Haitian-American Author of a Collection of Short Stories...

Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American writer, immigrated to the United States at the age of twelve from a Haiti that was filled with violent turmoil where she lived with relatives in a poverty-stricken area of Haiti. She soon learned English in the United States and began to develop as a young writer. Unlike most fictional writers, Danticat wrote her literature about the pain and suffering of her country from her own experiences. â€Å"She often says that her voice is the only one of many representing the Haitian people†(eportfolio). Her collection of fictional short stories Krik? Krak! depicted the lives of Haitians at different points throughout the twentieth-century(Chen 36). â€Å"A Wall of Fire Rising† is one of the short stories in the cycle in†¦show more content†¦Little Guy recites this speech: â€Å"A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones of my people. Not only those people whose dark hollow faces I see daily in the fields, but all those souls who have gone ahead to haunt my dreams. At night I relive once more the last caresses from the hand of a loving father, a valiant love, a beloved friend† (a wall 319). The speech reveals the symbolic meaning of the title and its symbolic attachment to Haitian revolutionary history as a picture of rising fire is painted when Boukman’s powerful words come out of Little Guy’s mouth. The theme of entrapment is starting to be revealed from the speech. The lives lost in the revolution, those that did not get to see freedom, resonate through the paper and becomes a reality. The slaves that died in the effort to revolution will be forever trapped in a life of slavery. Furthermore, â€Å"The image of a rising ‘wall of fire,’ conveyed by the storys title, historically refers to the dramatic sight of insurrection in 1791 after the Bois Caà ¯man ceremony† (Chen 7). The Bois Caà ¯man ceremony was a meeting led by Dutty Boukman in which slaves met in order to revolt againt the white planters. This would mark the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. Within days the Northern Plain was up in flames as the slaves burned and pillag ed the land. â€Å"A Wall of Rising Fire† coincidentally was individually released exactly two centuries