Summary

“Living Dyingly,” as well as Edwidge Danticat’s other essays, are a combination of auto-biography, amateur philosophy, and literary analysis. Speaking in the first person, Danticat relays stories from her past (most often about her mother’s death), her own thoughts on death, all the while including passages from published works. Through this variety of inter-text, Danticat explores the problem of death, its effect on the human person, and its relationship to writing.

Danticat begins her essay “Living Dylingly” by examining the modern practice of “writing our own obituaries” (9). She equates the obituaries with social media, saying social media websites are “virtual cemeteries where our life stories continue” (9). Danticat contrasts this public memorialization with the privacy of mourning in times past, saying at one time “only close relatives” would have mementos of their loved one’s death (10).

Danticat then begins discussing her mother...