak! Her stories focus on problems with immigration, gender and history, and they concern mother-daughter relationships. Characteristic of Danticat‟s stories is the focus on women and their search for identity.2 The mothers and daughters in the two stories I have chosen to examine are immigrants from Haiti of the first or second generation and have lived in the United States for several years. Krik? Krak! focuses on women, their struggles and motherhood. In the last two stories of Krik? Krak!, “Caroline‟s Wedding” and “New York Day Women” the mother‟s and daughter‟s relationships are influenced by the situation of being caught in the middle of two cultures, a situation that is problematic both for the first and second generation. While reading these stories I found that the rifts between the mothers and daughters are profound, and that the gap between the mothers and daughters were widened by the differences between Haitian and American culture and by the complexity of the political relationship between the countries. In “New York Day Women” a Haitian-American daughter follows her Haitian mother from a distance as she makes her way through New York City. The daughter discovers that her mother has her own secret life and she describes what she experiences as she reflects over who her mother is. The mother‟s voice also appears, however, in form of a dialogue, or as I read it, as the daughter remembering her mother‟s words. By seeing how the daughter responds and reacts to her mother‟s whereabouts, the character of the daughter is also revealed. The reader comes to see how the mother and daughter are different from each other, and the gap between the Haitian community and the American community is revealed. “Caroline‟s Wedding” also has a mother-daughter relationship in focus, and in this story the narrator is the oldest daughter. The mother, Ma, has two daughters, Grace, the oldest, who was born on Haiti and raised there during her first years, and Caroline, who 1 The Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969 and raised there until she was twelve when she moved to the United States to live with her parents in Brooklyn, New York, where she still lives. Her first writings were published two years later. Danticat holds a degree in French literature from Barnard College and an MFA from Brown University. Krik? Krak! became a National Book Award Finalist in 1995. The author is still very committed to Haiti and returns to Haiti in every book. Karlee, “Edwidge Danticat”. Emory, 9 December 2004. <http://www.english.emory> 2Carlisle, “Edwidge Danticat”. Athena, 23 November 2004. <http://athena.english.vt.edu/> 3 was born in America and thus became an American at birth. Grace receives her American citizenship in the course of the story, and Caroline is preparing for her wedding with a man that her mother does not entirely approve of because he is not a Haitian boy. The mother raises her daughters according to Haitian cultural traditions and this creates problems within the family as the daughters feel they are a part of American society as well. Especially Caroline identifies with other Americans, more so than Grace and thus her relationship with her mother is more complicated. My aim is to examine the mother-daughter relationships in “New York Day Women” and “Caroline‟s Wedding” and how these relationships are related to the experience of being caught between two different cultures. The short stories exemplify Haitian and American customs, as well as mother-daughter situations. How do these different cultures influence the relationships between the mothers and daughters? What influence do the mothers and daughters have on each other? Do these questions differ amongst the two stories or does the author develop the plot as well as the characters in similar ways? To better understand the relationships between these mothers and daughters, it is necessary to learn more about the past and recent history between the countries. 1.2 Background Haitian history is filled with conflicts that arise from when it was colonised and the colonial past still affects the people on Haiti, as well as people who have left the country. Haiti was exploited to bring wealth to the colonisers. It was the richest colony in the West Indies, with an ideal climate for producing sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton; this is why it became interesting to the countries in the Western world (Barry 1997:6). The problems on Haiti have primarily been political, the rich people controlled the important parts of the Haitian economy, and Haiti became a state where its people were controlled and robbed of their possessions by elite. The people in power gave their own children the best education, and so the gap between the rich minority and the very poor majority was secured. The “mulatto elite” ruled the country without any social security plan or health care programme for the ordinary people to benefit from (Gardell 1999:6). These harsh conditions caused by the unsteady political environment lead to emigration by large parts of the populations. The number of emigrants steadily increased through the 20th century and approximately 2 million people have left Haiti. Today, most of them live in New York, Miami, and Boston (5). 4 The problematic relationship between Haiti and America comes from America‟s involvement in Haitian affairs. In 1915 Americans settled on Haiti; one reason was that the Americans thought that the German people were involved in Haitian politics. So the involvement from America‟s part came from suspicion and fright, and the suspicion increased after the outbreak of the First World War. In the 1950s the unemployment rate on Haiti increased and has continued to increase since then, while the standard of living has decreased. In the 1970s Haiti was one of the poorest countries in the world, and the low salaries attracted businesses to Haiti, for example, from the US. Haitian people finished products that later were exported back to the US (Gardell 1999:4). This involvement from America has been greatly criticised by Haitians (28). Peter Barry writes that the colonial view is still present today, in the form of discrimination of immigrants (Barry 1997:207). Alex Stepick argues that Haitians have been negatively stereotyped in America, more than other migrants in modern time, much due to the huge differences between the two cultures (Stepick 2003:116). In her story, Danticat focuses on problems with discrimination, language and double identity. In both “Caroline‟s Wedding” and “New York Day Women” the author addresses the difficulties that the mothers character experiences as first generation immigrants, as well as the dilemmas the daughter characters experiences as the generation of immigrants raised in “the new country” but brought up according to old traditions. The mothers and daughters are stuck between the two cultures. The differences between the cultures could make them a target of discrimination, which can make it hard when assimilating into American society. Several critics have addressed the situation of being in between two countries. Rocio G. Davis specifically deals with the stories in Krik? Krak!, and his essay contains a discussion of the mother-daughter relationships. Another critic, Carole Boyce Davies, writes about Caribbean women and immigration, while Marie-José N‟Zengou-Tayo often recalls her own experiences and John McLeod discusses migration in the light of being in- between two communities. McLeod stresses that migration alters how migrants think about their home and host countries. The host country, viewed from the miserable conditions in the native country, seems dreamlike and becomes an illusion for the migrants, because when they get there it cannot live up to their expectations. When viewed from the native country, it seemed a place of opportunity and promise. In a similar way, the old country becomes illusory when 5 viewed from the poverty of the new host country. The old country could be a refuge from the miserable conditions in the host country, and a voyage home could show this place to be imaginary. Just as the host country became an illusion, the homeland becomes an illusion. Their native country tends to become the imaginary place they have built up in their mind (McLeod 2000:209). McLeod also discusses the concept of “home” and stresses that this concept often has an important function in our lives. It gives us a sense of our place in the world and tells us where we belong and is associated with shelter and security, although the truth could be somewhat different. What McLeod is interested in, is “what happens to the idea of home for migrants” who left their homeland and live far away (210). He refers to Salman Rushdie who argues that at some point in our lives, we all leave home and feel a sense of loss for doing so, but this feeling is intensified if you also leave your country and even may lose the use of your language.

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