Untwine - Hardcover

Edwidge Danticat is the author of many award-winning books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah's Book Club pick; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award nominee; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award Winner; and Brother, I'm Dying, a National Book Critics Circle winner. She is a 2009 winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant. Edwidge lives with her family in Miami, Florida.

From UNTWINEPeople say that things like this happen in slow motion, as though you suddenly become an astronaut in the anti gravity chamber of your own life. This wasn't true for me. Things were speeding up instead and I did my best to slow them down in my mind. Mom was still screaming our names, taking turns calling Isabelle and me by both our proper names and our nicknames: Isabelle, Giselle, Izzie, Gizzie. She then called Dad (David! David! David!), shouting his name over and over again. Isabelle didn't need to call my name. Not because of the twin telepathy thing people always talk about, but because we were holding hands. We were holding hands the tightest we have ever held hands in our entire lives. We were holding hands just as we had been holding hands on the day we were born. We had shared the same amniotic sac, and during Mom's C-section, the doctor told our parents that he would need to untwine our tiny fingers to separate us. We were born holding hands. And now, even as our heads bobbed and our bodies flopped -- mine strapped behind the seatbelt and Isabelle’s loose and unprotected -- we screamed for our parents who were screaming for us, but we wouldn’t let go.