Antilles: the weblog of the CRB

Kakutani times two

The fearless and energetic Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times manages to review not one but two new Caribbean books in today's edition. First, Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:

... a wondrous, not-so-brief first novel that is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets Star Trek meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West. It is funny, street-smart and keenly observed, and it unfolds from a comic portrait of a second-generation Dominican geek into a harrowing meditation on public and private history and the burdens of familial history.

Next, Edwidge Danticat's memoir of her father and uncle, Brother, I'm Dying:

Danticat not only creates an indelible portrait of her two fathers, her dad and her uncle, but in telling their stories, she gives the reader an intimate sense of the personal consequences of the Haitian diaspora: its impact on parents and children, brothers and sisters, those who stay and those who leave to begin a new life abroad. She has written a fierce, haunting book about exile and loss and family love, and how that love can survive distance and separation, loss and abandonment and somehow endure, undented and robust.