She Survives a Mass Shooting, but Tells No One She Was There

In Edwidge Danticat’s new novel, “Dèy,” a Haitian American mother in Miami experiences the numbing aftershocks of a random act of violence.

By Imbolo Mbue

DÈY, by Edwidge Danticat

To live in 21st-century America is to accept that violence might find you on any ordinary day. I was sitting on the New York City subway recently when a young man walked up to me, balled up his fist and swung at my face. An inch away from punching me, he stopped, lowered his fist. “See how easy it is?” he said, looking me in the eye, certainly seeing my utter fright. Easy to do what? I thought. To injure? To kill? To cause fear for no reason at all? At the next stop, the other passengers and I rushed into a different car, and only then did we give one another that look of, What just happened?

Most of us would rather not consider just how “easy” it is for a random act to upend our sense of safety, if not our entire lives. That is certainly the case for Magnolia, the protagonist of Edwidge Danticat’s heartfelt new novel, “Dèy.” She’s in a Miami mall buying a cellphone for her daughter when a mass shooter sends the whole place into lockdown, and she finds herself curled up on a restaurant floor alongside dozens of strangers. Read the full review at the New York Times.