Krik? Krak!

Krik? Krak! Is a beautiful collection of nine short stories and epilogue written by Edwidge Danticat. The title of the book comes from the Haitian storytellers. The stories take place in different locations like Port-au-Prince, Ville Rose, Haiti, or New York.  I think the stories are tied together pretty good. These stories give you emotional feelings for the Haitian people. I think this book is good book to get to know about the Haitian and feel their pain. I think this book holds the love, pain, culture, and the worse time of the Haitians life. I think that the first opening story of the book called “Children of the Sea” is extremely powerful piece to make you read the rest of the book. And makes you have feeling about the Haitians and get to know about their painful truth of life. The second story of the book called “nineteen Thirty-Seven” is one of my favorite stories, because it really touches my heart. It’s a story of a daughter and her mother separated by the prison. When I was reading this story, I could really feel the pain of them. All the images were coming into my mind and I felt so heartbroken.  “1937” is narrated by Josephine, whose mother is imprisoned as a witch. Hours before Josephine’s birth, her mother swam across a blood-filled river to Haiti from the Dominican Republic. Every year, she and her mother performed rituals at the Massacre River. When her mother got arrested, Josephine saw her getting tortured so badly by the group of people and she couldn’t do anything to save her. Probably because of that whenever Josephine went to see her mother, it was a really hard time for her while talking to her mother. She could hardly speak to her. Whenever she met her mother, she brought her Madonna (a statue). Her mother would make Madonna cry using wax and oil. When her mother dies, another ritual performer named Jacqueline takes Josephine to see her mother’s body gets burned in the yard. So, this was the terrible story of a mother and her daughter. I think it’s a type of story that after reading it, it would make bonds between the readers (daughter and mother) even stronger and faithful to each other. I think who ever will read this story, you probably don’t see the tears in their eyes, but their hearts probably cry.