I really enjoyed the writing in the first third of this short book which tells of the protagonist’s early years in Haiti and then her first impressions of New York and of meeting her mother for the first time in her 12 young years. It felt bittersweet and magical. But after Sophie’s journey to New York City, it fell apart for me. There are huge time jumps and stilted, often weird dialogue. The story reveals family secrets, trauma and a hateful practice passed down within the family but nothing is really addressed or resolved. And the end is bizarrely over-the-top dramatic. Generally, however, I wanted more…more of how Sophie gets along in the Haitian neighborhoods of NYC and bilingual private school and making friends etc. Then later when she meets her husband, I wanted more of their courtship and early marriage. And let’s not forget Tante Atie, her aunt who raised her. Atie’s story itself is worthy of a novel.

This is a great, if disturbing, book. It's funny how an outsider's view of culture changes her own understanding of right and wrong. Let me clarify: because I was reading about Haitians in Haiti and then in New York (a group of people I'm not familiar with), I was less critical of certain characters' actions. I became, simply, an observer. Silly me. Because of this oversight, it didn't even occur to me that Sophie's mother was sexually abusing her. Maybe this is the point--in a certain context, something horrible can appear so normal, even routine.

Immediately prioritized this book by a Haitian-American writer after reading about the "shithole countries" comment, and I'm so glad I did. There's so much going on artistically, it leaves you in awe even as it breaks your heart.

Sophie grows up in Haiti with her aunt until age 12, when she is sent to New York City to live with her mother. It would be hard enough to live between two places, never having a true sense of home, but Sophie’s life is further shadowed by the painful knowledge of why her mother couldn’t raise her (which I won’t spoil here). Danticat explores how the legacy of violence and hurt are inherited by each new generation, and the herculean effort of will required to break those patterns.

Even though thematically this is a tough book to read, the prose is spare and the pages fly. I never could decide if I wanted to speed up so the pain would be over, or if I wanted to slow down and let myself feel the impact. This is the kind of book you could read over and over and still not catch everything Danticat is doing, but I don’t think my heart could handle multiple close readings.

At the back of my paperback copy, the publisher includes a note from Danticat addressed to her character, Sophie, in which she says she feels compelled to explain that not all children growing up in Haiti suffer exactly like Sophie does. Apparently some readers of the book have not understood that one character’s experiences from one fictional work cannot be generalized over the actual human population of an entire country. It created uncomfortable resonance when, after reading her eloquent response to the “shithole” comment, it occurred to me that Danticat is still, all these years later, having to explain herself to an audience of ignorants.

More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com

There is quite a bit of unpacking to do for this one. Danticat is such an amazing writer, in ways I was not expecting. Her prose is simple, almost incomparable to books of similar nature or topic that mostly end up convoluted. I do remember Danticat from The Royal Diary series where she had a fictitious account of a Taino princess. I mention that because while this was definitely mature subject matter, there was almost something childlike simple about the writing. I could have picked up the book at the same age I did the aforementioned and have slipped into this beautiful, heartbreaking writing. I am glad I did not because that would be a bit too much for a 14 year old but I digress.

More or less, I think that this book really did provide a window into the grief women can carry despite everything. The women in this story attempted many things to forget their pain and grief - from immigration to another country, to taking their bodies into their own hands. Grief, as the characters realize, follow them everywhere. And there's no pithy lesson in here about learning to overcome the past, or looking forward to the future. Along with all the grief the women in Sophie's life experience, she also encounters some of her own. It's an amazing story, full of emotional depth that I didn't really understand was there until I finished the book.

As for recommended, I do not advise this book be read by children (not that they wouldn't be able to handle it necessarily but because they may not pick up on some of the nuance, which was essential for this one). But I think that it is an important book and one that should be read by anyone that is interested in the culture of Haiti, something which I am grateful to have found more about via this book. I also recommend it for Alice Walker fans.

I read 25% and then skimmed the rest. Found the prose flat and the characters uninspired. The Dew Breakers is much, much better, imo

Breath, Eyes, Memory is the story of the suffering of three women bound by family ties. It was strongly emotional with some heavy themes. The repercussions of rape, the cultural value of virginity and how mothers routinely sexually abuse their daughters in order to preserve their honor were all covered in great detail. The descriptions of Haitian culture both in Haiti and in the United States were fascinating.

The book flowed well and held my interest much more than I expected. The ending was filled with sadness and quite unexpected. Breath, Eyes, Memory was not my usual fare, but it was very good and more than a little eye-opening.

“The tale is not a tale unless I tell. Let the words bring wings to our feet.” - Edwidge Danticat, “Breath, Eyes, Memory.”

My first read for Black History Month, “Breath, Eyes, Memory” is Edwidge Danticat’s first novel and I loved it. This writer introduced me to Haitian literature over a decade ago and I feel strong feelings of kinship with her.

This was a beautiful and moving story about a young Haitian girl named Sophia, whose mother leaves her with an aunt in Haiti as a baby and moves to New York to escape bad memories and get a better life for herself. When Sophia is finally reunited with her mother at the age of 12, she is a girl wise beyond her years, trying to navigate herself in an unfamiliar environment, using a strange language, with a mother she doesn’t really know:

“Night had just fallen. Lights glowed everywhere. A long string of cars sped along the highway, each like a single diamond on a very long bracelet.”

I was struck by that description. How would the busy streets of NYC look to a young girl freshly arrived from the Third World?

I’ve heard far too many stories of families separated by immigration. We hear about families reuniting but rarely do we hear about the difficulties they face trying to re-adapt to each other and make up for lost time. Danticat brings these issues to the forefront.

Despite depicting some of Haiti’s violent history, it was a hopeful book, one infused with Haitian thought and mentality, mostly through stories, songs and the grandmother’s wisdom, the grandmother, who like mine, has been preparing for her own funeral for years. The part about the grandmother definitely touched me; it hit very close to home.

The descriptions of Haiti were evocative; it felt like Danticat was drawing from her own memories there:

“The mid-morning sky looked like an old quilt, with long bands of red and indigo stretching their way past drifting clouds. Like everything else, eventually even the rainbows disappeared.”

I know this book will speak a lot to a lot of immigrants, especially those who question where home is. Being stuck between two worlds as well as experiencing the generation gap is a double whammy for many immigrant kids. Old practices continue to take place in their new home; however, with a new westernized mentality it can all be hard to take. The unbelievable stress a young immigrant faces having to live up to high expectations, after all their family sacrificed so much for them to have a better life is something that is a real issue:

“If you make something of yourself in life, we will all succeed. You can raise our heads.”

Reading this made me dwell on how much the world is changing. My first language is different from my mother’s and my grandparents’, I can’t even communicate with some of my relatives because we don’t have a language in common. My relatives are spread out all across the globe. Changes beget changes and questions about identity and the value of tradition abound.

“Siempre hay un lugar donde las mujeres viven cerca de árboles que, al soplar el viento, suenan como música. Estas mujeres les cuentan historias a sus hijos, para que disfruten, y también para asustarlos. Estas mujeres son linternas que se agitan en las colinas, las luciérnagas de la noche, las caras que se ciernen sobre ti y recrean los mismos actos impronunciables que han vívido. Siempre hay un lugar en que las pesadillas pasan de generación en generación como reliquias. Donde las mujeres, como el pájaro cardenal, regresa para verse la cara en el agua estancada.
Vengo de un lugar donde el aliento, los ojos y la memoria son uno, un lugar donde llevas tu pasado como los cabellos en la cabeza. Donde las mujeres vuelven a sus hijos en forma de mariposas o de lágrimas en los ojos de las estatuas a las que rezan sus hiñas Mi madre fue tan valiente como las estrellas al alba. Ella también procedia de este lugar. Mi madre fue como esa mujer que no podia parar de sangrar, la que cedió a su dolor para vivir como mariposa
Sí, mi madre fue como yo.”

One of the wonders of the United States melting pot is its wide range of writers from other cultures who emigrate to America and write in English. This provides us with a built-in translation program carried out by the immigrants themselves with a lag of approximately one generation.


I decided to read Danticat in tribute to Haiti when the earthquake happened. Breath, Eyes, Memory is her first novel and while it is in part autobiographical, it is stunning. The style is plain and unassuming but made exotic by the glimpses into Haitian culture that Danticat provides.

The first person narrator begins her story at age eleven, when she learns she is to be sent to her mother in New York City. She has been raised since infancy in a town outside Port au Prince by her aunt, whom she loves like a mother. Her own mother and the girl's birth are shrouded in mystery and in the way of eleven year old girls, Sophie would rather not know the details in the interests of maintaining the status quo.

However, off to New York she goes and unavoidably learns the grim details of her mother's past and of life as an impoverished minority in America. The most affecting aspect of the story is the custom of Haitian mothers repeatedly "testing" their teenage daughters to insure the girls remain virgins until they are married, which results in a mild form of genital mutilation deeply damaging to a woman's sexual development. Danticat reveals the tradition which goes back many generations and probably has its roots in African tribal culture.

Eventually, Sophie grows up, marries, becomes a mother and because she is educated, goes back to Haiti to seek an understanding of her life and troubles as well as her mother's. The story traces that fragile path of a woman moving out of ignorance and superstition into knowledge and selfhood.

"I come from a place where breath, eyes, memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. My mother was as brave as stars at dawn. She too was from this place. My mother was like that woman who could never bleed and then could never stop bleeding, the one who gave in to her pain, to live as a butterfly."

Pertenezco a esa generación que creció sabiendo que Curro se había perdido. Durante un tiempo sus compañeros de trabajo, sus vecinos, sus amigos... buscaban a Curro sin parar y Curro no aparecía. ¿Dónde estaba Curro? Por supuesto, en el Caribe (Ya voy teniendo una edad, pero admite que si recuerdas el anuncio acabas de sonreír).

El caso es que desde lo de Curro, el destino vacacional por excelencia para todo el que se lo podía permitir era El Caribe. Yo por desgracia no era de esos. Me podía dar con un canto en los dientes si podía dormir tres noches seguidas en la terraza de mi abuela al fresquito. Eso sí que eran unas vacaciones. Nunca he ido al Caribe, pero tengo que admitir que últimamente me están entrando muchas ganas. Y no por lo de las palmeras, las piñas coladas y las camisas hawaianas, que también, sino para ver con mis propios ojos todos esos paisajes, esas costumbres y esas tradiciones que nos narran las novelas ambientadas en sus islas. Y una de las grandes culpables es Edwinge Danticat.

En esta novela nos trasladamos a Haití a conocer a Sophie, una niña criada por su tía cuya madre emigró a América cuando ella era un bebé. Durante esa primera parte nos sumergimos en lo más profunda de la cultura haitiana y conocemos a Tante Attie, uno de los grandes personajes de este libro, por no decir el gran personaje de este libro. La mujer que se quedó cuando su hermana se fue a América, “la tierra de las oportunidades”, intentando dejar atrás un mundo de pesadillas.

Pero inevitablemente llega el momento en que Sophie tiene que marcharse de su isla y abandonar sus costumbres y el mundo que conoce para viajar a América a encontrarse (y conocer) a su madre, a la que solo ha oído a través de las cintas que periódicamente envía a la isla contando sus andanzas.

Acompañamos a Sophie pues en un viaje a lo desconocido donde el peso de las tradiciones, las herencias generacionales, los traumas y los diferentes lazos afectivos familiares serán nuestros compañeros de viaje.

Y aviso que este viaje no es como el de Curro, que no se movió de la hamaca al solecito. Este viaje hará que por momentos te quedes sin aliento, es un regalo para tus ojos y habrá algo de él que siempre se quedará en tu memoria. Si Edwinge dice ¡Krik!, nosotros decimos…

https://www.lalibreriaambulante.es/es...

#cosasdelectores
#lalibreriaambulante
Aliento, ojos, memoria
Edwinge Danticat
Consonni

Such an engaging vivid story of relationships between women in a family, and the consequences of a culture's obsession with female purity.
I enjoyed this on so many levels.
Sophie was the voice of this novel, and although her own experiences are harrowing, it is her Mother and Aunt I felt sorry for, for reasons that differ so greatly - Sophie being the result of her Mother's rape, and also the hardest thing her Aunt had to give up. My sympathy oozed over.
And then there is Grandma, the root of all these women's problems, and yet their biggest champion.
This author is most definitely one I will seek out again.

Reminded me a little of 'Rush Home Road' by Lori Lansens.

I read this book for the   666 for 2015 - An Around the World Reading Challenge   as the author was born in Haiti, and much of the story is set there.
Really loving this challenge, and it is pushing me to clear some books off my TBR pile that I should have read and got moving again a long time ago.

I love the way Danticat writes...prose that flows like poetry and holds its weight. A deceptively simple story, it contains depths that keep you reflecting and thinking throughout and after. I never tire of reading about how women make sense not just of their lives but of how family passes along joy and tragedy and how each family deals with that.