Edwidge Danticat, a multi-award-winning and Oprah-praised author, elevates the dictum "write what you know" to a higher plane. Born and raised until the age of 12 in Haiti, Danticat constantly incorporates that rich heritage into her renowned books of fiction. In her latest work, this time a nonfiction piece, she doesn't just use what she knows — she relives it.

Brother, I'm Dying begins at the end, as Danticat travels from Miami back to New York, where she spent her teenage and college years, in order to visit with her ailing father. Finding herself pregnant and, at the same time, learning the devastating extent of her father's illness, Danticat relates not only her story, but also that of her family.

Danticat's father and mother left her in the care of her Uncle Joseph in Haiti, in order to go to the US to establish a life. Danticat spends her childhood under the guidance of Joseph, a revered pastor. She grows incredibly fond of him, and her admiration shines through in her prose. His story is the heart and hurt in the book, as Danticat leaves him to join with her mother, father, and younger brothers in the US. While a young Danticat tries to reconcile her cultural past and present, she must reconcile herself with the strife in her Haitian homeland from a distance, as her uncle, in his very old age, attempts to reunite in the US with Danticat and the rest of her immediate family.

Danticat seamlessly blends historical facts into the patchwork of her family's alternately joyous and heartbreaking travails. She also deftly navigates competing pressure to be both politically and geographically informative with prose that's incredibly poetic and intimate. Brother, I'm Dying is not only a fitting companion piece to all her other works of fiction — it's also an extremely personal gift from Danticat to her readers, and a reminder that the human echoes of conflict and injustice still resonate today.

-Diana Metzger