Importance of storytelling

The storytelling part in Krik? Krak! and to Danticat, both are very important. Through the whole book, by storytelling, readers could experience much emotional changes in the book, from normal to desperate, from hopeful to desperate, stay in desperation, confusion to released and also happiness. I remember that Danticat in the episode wrote down that the reason why she chose to become a writer in a very chaos time because she wanted to use the pen as a weapon to attack murders and also to tell the world that what happened in Haiti and how much pain Haitians endured during the chaos. Also for Danticat, Krik? Krak! was also a book that records what happened on her family.  Many small stories in it are having connections with others, which let the storytelling be more convincing and logically to readers.  Moreover, from a reader’s perspective, storytelling can help you understanding the plot and relationship between characters more deeply.

The story gave me the most feeling is the story Wall of the Fire Rising. After I finished reading this story, it gave me a feeling of both desperation and freedom. When I read the line “ Do you want to close the eyes?” “ No, leave them open, my husband, he likes to look at the sky.” From this small dialogue, I can even feel the desperation that Lili experienced, as reading the proceed of the death part, I can feel Lili’s confusion on her husband’s impulsive behavior and also a will of protection on her son at the same time. For Lili, the death of Guy means not only the family lost one member but also means in that men-dominated society, she can hardly feed her son under the harsh situation. After the line “ He likes to look at the sky.” I almost cried because, for a woman, she needed to perform strongly in front of her son, also after her husband died she still cared about her husband. But I believed behind this strong, she must feel oscillation and lost. From the storytelling, I can clearly know what makes Guy choose to go to the hot air balloon and also what Lili and Little Guy experienced after the death, even this story did not happen to Danticat’s family, however, it still reflected truth in the period when Haitian revolution took place, about men-domination and the oscillation women faced.

Also, the storytelling shows its importance in the episode. From the title of the episode: Women Like Us. I can directly get the information that this article is talking about her or the writer group that female chose to speak out their harsh situation. From the main character’s explaining, she explained from the writing to the daughter’s dream to become a writing.  This hardly makes me think that the main character in this episode was not Danticat. She talked about the harshness that writers faced in that time period and the motivation she had in order to ask herself to persist writing path. If there’s no storytelling, we, as the readers, can not get the vivid description of the story and thus hardly for us to feel the same way that author wanted us to feel.