11/11/2013-Connecting

Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, described her personal experience with being an immigrant in the United States. This not only made the reading more enjoyable but added to the ability to find significance in certain scenarios. When reading about what would have been a pleasurable time in someone’s life be compared to a level of death, made me question the actual relationship that existed among the parent and child. There seemed to be some sort of emotional disconnect, which was later to be discussed to have come from being raised not by her father, Mira, but by his brother, Joseph, until him and her mother brought her to live with them when she was twelve. She looked at them as if they were her parents and felt the parental connection with the ones who had raised her.  This reminded me of Children of Global Migration, but also of the many narratives I've read that involve the parents leaving their children behind to make a life for them and having a trusted relative raise them until the parents are ready for them.

            These types of parent-child relationships add strain to the relationships and often create hostility amongst siblings if some are with the parents while the others are being raise by other relatives. Edwidge felt this way towards her parents, I felt that there seemed to be more of a protective connection for her father from her brother who had known no other parents than their biological mother and father. This is not to take away from Edwidge and her father’s connection, because when she found out she was pregnant it seemed that his possible death plagued her ability to enjoy the moment, as she began to think of purely negative thoughts of her father passing, her passing, and even of her child passing. She even mentioned that she had felt the initial cramps she felt were due to her father’s illness that in itself felt showed that she had some type of connection with her father. My question for this is whether it would have been the same type of connection if it had been Joseph, or if it may have been viewed differently sense he was who she saw initially as a father?