Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat

Joyce White is assistant professor of Gullah Geechee Literature and Cultures at Georgia Southern University.

As an extended exploration of the cosmogram in four of Edwidge Danticat’s best-known novels, Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat: Crossroads as Ritual makes a powerful case that Black life in diaspora is a recursive, cyclical, cosmologically unique experience singular to African peoples. Through a critical study of the narrative and spiritual functions of crossroads, pathways, bridges, passages, and intersections, Joyce White brilliantly illuminates how Danticat creates in her fictional worlds both figurative and literal homelands for Africana women, whose radical spiritual healing communities enable diasporic peoples to survive and thrive. White’s insistence on the importance of Africana spiritual traditions to Black women’s existence in diaspora is always illuminating and inspiring, shedding light on too-often neglected discourses of healing and community that have always animated Black life in diaspora. White’s book is a must-read for scholars interested in Danticat’s extensive treatment of magic, cosmology, and spirituality in lives of Africana diasporic women.

• ContentsIntroduction: Home is Where the Healing Is: Ritual Pathways to HomeChapter 1: They Did Not Come Alone: Towards a Theoretical FrameworkChapter 2: At the Crossroads: Rituals of Death in Danticat’s The Dew BreakerChapter 3: Lót Bót Dlo (The Other Side of The Water): Examining the Cosmogram in Danticat’s The Farming of BonesChapter 4: A Seat at The Table: Constructing Identity in Danticat’s Claire of the Sea LightChapter 5: “May These Words Bring Wings to Your Feet”: Re-membering Ancestral Healing in Breath, Eyes, MemoryConclusion: Existing Beyond the Gaze: Finding Home in the Works of Edwidge Danticat