Krik? Krak!: Seeing Things Simply

by Edwidge Danticat
In this short story collection, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat explores everyday life in Haiti.

Here are links to our lists for the stories in the collection: Children of the Sea, Nineteen Thirty-Seven, A Wall of Fire Rising, Night Women, Between the Pool and the Gardenias, The Missing Peace, Seeing Things Simply, New York Day Women, Caroline's Wedding, Epilogue: Women Like Us, In the Old Days
16 words 28 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. chortle
    a soft partly suppressed laugh
    She laughed like she was chortling at the clouds and walked away.
  2. phonetic
    of or relating to the scientific study of speech sounds
    “Madame,” Princesse said, calling upon her phonetics lessons in order to sound less native and more French.
  3. veranda
    a porch along the outside of a building
    Catherine already had her canvas and paint set up on the veranda of her house.
  4. conjecture
    believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds
    The village would surely smell the rum on her breath when she returned home and would conjecture quickly as to where she had gotten it.
  5. resistant
    impervious to being affected
    The pencil made a slight sweeping noise as though it were grating down the finer, more resistant surfaces of the white page.
  6. burnish
    polish and make shiny
    Catherine’s brush attacked the canvas as she spoke, quickly mixing burnished colors to catch the harsh afternoon light.
  7. complexion
    texture and appearance of the skin of the face
    “It’s dazzling how the light filters through your complexion,” Catherine assured Princesse.
  8. venture
    put forward, of a guess, in spite of possible refutation
    “How?” ventured Princesse.
  9. battalion
    an army unit consisting of a headquarters and companies
    Finally, Princesse walked down to the beach and watched the stars line up in random battalions in the evening sky.
  10. dissonant
    lacking in harmony
    Princesse wanted to paint the sound that came out of the shell, a moan like a call to a distant ship, an SOS with a dissonant melody.
  11. paramour
    a lover, especially a secret or illicit one
    She wanted to discover where the sky and the sea meet each other like two old paramours who had been separated for a very long time.
  12. immaculate
    completely neat and clean
    Princesse sat on the cooling sand on the beach staring at the spots on her otherwise immaculate undershirt, seeing in the blank space all kinds of possibilities.
  13. sift
    check and sort carefully
    Catherine sifted through a portfolio of recent work and pulled out a small painting of Princesse lying naked on the beach rock with a candle in each hand.
  14. eon
    an interminable period of time
    The sky in all its glory had been there for eons even before she came into the world, and there it would stay with its crashing stars and moody clouds.
  15. shroud
    wrap in a burial garment
    The rooster was still and lifeless beneath the sock even as the man took sips of white rum and blew it in a cloud at the rooster’s shrouded head.
  16. silhouette
    a filled-in drawing of the outline of an object
    First she drew a silhouette of the old man and then his wife with her basket on her head, perched over him like a ballerina, unaware of her load.
Created on Mon Sep 10 13:41:39 EDT 2018 (updated Tue Sep 11 14:50:18 EDT 2018)

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