ABSTRACT
Edwidge Danticat’s story cycle The Dew Breaker represents the lived experience of Haitian and Haitian-American victims of state violence, centered on a former member of Haiti’s secret police, known variously as Tonton Macoutes or choukèt lawozes (dew breakers). Though directly involved in abductions, torture, and murder, the macoute, known as Mr. Bienaimé, flees Haiti and builds a new life for himself in the U.S. with his wife and daughter. This essay argues that The Dew Breaker compels a reconceptualization of healing from moral injury through its attentiveness to animist structures of meaning. Animism is the belief in the spiritual properties of nonhuman matter, a belief that shapes the cultural practices of millions of people across the world in non-Western religious and cultural contexts. By paying attention to partial but non-identical patterns of animist resemblance across and within each story, The Dew Breaker reimagines how Haitian victims of Tonton Macoute violence negotiate and work through their personal traumas. This reimagining offers a provisional form of healing from moral injury to both Bienaimé and Anne, but in a private and specifically Haitian-American context without ritual atonement and public disclosure.
