Roots formed in Memory and Ethnicity Different social scientists have used various approaches to explain ethnicity when trying to understand the nature of it as a factor in human life and society. Examples of such approaches are: modernism, primordialism, constructivism, essentialism, perennialism, and instrumentalism. Whether you agree or disagree with their proposed theories, one fact remains true: ethnicity is an important substance for human beings, especially in identifying oneself in a cultural tradition or social group. Through the theme of memory, the author Edwidge Danticat of The Dew Breaker uses different settings over a time span to shape her work by conveying that wounds cannot be erased from immigration but can in…show more content… This found in the totalitarian and regimes in Haiti, as well as, the lives in America. The betrayal of women by men could be part of Danticta’s own personal life experience bleeding into her novel. Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to America at age twelve, to settle in New York. The author being a female from Haiti is important to understand why she uses female protagonists in her novel that suffer at the hands of males injustice. A Professor at Rutgers University, Dr. Mary Rice, in the article “Migrations of Memory: Postmemory in Twentieth Century Ethnic American Women’s Literature” asserts that Danticat’s writings showcase victimization and opprobrium by men. She supports this claim by showing in the first story the disconnect between Ka and her father , then she correlates Haitian people to create her own narrative that imagines an alternative to being either victim or perpetrator of violence, and finally displays every story in the novel having victim (female) and perpetrator (male) included. Rice’s purpose is to create a composite portrait of the Haitian community through interconnected stories, in order to explore possible means of resolving the traumatic aftermath of the Duvalier regime that left so many female