Why Danticat makes it difficult for us to read The Dew Breaker

General agreement last night in book group that Edwidge Danticat's "The Dew Breaker" was beautifully written and terribly sad, and that we all feel great remorse for the sufferings of the people of Haiti and the role U.S. has played in that. Concern about how or why the Haitian immigrant community is so different from other immigrant communities, and some consensus that this is about greater trauma - other immigrants generally came to U.S. seeking freedom and opportunity, but the Haitians came fleeing danger at home. Also acknowledgment of the racism, that Haitian immigrants the only black immigrant community from Latin America. Trauma plays an important role in The Dew Breaker, all of the characters, even the next generation (though less so) suffer from that. Much discussion as to why Danticat chose to tell these stories in mosaic form, out of chronological order, making it difficult to follow the line of plot on first reading. Suggested that she does so in part to hold our deepest attention but also because the trauma they, and maybe she, experience make it difficult for her to tell the story in other than fragmented form. The whole collection is something like a miximal version of a New Yorker story : full of allusion and nuance, ending on a plangent note, but not building to any climax of resolution. I in particular discussed the lack of a final confrontation between the victims and the perpretrator, now living comfortably (though guilt-wracked) in nyc. Book is unusual in that it is about the refugees and exiles, but not only those fleeing oppression - a main character is one of the oppressors, and he is treated rather sympathetically.