The dew breaker is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hard-working barber, a kindly landlord to the men living in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighbourhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. But beneath the surface of this American life lies a dangerous truth: the brutal crimes committed in the country of his birth. As his story unfolds, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter, his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbours, tenants, and clients. And in the Haiti of the dew breaker's past, we witness his last, desperate act of violence, and his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption-albeit imperfect-that will change him forever . . . By the author of The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker is a wonderful novel of interconnected lives-a book of love, remorse, and hope; of rebellions both personal and political; of the compromises often necessary after the most intimate brushes with history.

Can we move beyond borders that divide us without losing our identity? Over the past decade, the yearning for rootedness, for being part of a story bigger than oneself, has flared up as a cultural force to be reckoned with. There's much to affirm in this desire to belong to a people. That means pride in all that is admirable in the nation to which we belong - and repentance for its historic sins. A focus on national identity, of course, can lead to darker places. The new nationalists, who in Western countries often appeal to the memory of a Christian past, applaud when governments fortify borders to keep out people who are fleeing for their lives. (Needless to say, such actions are contrary to the Christian faith.) Is our yearning for roots doomed to lead to a heartless politics of exclusion? Does maintaining group or national identity require borders guarded with lethal violence? The answer isn't artificial schemes for universal brotherhood, such as a universal language. Our differences are what make a community human. Might the true ground for community lie deeper even than shared nationality or language? After all, the biblical vision of humankind's ultimate future has "every tribe and language and people and nation" coming together - beyond all borders but still as themselves. In this issue: - Santiago Ramos describes a double homelessness immigrant children experience as outsiders in both countries. - Ashley Lucas profiles a Black Panther imprisoned for life and looks at the impact on his family. - Simeon Wiehler helps a museum repatriate a thousand human skulls collected by a colonialist. - Yaniv Sagee calls Zionism back to its founding vision of a shared society with Palestinians. - Stephanie Saldana finds the lost legendary chocolates of Damascus being crafted in Texas. - Edwidge Danticat says storytelling builds a home that no physical separation can take away. - Phographer River Claure reimagines Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince as an Aymara fairy tale. - Ann Thomas tells of liminal experiences while helping families choose a cemetery plot. - Russell Moore challenges the church to reclaim its integrity and staunch an exodus. You'll also find: - Prize-winning poems by Mhairi Owens, Susan de Sola, and Forester McClatchey - A profile of Japanese peacemaker Toyohiko Kagawa - Reviews of Fredrik deBoer's The Cult of Smart, Anna Neima's The Utopians, and Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway - Insights on following Jesus from E. Stanley Jones, Barbara Brown Taylor, Teresa of Avila, Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King Jr., Eberhard Arnold, Leonardo Boff, Meister Eckhart, C. S. Lewis, Hermas, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys's return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction's most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind. A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting's impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.

Whose lives count as fully human? The answer matters for everyone, disabled or not. The ancient Greek ideal linked physical wholeness to moral wholeness - the virtuous citizen was "beautiful and good." It's an ideal that has all too often turned deadly, casting those who do not measure up as less than human. In the pre-Christian era, infants with disabilities were left on the rocks; in modern times, they have been targeted by eugenics. Much has changed, thanks to the tenacious advocacy of the disability rights movement. Yesteryear's hellish institutions have given way to customized educational programs and assisted living centers. Public spaces have been reconfigured to improve access. Therapies and medical technology have advanced rapidly in sophistication and effectiveness. Protections for people with disabilities have been enshrined in many countries' antidiscrimination laws. But these victories, impressive as they are, mask other realities that collide awkwardly with society's avowals of equality. Why are parents choosing to abort a baby likely to have a disability? Why does Belgian law allow for euthanasia in cases of disability, even absent a terminal diagnosis or physical pain? Why, when ventilators were in short supply during the first Covid wave, did some states list disability as a reason to deny care? On this theme: - Heonju Lee tells how his son with Down syndrome saved another child's life. - Molly McCully Brown and Victoria Reynolds Farmer recount their personal experiences with disability. - Amy Julia Becker says meritocracies fail because they value the wrong things. - Maureen Swinger asks six mothers around the world about raising a child with disabilities. - Joe Keiderling documents the unfinished struggle for disability rights. - Isaac T. Soon wonders if Saint Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was a disability. - Leah Libresco Sargeant reviews What Can a Body Do? and Making Disability Modern. - Sarah C. Williams says testing for fetal abnormalities is not a neutral practice. Also in the issue: - Ross Douthat is brought low by intractable Lyme disease. - Edwidge Danticat flees an active shooter in a packed mall. - Eugene Vodolazkin finds comic relief at funerals, including his own father's. - Kelsey Osgood discovers that being an Orthodox Jew is strange, even in Brooklyn. - Christian Wiman pens three new poems. - Susannah Black profiles Flannery O'Conner. - Our writers review Eyal Press's Dirty Work, Steve Coll's Directorate S, and Millennial Nuns by the Daughters of Saint Paul. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

Spanning a period of over three hundred years and twenty-five countries, The Penguin Book of Migration Literature is a wide-ranging anthology that brings together well-known authors such as Mohsin Hamid, Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie alongside emerging writers like Deepak Unnikrishnan, Warsan Shire and Djamila Ibrahim. A compelling and original collection of migration writings, this is a unique work that conveys the intricacies of worldwide migration patterns and the diversity of immigrant experiences.

Food - how it's grown, how it's shared - makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind's first task: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one's hands dirty raising one's own food, then, doesn't just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, "The Welcome Table," comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible's closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited - a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Koeder, Carl Juste, Andre Chung, Angel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

From National Book Award nominee Edwidge Danticat comes a timely, brilliantly crafted story of hope and imagination--a powerful tribute to Haiti and children around the world
Hope comes alive in this heartfelt and deeply resonating story.
While Junior is trapped for 8 days beneath his collapsed house after an earthquake, he uses his imagination for comfort. Drawing on beautiful, everyday-life memories, Junior paints a sparkling picture of Haiti for each of those days--flying kites with his best friend or racing his sister around St. Marc's Square--helping him through the tragedy until he is finally rescued.
Love and hope dance across each page--granting us a way to talk about resilience as a family, a classroom, or a friend.

"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them."--"Create Dangerously"

In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus' lecture, "Create Dangerously," and combining memoir and essay, Danticat tells the stories of artists, including herself, who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them. Danticat eulogizes an aunt who guarded her family's homestead in the Haitian countryside, a cousin who died of AIDS while living in Miami as an undocumented alien, and a renowned Haitian radio journalist whose political assassination shocked the world. Danticat writes about the Haitian novelists she first read as a girl at the Brooklyn Public Library, a woman mutilated in a machete attack who became a public witness against torture, and the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and other artists of Haitian descent. Danticat also suggests that the aftermaths of natural disasters in Haiti and the United States reveal that the countries are not as different as many Americans might like to believe.

"Create Dangerously" is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat's belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.

We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat' s brilliant exploration of the " dew breaker" --or torturer--s an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America' s most essential writers.

Edwidge Danticat's groundbreaking debut, with new introduction from Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo. An Oprah Book Club selection 'A vision of female solidarity which transcends place and time' Sunday Times 'A novel that rewards the reader again and again with small but exquisite and unforgettable epiphanies' Washington Post 'Extraordinarily successful' New York Times Book Review 'A first novel of precious humanity' Independent At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti - to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence. In her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti - and the enduring strength of Haiti's women - with vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage.

At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

What is a family and what is it good for? Story 1: Families are in crisis, and the cause is moral breakdown. We urgently need a deep renewal of our family culture, supported by public policies that strengthen traditional marriage and encourage childbearing. Story 2: Families are in crisis, and the cause is capitalism. We need structural changes in society so that all families can flourish: parental leave, guaranteed healthcare, flexible work hours for parents, restorative justice. What if both these stories are true? This issue of Plough reflects on what a family is and what it is for, so that the transformations needed to solve the crisis of the family start from a firm basis, not a nostalgic ideal or progressive theorizing. As always, we take as a starting point the teachings of Jesus. It turns out his idea of family values might not be what people think. He calls us to extend our natural love for our biological family to a vast new throng of siblings - a family of many ethnicities and cultures that includes the widowed, the unmarried, the outsider, and the stranger. In this issue: - Ross Douthat asks what is stopping people from having the one more child they desire. - Edwidge Danticat says families are not nuclear. - Gina Dalfonzo reveals what singles know best about the church as family. - Norann Voll remembers a Jewish woman who escaped the Holocaust and married a German. - W. Bradford Wilcox and Alysse ElHage report on how the Covid pandemic has impacted the family. - Noah Van Niel asks whether masculinity is OK anymore. - Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn reflects the burden of family history, celibacy, and monument toppling. - Sarah C. Williams pinpoints the source of feminist pioneer Josephine Butler's daring. - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begins the story of marriage 385 million years ago in a lake in Scotland. - Zito Madu recalls how his father's amazing storytelling saved the past from oblivion. You'll also find: - M. M. Townsend on what Louisa May Alcott and Simone de Beauvoir had in common - A special announcement about Plough's new poetry contest: the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award - A reading from G. K. Chesterton - Two new poems by Rachel Hadas - Reviews of Eric Edstrom's Un-American, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law's Prison by Any Other Name, Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song, and Martin Caparros's Hunger Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

A "New York Times Book Review" and "Washington Post "Notable Book of the Year, an NPR "Great Read," a "Christian Science Monitor" Best Fiction Book, and a "Library Journal" Top Book
Just as her father makes the wrenching decision to send her away for a chance at a better life, Claire Limye Lanme--Claire of the Sea Light--suddenly disappears. As the people of the Haitian seaside community of Ville Rose search for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed. In this stunning novel about intertwined lives, Edwidge Danticat crafts a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores the mysterious bonds we share--with the natural world and with one another.

An unprecedented visual history of African women told in striking and subversive historical photographs--featuring an Introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a Foreword by Jacqueline Woodson.

Most of us grew up with images of African women that were purely anthropological--bright displays of exotica where the deeper personhood seemed tucked away. Or they were chronicles of war and poverty--"poverty porn." But now, curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870-1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods.

Featuring works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries. McKinley also features photos by Europeans--most starkly, striking nudes--revealing the relationships between white men and the Black female sitters where, at best, a grave power imbalance lies. It's a bittersweet truth that when there is exploitation there can also be profound resistance expressed in unexpected ways--even if it's only in gazing back. These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women's self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty.

It is 1937, and Amabelle Desir is a young Haitian woman working as a maid for a wealthy family in the Dominican Republic, across the border from her homeland. The Republic, under the iron rule of the Generalissimo, treats the Haitians as second-class citizens, and although Amabelle feels a strong sense of loyalty to her employers, especially since her own parents drowned crossing the river from Haiti, racial tensions are heightened when Amabelle's boss accidentally kills a Haitian in a car accident. The accident is a catalyst for a systematic round-up of Haitians, ostensibly for repatriation but in fact a prelude to slaughter. Amabelle, caught up in the chaos and confusion, returns to Haiti after much hardship to make a new life, but is for years uncertain of the fate of her lover, Sebastian, and haunted by a nagging sense of guilt.

A powerful, fiercely economical and deceptively moving work, blending historical accuracy with lyrical brilliance.
 

It is 1937 and Amabelle Desir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastian, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastian are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.
Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival--from one of the most important voices of her generation--is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.

A "New York Times" Notable Book
A "Miami Herald" Best Book of the Year
In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile.
Inspired by Albert Camus and adapted from her own lectures for Princeton University's Toni Morrison Lecture Series, here Danticat tells stories of artists who create despite (or because of) the horrors that drove them from their homelands. Combining memoir and essay, these moving and eloquent pieces examine what it means to be an artist from a country in crisis.

From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love. AUGUST 2020 REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2020 VILCEK PRIZE IN LITERATURE Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant. In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart--a master.