A Talk with Edwidge Danticat: “Storytelling, Death, and Putting Flesh Back on Bones”

In The Art of Death, you quote something Margaret Atwood says in her essay “Negotiating with the Dead”: “Perhaps all writing [is] motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality—by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead.” Is this true of your writing? I always go back to something similar to what Atwood is saying. It’s a Haitian proverb: “When you see some bones on the side of the road, remember they once had flesh on them.” Thinking about all the people in my life that I’ve written about who have passed on, especially the people I love, I feel that my job as a writer is putting the flesh back on their bones. 

Read the interview here.