Library Exhibit for Summer Read 2015: Brother, I’m Dying

As part of Whitman College’s 2015 Summer Read program, first-year students read Edwidge Danticat’s 2007 family memoir Brother, I’m Dying. Danticat writes about her childhood experiences in Haiti living with her uncle and aunt, and her move to join her parents in the United States at age twelve. As an adult, she maintains her close relationship with both parts of her family as political developments in Haiti threaten her uncle, and her father becomes increasingly ill with lung disease. Every fall, Penrose Library features an exhibit about the Summer Read book in our main floor display case. This year’s exhibit, curated by Circulation Supervisor Sarah Owen, brings together artifacts that speak to the themes of Danticat’s work, emphasizing both the geographic distances between Edwidge, her father Mira, and her uncle Joseph, and the close ties between them, as well as the larger socio-political and medical contexts of their lives. The rotary-dial telephones in the display case were borrowed from members of the Whitman community; books on display are part of the Penrose Library collection.

We invite all Whitman community members to stop by the Library and see the exhibit, to check out a copy of Brother, I’m Dying, and to attend Edwidge Danticat’s lecture on September 10 at 7 p.m. in Cordiner Hall.