Introduction

Krik? Krak! (1995) is a historical and postcolonial short story collection by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, consisting of nine short stories plus an epilogue.[1][2] The collection is written mostly from the perspective of different female narrators living in Haiti and in New York City. The book follows these characters as they deal with the loss, separation and trauma resulting from Haiti's colonial history, the mass killings of Haitians during the Parsley Massacre in 1937 and the oppression of the Duvalier regime. The epilogue ties the stories together through the narrator's reflections that every Haitian woman's story is connected and is carried on by new generations. The book was finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 1995.[3]

Title of the book

The title of the book is a Haitian Creole term referring to the Haitian tradition of call and response storytelling inherited from their African ancestors.[4] In the first short story, one persons explains the tradition as "Someone says, Krik? You answer, Krak! And they say, I have many stories I could tell you, and then they go on and tell these stories to you, but mostly to themselves".[5]

Plot

Krik? Krak! contains nine stories as well as an epilogue taking place in Port-au-prince and the fictional Ville Rose in Haiti, and in New York City.

“Children of the Sea”

Two nameless narrators, a boy who is fleeing Haiti on a small, leaky boat, and a girl who stays, are in love and write each other letters in their journals that the other will never read. The female narrator discusses arguments with her family, particularly with her father who opposes their love. She later finds out he gave up all his possessions to protect her from the macoutes. The male narrator narrates his experiences on the boat where he gets to know a pregnant teenager, Célianne, who was raped by a macoute. Célianne gives birth on the boat, the baby dies, and days later she throws it and herself overboard. As the boat leaks more and more and the passengers have to throw their possessions overboard and the narrator knows he has to give up his journal soon. The female narrator explains that black butterflies represent death. When she sees a black butterfly, she realizes that the male narrator has died.

“Nineteen Thirty-Seven”

“Nineteen Thirty-Seven” is narrated by Josephine, born on the night of the Parsley Massacre. Hours before Josephine's birth, her mother swam across a blood-filled river to Haiti from the Dominican Republic, where Haitians were slaughtered, including Josephine's grandmother. Every year, Josephine and her mother performed rituals at the Massacre River. Over time Josephine feels repressed when she tries to speak to her mother. Their lack of communication means that Josephine does not understand the meaning of the rituals. Her mother is now imprisoned as a witch and Josephine goes to visit her. The mother is frail and never says anything, but Josephine brings a Virgin Mary statue that her mother makes cry using wax and oil. When Josephine's mother dies, Jacqueline, another ritual performer, takes Josephine to see her body burned, and Josephine reflects on her mother's history and pledges to continue the rituals honoring her mother's sacrifices.

“A Wall of Fire Rising”

Guy, Lili, and their son, Little Guy, live in poverty in a one-room shack. Guy works as a cleaner of bathrooms at a nearby plantation. When Little Guy gets to play a revolutionary at school, and his parents are impressed with his lines about bravery and patriotism. Little Guy spends all his time learning lines while Guy dreams of stealing the plantation's hot air balloon. Lili does not approve, but one day she sees Guy flying in it. Guy captures the neighborhood's attention and jumps out and dies. Little Guy recites the lines from his play over his father's dead body.

“Night Women”

“Night Women” concerns a prostitute who practices her profession next to her young, sleeping son's bed. She tells him she gets made up before bedtime because she is waiting for an angel to come. She worries he will someday find out the truth, especially as she sees him becoming older and more sexually aware. If he ever wakes to find her with one of her regular married men, she will tell him it is his father, visiting for one night. When he asks about the angels, she tells him they have not come yet.

“Between the Pool and the Gardenias”

Marie finds a dead baby in the street. She names it Rose and tells it about her miscarriages, her cheating husband, and the Dominican pool-cleaner who slept with her once. Marie pretends the household where she works belongs to her and imagines her female ancestors visiting her. When the baby rots, she covers it with perfume, but she finally decides the flies are trapping Rose's spirit and buries Rose by the gardenias. The Dominican calls the police, claiming Marie killed the baby for evil purposes.

“The Missing Peace”

Emilie Gallant, Lamort's grandmother's boarder, asks Lamort to take her secretly to a mass grave where Emilie's mother, a supporter of the old government, may have been dumped. A soldier tries to stop Emilie, who defies him. Lamort says “peace,” a password given to her by a flirtatious soldier, but he appears and says the password has changed. Emilie tells Lamort she does not have to please her grandmother. Lamort's name means “death” because her mother died when she was born, but when she goes home she demands to be called Marie Magdalènene, her mother's name.

“Seeing Things Simply”

Princesse passes a flirtatious drunk watching cockfights on her way to visit Catherine, a foreign painter. Princesse poses nude while Catherine paints and talks about art. Princesse feels uncomfortable at first, but as long as no one else can see her, she relaxes. Sometimes Catherine paints her outdoors, wearing clothes. When Catherine's mentor dies, Catherine goes to Paris without telling Princesse. When she returns, she gives Princesses a nude painting of her by the ocean. Princesse is inspired to create art herself and sketches the cockfight-watching drunk in the sand.

“New York Day Women”

“New York Day Women” takes place in New York rather than Haiti. Suzette spots her mother, who never leaves Brooklyn, in Midtown. As Suzette follows her mother, undetected, she thinks about the critical things her mother says about family or Haiti or Suzette. In a playground, a woman wearing workout clothes leaves her young son with Suzette's mother for an hour. Suzette's mother and the son seem quite fond of each other. Suzette wonders whether her mother would have said hello, had she seen her.

“Caroline's Wedding”

Grace's mother (Ma) is upset that Grace's sister, Caroline, is marrying Eric, who is not Haitian. Ma makes bone soup every day, which she believes will end Caroline's engagement. Grace begins dreaming about her father, as she did when he died of cancer. In order to get a visa, Grace's father married a widow, then divorced her to bring his real family to the United States. Ma worries that Caroline thinks no one but Eric will love her. Before the ceremony, Caroline becomes very nervous, but Ma reassures her. There is a heavy sadness over the family because they know Caroline will never again be as close to them as she has been all her life. Ma asks Grace to burn her belongings when she dies so no one will feel sorry for her. Grace refuses. She visits her father's grave to tell him about the wedding and her new U.S. citizenship, and when she returns home, she helps her mother make bone soup.

Epilogue: "Women like Us"

The epilogue suggests that these women have a relationship with one another as its unnamed narrator recognizes the similarity between herself and her mother as well as her female ancestors. These women all cook when they feel the need to express their sorrows and pain, but the narrator chooses to write despite her mother's disapproval. Her mother feels that she could be killed because that is often the case with Haitian writers. The narrator thus keeps her female ancestor's history alive through her stories.

Major themes

Storytelling

As the titles of the book suggests, Krik? Krak! focuses on how communication enables memory to be passed down generations, whether its within Haiti or outside. By telling these stories, Danticat is "resurrect[ing] her cultural inheritance of Haitian oral histories from the graves of her foremothers".[6] These stories are interconnected as, although narrators of different stories do not necessarily interact directly, they know each other's names, as characters' names are mentioned in stories after their own. Every woman carries previous stories within them, and that is how they are carried into the future. This is demonstrated in “Caroline's Wedding” where the sisters living in New York have inherited their mother's storytelling game of questions and answers. This game, as is mentioned in “Nineteen Thirty-Seven”, comes from previous women born of the Massacre River which ‘carries within it memories of the lost country and links to those who have died’.[7] Stories are essential for the sisters' connection with Haitian culture because they are ‘Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance’.[8]

Diaspora and migration

The story tells of characters that have been misplaced within the country or who have been forced to migrate outside its borders due to different conflicts and what effect this has had on families and communities. In the first story, refugees are fleeing on a boat with few belongings, being separated from their lovers, as is the case for their narrators, justice, as is the case for Celine, and families. The last two stories taking place in New York are about the disparities between sisters and mothers as they have different ways of life and feel connected to Haitian culture to different degrees due to living in a different culture to their own.

Reception

"Spare, elegant and moving, these stories cohere into a superb collection." National Book Foundation [3]

"Virtually flawless... If the news from Haiti is too painful to read, read this book instead and understand the place more deeply than you ever thought possible." Washington Post [5]

"Danticat's fiction is an antidote to headline abstractions, giving readers the gift of narrative through which to experience a people and a country as more than mere news." Kirkus Reviews [9]

References

^ "Krik? Krak!". Booklist. 1995-02-15. Retrieved 2024-02-27.
^ "Krik? Krak!". Kirkus Reviews. 1995-02-01. Retrieved 2024-09-27.
^ a b "Krik? Krak!". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
^ admin (2020-05-29). "Krik-krak! - The Haitian Tradition of Storytelling · Visit Haiti". Visit Haiti. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
^ a b Omang, Joanne (13 May 1995). "Krik? Krak!". Washington Post. Retrieved 11 December 2024.
^ M. Ortiz, Lisa (2001). "Re-membering the Past: Weaving Tales of Loss and Cultural Inheritance in Edwidge Danticat's "Krik? Krak!"". Journal of Haitian Studies. 7 (2): 64–77. JSTOR 41715101 – via JSTOR.
^ G. Davis, Rocio. "Oral narrative as short story cycle: forging community in Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!". MELUS. 26 (2): 65. doi:10.2307/3185518. JSTOR 3185518 – via Gale Literature Resource Center.
^ Danticat, Edwidge (1991). Krik? Krak!. New York: Vintage Books. p. 180. ISBN 978-0679766575.
^ KRIK? KRAK! | Kirkus Reviews.