Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat: Crossroads as Ritual

Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat: Crossroads as Ritual examines the form and function of ritual in four of Danticat's fictional works—The Dew Breaker; The Farming of Bones; Claire of the Sea Light; and Breath, Eyes, Memory—to reveal how these texts create textual topography that heals and clarifies Africana consciousness. Filtering ritual through the symbolic iconography of the cosmogram and Africana women’s literary tradition, Joyce White investigates modern articulations of the cosmogram’s cosmological and philosophical iterations within the life and existence of Africana people and establishes set systems and beliefs that are manifest through ritual practices. White argues that emblemed by the cruciform symbol of the crossroads, the cosmogram within Danticat’s texts emanates extendable textual, liminal, and ritualized spaces through the inscription of the symbol that exists within and without the boundaries of pagination. The extension of textual landscape expands the borders and boundaries of a given text and provides additional space for contemplation and rumination incongruent to those spaces in its common and normal iterations.