Brought up in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Edwidge Danticat has had firsthand experience with many of the harrowing events she relates in her stories. Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital city, on January 19,1969. Four years later her parents immigrated to the United States, leaving their young daughter behind. She rejoined them in 1981, and the family settled in Brooklyn, New York. She felt somewhat like an outsider at school, and she took refuge in her isolation by writing about her homeland. As a teenager, she began writing the novel Breath, Eyes. Memory, which became her first published work in 1994.

Danticat's parents wanted their daughter to become a nurse and sent her to a specialized high school in New York City, but by the time she graduated she had decided to concentrate on writing. She attended Barnard College in New York City, receiving...