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Collection of linked short stories by Edwidge Danticat

The Dew Breaker is a collection of linked stories by Edwidge Danticat, published in 2004. The title comes from the Haitian Creole name for a torturer during the regimes of François "Papa Doc" and Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The book can be read either as a novel or collection of short stories. It is divided into nine portions: The Book of the Dead, Seven, Water Child, The Book of Miracles, Night Talkers, The Bridal Seamstress, Monkey Tails, The Funeral Singer, and The Dew Breaker.

A Haitian sculptor (Ka) and her father travel from Brooklyn to Florida, to the home of a formerly jailed and tortured Haitian dissident and his daughter, Gabrielle Fonteneau, a television actress. They are delivering the sculptor's first sale, a statue called “Father”. The sculptor wakes up in a motel room on the morning of the delivery, and discovers her father, also a Haitian refugee, has disappeared with her sculpture.

A short and seemingly completely unrelated story to the first, Seven is about a man whose wife arrives from Port au Prince to NYC. They've been separated for seven years, a number the man despises. He lives in the shared basement of a two storied house along with two housemates, Michel and Dany. In preparation of his wife coming, he cleans his room as Michel advises, throws some items he knows his wife would hate away, then notifies the landlady of his wife's arrival. The landlady tells the man that if his wife was clean there would be no problem. The man returns to the basement to have a more thorough conversation with Michel and Dany about his wife. The man tells Dany not to mention to his wife any of their nights out or the women the narrator has brought back home. The man changes his phone number and hangs pictures that his wife had sent to him up on his bedroom wall. The wife arrives and while going through customs, has her luggage and gifts searched and much is thrown away. All that is left with her is a small, light suitcase. She is finally reunited with her husband. Her husband works two jobs, a night janitor at Medgar Evers College, and a day janitor at Kings' County Hospital. He leaves his wife to go to the first job. At noon he calls to see what she is doing, and she lies and tells him she's cooking. The wife turns the radio to a Haitian station which talks about the recent death of Patrick Dorismond, a fellow Haitian who was killed by the NYPD. She spends the whole week inside, too afraid to venture out. In her spare time, she writes letters back to Haiti. One to her family and another to a man whom she had an affair with after her husband left for NYC. The weekend comes and the couple walk around Prospect Park until evening. The husband reminisces on the bride and groom carnival theater that they partook in while in Haiti. The two married after a day of knowing each other. At the end of the carnival celebrations, they each burned their clothes and marched on in silence. They yearn for this temporary silence now, instead of the permanent one that has come over them.

In this chapter of The Dew Breaker, Danticat touches heavily on themes of voice. Nadine is a Haitian women working as a nurse in the ICU of a hospital in Canasarie. Nadine keeps to herself and tends not to socialize much with the other nurses at the hospital, despite their constant efforts in reaching out. Josette, another Haitian nurse is the only one she somewhat associates with, and not necessarily by choice. The story's underlying tone of sadness reflects in the fact that Nadine is hiding from everyone that she went through with an abortion after being impregnated by a man named Eric. Eric is mentioned in Seven as one of the male roommates. This abortion plays a large role throughout the story, tying back to one's voice because Nadine has never shared with even her own family that she was pregnant. Her parents who still reside in Haiti write to her once a month and constantly try reaching out to talk to their daughter as well as thank her for the money she sends to help with her father's medical expenses. Not only is she caring for her family in Haiti, she is constantly caring for the patients in the hospital. Many of which have undergone laryngectomies and are no longer able to speak. This may be why she felt she was unable to bring a child into the world. Supporting a child financially would be difficult with her sending half of each of her paychecks to her parents and with her keeping to herself, she does not have much of a support system. Nadine takes special interest in a patient named Ms. Hinds, a young women who had suffered from cancer and was left unable to speak. One day, the two have an interesting interaction after Ms. Hinds is held down by multiple nurses due to her thrashing about in an upset manor. Nadine exclaims, “Let me be alone with her,”. After the other nurses file out of the room, she asks Ms. Hinds to explain what is wrong in which she replies with a pen and paper that she is a teacher, asking why they would send her home in the condition she is in. She goes on to tell Nadine that she is like a Basenji a dog that does not bark. This goes back to the theme of voice. Are we really human and living if we are not able to use our voice? Nadine has outlets to express her voice, however, something holds her back from reaching out to those who care about her.

Narrated by Ka's mother Anne, The Book of Miracles chronicles the family's car trip through NYC to get to Christmas Eve mass. When they arrive at the church, they have a run in with a lookalike of Haitian criminal Emmanuel Constant. Constant is known for his involvement, and leadership, in a paramilitary group called the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH). Anne is a very faithful woman and struggles with her daughter Ka's flippant demeanor and fears what could happen if her daughter were to formally acknowledge that this man was Constant. The potential presence of Constant coupled with the religious setting brings to light Anne's own guilt and fear of living a lie, both with her relationship with her daughter and as a member of the Haitian community in NYC. What Anne struggles to keep secret is that Ka's father was a “dew breaker,” known otherwise as the Tonton Macoutes. These men made up a paramilitary group during the 1950s that formed in order to maintain the political administration of François “Papa Doc” Duvailer, and his son, Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvailer. “He hadn’t been a famous “dew breaker,” or torturer, anyway, just one of hundreds who had done their jobs so well that their victims were never able to speak of them again,” referring to Anne’s husband in The Dew Breaker. Now knowing this, we can see why Anne struggles so much in this scene because she thinks about how her daughter looks at Constant and how she might look at her father knowing he was once a man who participated in similar violent acts. All while also struggling with how Ka would view her for maintaining this secret of her fathers past. It is not only this secret that she is keeping from her daughter, but also the Haitian community within NYC. Due to events like the election of François “Papa Doc” Duvailer and the terror he brought to the Haitian community and economy, many Haitian immigrants came to the US as early as the 1960s to settle into predominant Haitian communities in cities like New York City and Miami. New York City is where Anne and her family reside, and Danticat specifically addresses Nostrand Avenue as the location where Anne and her husband work. Nostrand Avenue is a well known site in the Haitian community of New York City, it is known for being the site where Haitian immigrants gathered to lead successful economic lives and work in medium size businesses. meaning to double or twin, and the theme of forgetting and invalidation of traumatic experiences.

The reoccurring, cyclical events, the parallels between characters, and the symbolic imagery in each of the short stories is emblematic of Danticat's tale of Marasa. Danticat uses the binary of physical and emotional trauma in power imbalances to expose key thematic issues in the Haitian struggles resulting from the Duvalier totalitarian dictatorship. From Bienaimé's (Papa's) behavioral change transitioning from Haiti to the United States in the chapter “The Dew Breaker,” to the generational split between Beatrice Saint Fort and Aline Cajuste in “The Bridal Seamstress,” the rule of two thrives in each chapter and across sections. Duality is especially seen in the character of Ka who exists both as the child of a Tonton Macoute torturer and as the niece of a man who was killed by that same Tonton Macoute member. By placing the reader in a story of Marasa, Danticat calls attention to the act of the writer as a “witness” to political, structural, and personal struggles, exposing other thematic issues as a consequence.

The inability to validate traumatic experiences of victims through memory is also a crucial theme in The Dew Breaker. was with them inside their church on Christmas Eve. Yet even with all of these negatives coming from the past, the characters, the people of this story never seem to let it truly affect their futures they built for themselves and their families. The Dew Breaker is one of Danticat's older works, but the lesson in both moving forward and remembering the past hold true throughout its pages. “She delivers her most beautiful and arresting prose when describing the most brutal atrocities and their emotional aftermath,” says the Washington Post. Danticat has and is able to take the pain of the people and turn it into a force of knowledge to tell people that often behind a tale of hope is often a tale of trial and escape from a pain that haunts its people to this day.