Nineteen Thirty-Seven

Nineteen Thirty-Seven is a short story featured in Edwidege Danticat’s Krik? Krak! This story revolves around one young girl’s experience of dealing with her mother’s accusation and arrest for being a witch shortly after the massacre of 1937 in the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. During the story the author mentions the horrible experiences this young girl’s mother went through during the massacre, as well as what both mother and daughter did along with other women in order to remember the sacrifices many did on that night of the massacre. In this analysis I will argue that in story there is a special bond between the generations of women that have inherited the Madonna. When the story begins, it starts off by mentioning that the Madonna had shed a tear as the young girl was on her way to visit her mother at the prison and at that very moment she thought her mother was dead. Then when they young girl gets to see her mother the first thing her mother asks is if the Madonna has cried and when she answers yes Manman starts to cry. By the Madonna crying both the daughter and mother see it as a prediction of what is to come to Manman in the future which is stated when the narrator states: “Now, Manman sat with the Madonna pressed against her chest, her eyes staring ahead, as though she was looking into the future.” (Danticat 40) What this means is that if neither mother nor daughter had a bond, they would never know the meaning of the Madonna crying or the importance of keeping the Madonna close ones self.