Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory, written by Edwidge Danticat, is a powerful novel that illustrates the story of a young Haitian immigrant, Sophie Caco, and her family. The book follows her struggles from her youth to her later years as a mother and wife while giving a unique insight into her troubled life the entire time. Danticat is able to raise emotions concerning the ideas of inheriting burdens from parents and mistrust between the closest of people. I really respect Edwidge Danticat a lot more after reading this novel and recommend it to readers of a mature level due to the content and the ability required to fully understand the story. Although her life differed greatly from that of Sophie’s, one could say that the author started off writing a story about her own life. Edwidge Danticat also had parents who immigrated to America from Haiti, and then she, herself, followed them there at the same age that Sophie was sent to America, twelve. In the novel, Sophie’s life takes many dark turns. At first, her and her mother’s troubles are similar to that of many immigrants including the need to work hard for many hours while making little money. The author later reveals that Sophie’s life is much more complicated than that, and her family’s history in Haiti has come to haunt her in America after finding out that she was the product of her mother being raped. In the coming years, their lives seem to be getting better. They move to a nicer neighborhood and Sophie has been studying hard, but once again her history comes to haunt her. Once Sophie finally finds a man she loves, her mother loses it and starts to perform the invasive “virginity testing” that Sophie’s grandma had performed on Sophie’s mother. Eventually, Sophie becomes so fed up that she breaks her own hymen and is subsequently kicked out of her mother’s home and elopes with her love, Joseph. This novel showed me that immigration is tough for everyone. I had little to no knowledge of what life was like in Haiti or for their immigrants until after I finished this book. I only knew a little about my own parent’s experience of immigrating from Korea, and I’m finding that learning about other immigrant’s experiences really helps me to appreciate everything they’ve done. Danticat also did a remarkable job of telling the story of his young girl. Her language was never too eloquent or sophisticated, but it had a way of really striking deep and getting to the point. The experiences Sophie and her family shared weren’t dressed up in fancy words, but rather told the way it is to capture their true emotions and convey them to the reader. I also really like the interesting ideas Danticat brought up about inheriting burdens and the effects that can have. One very moving story about a group of people in Guinea explains these troubles metaphorically, “Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head” (Danticat 25). Sophie has a sky to carry, but she was chosen because she is strong. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is even mildly interested in reading about other cultures and their experiences or is looking for a book that will leave them with that satisfied feeling of having read something meaningful. The way that Danticat tells the story of Sophie is unique in that she uses so many different types of writing styles and prose, yet still keeps it simple. This novel will really make you feel as if you had just shared a mind with Sophie Caco in order to relive all of her experiences. For anyone that needs a phenomenal book to read or is on the fence about reading Breath, Eyes, Memory, read this one.

Edwidge Danticat begins her debut novel from the point-of-view of twelve-year-old Haitian Sophie. Sophie chronicles her perplexing discovery that she must go to America and later the happenings of her life with her mother, Martine, in New York. In the midst of telling about her life, Sophie also reveals family secrets that horrify and haunt her Grandmother, her aunt, her mother, and herself. Danticat explores the idea of heritage through these generations of women and the abuse and conflict they endure. Sophie’s strengths as a narrator are derived from her position as a product of and player in diaspora, adding intensity and distance to Breath, Eyes, Memory. While overall Danticat’s vibrant, emotional prose and use of symbolism create a comprehensive picture of Haiti and its people, her style limits the depth and interaction of her characters. Part one of the novel is written with ignorance and innocence reflective of young children which is fitting as Sophie is not yet a teenager. In the early chapters, Sophie references her love and admiration of daffodils, a bright yellow and white flower brought to Haiti by European settlers. The ever-present image of a daffodil that is presented in Sophie’s poem is a bright and joyful one which contrasts the serious tone of Danticat’s writing. As soon as Sophie is relocated to New York to live with her biological mother, Danticat fast-forwards six years later to eighteen-year-old Sophie’s new home where her “mother had a patch of land in the back where she started growing hibiscus. She had grown tired of daffodils” (Danticat 65). Not only has Sophie aged and changed, but the tone is being altered as well; the reader can visualize the change from bright daffodils to darker, redder hibiscus. Beyond the difference in color between these two flowers, there is also the change in origin and background. Hibiscus is native to Haiti and to other tropical regions and is often used to cure ailments. Martine’s love for a flower indigenous to her homeland could be the attempt to cure both her homesickness and her fears. However, the color of the flower seems to also spark memories and feelings in Martine which trigger anxiety. Again and again the reader is bombarded with images of this house colored in red. Red itself is a bold color, often conjuring images of bloody violence or of love, both of which are present in Danticat’s writing. Red indicates robust passion, a theme that is vital to this novel. This ever-present color serves almost as the subtle life force for the four generations of women; blood, after all, is red, and the same blood courses from Grandme Ifé to her great-granddaughter Brigitte flowing swiftly with the beliefs and memories of the past. In stark comparison to Danticat’s crimson passion is the importance of chastity to this family. Sophie is subject to “tests” from her mother to ensure she is still a virgin. Often, virginity and purity are associated with the color white, so it is interesting how Martine and Grandme Ifé’s “obsession with keeping [their daughters] pure and chaste” (Danticat 154) is stained with Sophie’s defilement with a pestle and Martine’s rape respectively. The act of stealing each girl’s purity haunts this family, bleeding out onto the image of innocence the family tries to uphold. Issues with intimacy and sex, as well as an inability to continue deep relationships with men, are carried from mother to daughter in the Caco family. The main issue with Danticat’s narrative is not its subject matter – she pulls from her own knowledge and background of a politically divided, militant Haitian nation – but its utter lack of emotional interaction between the characters. Even through the title, one can assume that not only is the reader going to be immersed in all angles of the action by accessing the sights and the sounds of the landscape but also through interaction with the memories of the people surrounding the protagonist. Sophie merely lays out all of the facts, including those about her mother’s rape and resulting fear of intimacy, never explaining exactly who revealed the story to her. In a novel heavily reliant on the individual stories of each of the matriarchs in the family, Danticat’s emotionally removed style sacrifices strengthening the bonds between her four generations of women.

Reading this incredible debut novel at university sparked a lifelong interest in the history of Haiti and its people. The republic shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic and despite only occupying three eighths of the island, it has a staggering population of 11.4 million making it the most populated island in the Caribbean Sea. However, there is a huge Haitian diaspora with many residents relocating to the USA, probably due to the fact that it has the lowest Human Development Index in the world. The indigenous Taino people seem to have been the original residents of the island, but the first European settlers landed in the 1400’s claiming the island for Spain and it remained part of the Spanish Empire until the 17th Century. The French then laid claim to the most westerly point of the island and they brought the first slaves to Haiti for labour on the sugar plantations planted by the French. It has the incredible honour of being the first island in the Americas to abolish slavery after a successful slave revolt led by Toussaint Louverture and eventually declared sovereignty on Jan 1st 1894 under his successor Dessalines. As the country slowly united there were attempts to declare the whole island as Haiti, but eventually they recognised the Dominican Republic as a separate state. Haiti has been notoriously unstable due to crippling debt owed to France, the dearth of resources left by the French and Spanish, as well as the political volatility. The USA took control of the island in the early twentieth century, until Haitian leader Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier took power in 1956 and it is this period that is explored in the novel. This period, and the following rule of his son known as ‘Baby Doc’, was characterized by state-sanctioned violence against any political opposition an it’s own civilians, corruption, and economic stagnation. It was only after 1986 that Haiti began attempting to establish a more democratic political system.Danticat’s story is about the women of Haiti, particularly the three generations of Sophie’s family, and how this period of history impacted upon the women of Haiti. Sophie has been brought up by her Tante Atie and this is a beautifully warm relationship that really grounds Sophie in her Haitian identity. They are also incredibly close to her Grandma Ifé who tells Sophie stories passed down orally about people who could carry the sky on their heads. Atie is beautifully conveyed as a loving but slightly abrupt woman, conflicted between the needs created by her own motherlessness and her love for this child who has been left behind. Both Sophie and Atie have a void that each other can fill, but Atie is honour bound not to replace Sophie’s mother and to be sure that her mother’s wishes are carried out. This comes to a head one Mother’s Day when Sophie takes a Mother’s Day card home from school clearly wanting to give it to her aunt, but the women living thousands of miles away who she’s never met. Danticat is very adept at evoking her homeland with recipes and descriptions of mouth watering food. It’s not been a wealthy upbringing, but it is rich in stories, colour, warmth and nourishment. So when Sophie is sent to live with her mother in New York City the contrast is stark and confusing. Whereas Tante Atie seems comfortable in her skin, Sophie’s mother is shown to diet and use skin lightening creams, showing an obvious discomfort about her body and possibly even her identity as a black Haitian woman.Men are largely absent in this novel, but their impact is enormous. Maxine lives in an apartment with her boyfriend and Sophie hears her mother’s nightmares through the wall. Left alone for long periods, Sophie forms a friendship with a male neighbour in the apartment block. This seems to trigger Maxine and the truth of Sophie’s family starts to come to light, as her mother becomes obsessed with protecting her. She begins the horrific practice of ‘testing’ her daughters virginity - something apparently passed down from her own mother - causing shame, confusion and trauma. Sophie learns she is a child of rape and we travel back to the Haiti of Maxine’s teenage years where she is spotted by one of the ‘Tonton Macoutes’ - Papa Doc’s foot soldiers and the bogeymen of every Haitian child’s nightmares. He drags Maxine into the sugar cane field and assaults her. It will take a return to Haiti, for both Sophie and her Mother, to bring about healing. Danticat beautifully portrays inter generational trauma and the oppression of women that’s caused by the patriarchal system, but enacted by women on their daughters. Daughters who were virgins kept their value in the marriage market, just as in other cultures the men want wives who have undergone FGM. It takes rebellion and refusal from the women to create change. Sophie must also face the the ghosts of slavery, represented by the sugar cane her ancestors were brought from Africa to cut. Danticat paints a vivid, colourful but painful picture of a country created by trauma that is still felt many centuries later. She explores how generation must find some way to live, whether by leaving the country of their birth for something starkly different or by staying to face the past and break the chain of hurt each generation has passed on to the next. This is an emotional, evocative and difficult read in parts, but is a beautiful debut from an author whose love of her homeland shines through.

This book was sold as "Condition: Used - Very Good." However, if "very good" means that the first 40+ pages are tea/liquid stained and the book looks too disgusting to touch ,then I either need clarification on the phrase "very good" or this is some very wily marketing indeed. I have purchased several pre owned titles before but the condition of this one takes the biscuit! I've since made a 2nd purchase to read and enjoy.

The novel and story was very interesting to read. It is worth a must to read.

If you're reading this coment, you should read it.

Thats a nice book, interesting story - especially if interested in trans-generational transmission (of trauma), immigrant experience... etc. However the plot, the characters not so much developed as I expected. I definately compare this book with "When I was Puerto Rican" which was a more engaging read. Not sure Ill re-read other book from the same author