Selection of the Month
February 2010
The Coriolis Effect
Edwidge Danticat (1969- )
Copy no. 47, signed by Edwidge Danticat & Gaylord Schanilec
Stockholm, Wisconsin: Midnight Paper Sales, 2002.
Gould Library Special Collections
We are all part of this Coriolis effect, I say. We are the wind and ocean currents that move one another from joy to happiness and back to pain.
—from The Coriolis Effect
The Coriolis Effect consists of twelve short prose pieces inspired by the writing lessons in a workbook for English-language learners. The author, Edwidge Danticat, came to the United States from Haiti when she was twelve years old and published her first story two years later.
Gaylord Shanilec is a bookmaker, engraver, and the founder of Midnight Paper Sales. He is widely known for his elegant, unusual books inspired in equal part by life on a farm in western Wisconsin and by texts from his favorite authors. In addition to The Coriolis Effect, Danticat and Shanilec collaborated on Plunging (2009), the story of an immigrant worker who died in a fall on a construction site.
The Selection of the Month is often chosen from the Library's Special Collections.