Breath, Eyes, Memory was a bit of a surprise for me. Of course I expected it to be good. It is a modern classic. What I didn't expect was that it would be so immersing. I was completely captivated by this story about a Haitian immigrant and her culture and family history. Not uplifting, not perfect; but stunning!

Almost 4.5 Stars

Read on kindle.

Darn it I hated this. It was distressing and depressing and I didn't see the point. Like...it just kind of threw a bunch of heavy stuff at me--by "heavy stuff" I mean mostly "sexual trauma"--, and although the prose was very pretty in places and the writer is obviously able to DO things with symbolism and plot and recurring themes and whatnot, I don't feel like she utilized her talent to any very worthwhile purpose.

I mean, unless the purpose is just to make you feel AWFUL.

Which....we could have a whole discussion on the purpose of social justice literature, I guess, but I really, REALLY don't think this kind of thing is ideal. I think that if you're going to put the reader through this kind of suffering, there has to be some kind of hope and beauty at the payoff. Much more than what's offered at the end of this.

UGH I'M JUST MAD.

Anyway, it's following Funny Boy into the trash can just as soon as I finish the school assignments associated with it.

3 generations of Haitian women sharing a secret tradition that haunts their lives....Great Book!

Sophie's journey in the company of the vivid, but troubled Caco women is at times wrenching, at times hopeful. Danticat's afterword speaks to how real Sophie seems; so much so that readers assign her the role of "everywoman" from Haiti.

The Story Of Sophie Caco

My local library sponsors a "Black Voices" book group which offers the rare opportunity to read novels exploring black culture in the United States and throughout the world. The group's most recent book was "Breath, Eyes, Memory", (1994) the first novel of the Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) who has subsequent to this book established a substantial reputation. This is the first novel I have read about Haiti and my first book by Danticat. Oprah Winfrey featured "Breath, Eyes, Memory" on her show.

Danticat's book helped teach me about Haiti and about the life of Haitian immigrants to the United States. The book shows the growth in self-understanding and in freedom of a young Haitian woman, Sophie Caco, who narrates the story. In the course of the book, the scene shifts several times between two Haitian villages, Croix-des-Rosets and Dame Marie, about five hours apart driving on poor roads, and New York City.

At the outset of the novel, Sophie is a young girl of twelve who lives with her unmarried Aunt Atie in Croix-des-Rosets and is excelling in school. Sophie's mother, who had moved to New York years earlier under mysterious circumstances, suddenly sends her daughter a plane ticket to join her. Sophie lives under the protective wing of her mother, who works menial jobs, through high school before meeting an older man, a musician named Joseph, and running off from her mother to marry him. Gradually, Sophie learns about her mother's past, especially the brutal rape which resulted in Sophie's conception. Concerned for her innocence, Sophie's mother subjects her to a humiliating series of examinations of her private parts designed to protect her purity. After Sophie's marriage, which alienates her from her mother, and the birth of her own daughter, Bridgette, Sophie travels back to Haiti to try to come to terms with herself and to work through her lack of interest in sexual relations with her husband.

Sophie generally speaks in a simple, flowing style. The book is at its best in the Haitian scenes as the author describes the local people, the troubled political situation and Sophie's family, particularly her aunt and her grandmother. The book describes the local folk religion and the heaven, called Guinea, which awaits people after death. The book is full of stories of various lengths which are fascinating in themselves and which illuminate Sophie's search to come to terms with herself. One of the key stories involves the origin of the family surname, Caco, which derives from the caco bird. As Aunt Attie explains to Sophie:

"Our family name, Caco, it is the name of a scarlet bird. A bird so crimson, it makes the reddest hibiscus or the brightest flame trees seem white. The Caco bird, when it dies, there is always a rush of blood that rises to its neck and the wings, they look so bright, you would think them on fire."

Although the book offers many insights into Sophie and into Haiti, I found it flawed. The story gradually shifts away from Sophie and becomes gendered and polemical. Sophie becomes less a person than a symbol of the sexual and economic woes that the author finds pervade the lot of women, in Haiti and everywhere. The litany includes, besides the rape and emotional frigidity that are central to the story, breast cancer, incest, abortions, and much else. The reader tends to lose track of Sophie and of a shared humanity amidst the welter of women's issues. The author herself expands and loses the focus of the book. In a concluding passage, the author speaks in her own voice to address the character she has created:

"I write this to you now, Sophie, because your secrets, like you, like me, have traveled far from this place. your experiences in the night, your grandmother's obsessions, your mother's 'tests' have taken on a larger meaning, and your body is now being asked to represent a larger space than your flesh. You are being asked, I have been told, to represent every girl child, every woman from this land that you and I love so much. Tired of protesting, I feel I must explain."

Danticat's explanations notwithstanding, Sophie's story is weakened immeasurably when it forgets about a woman and becomes a symbol for everywoman. When the author allows Sophie to speak as an individual and to come to peace with her mother and with herself, she largely succeeds. As a symbol, the story fails. Danticat's first novel was a book of promise, marred substantially by its movement from a person and a place to a gendered symbol.

Robin Friedman

Very beautiful book. There was just one thing I wasn't sure about. I could no longer see Joseph as a good man when he had "sex" with Sophie who had to disassociate to get through it. No matter how horny I am, I could never do that to someone.

I decided to read the only book that I have about Haiti after the terrible tragedy of the recent earthquake over there. I wanted, by reading this book, to say, "I care about the people of Haiti, I am not Haitian, but we are all G-d's people here on earth, and I care". I think some of my old neighbors in NMB were from Haiti and I pray for the welfare of their loved ones.
As for the reading experience of this book, I had some mixed feelings. Mothers and daughters, grandmothers, aunts, female friends; these are the relationships that we hear the most about. Every male in the book, except the little Haitian boy who is often about the grandmother's house, is either dangerous, absent or problematic, even when he doesn't mean to be. There is a lot of attention paid to the "purity" of the unmarried girls (I found the "checking" procedure to be abhorrent), but not a lot of attention that I could tell on making sure the males grow up to be kind and loving people. There was great reason to fear certain of the Haitian males, the "macoutes". This bothered me a lot. It made me feel that Haiti was full of potential rapists and females who are at constant risk. And despite this, and the poverty which is evident, there is so much that is just incredibly beautiful in the culture, land and people.
I was very interested in the Haitian culture, which is so different than my own. A number of Haitian children, orphans after the earthquake, are currently being adopted by white upper middle class families in the US. I wonder how this will go, won't the children be lost with out both their parents and their culture? If they are going to be adopted into the US wouldn't it be worthwhile to try to find Haitian homes for them? There really are a lot of Haitian families in both Florida and NY. It seems it would be worth the extra effort to give the children a home that was the most culturally like that which is their heritage. Heritage matters.

I always find it interesting to read an author's debut after I'm already familiar with their latest works and honestly, Danticat can do no wrong, at least in my eyes, which is why this edition of Breath, Eyes, Memory was so great (20th anniversary edition) because it had a retrospective at the end and an interview with the author. Here you'll find fascinating insights into what it's like for authors to reread their earliest works, what this book meant to the Haitian community, and what sort of feedback the author got on it from them (it wasn't great).

I think that there is an unfair "responsibility" that authors writing from underrepresented communities have to carry: to somehow "get it right" / make everyone happy, even though what the community whats to hear and see themselves on the page as might not be the story that the author wants to tell. I have a lot of thoughts on that but they're very muddled at the moment!

Highly recommend this novel. It is one that will stay with you.

Starting at the surface and seeming to skim there a long time, the story suddenly goes very deep into the lives and traumas of a Haitian mother and daughter. Sophie, the daughter, is left in Haiti with her aunt, Tante Atie, when Martine, her mother migrates to New York. Raised lovingly, Sophie is taught her aunt is not her mother though she holds that place in her heart. When Martine finally sends for her it, it creates the first rent in the fabric of Sophie’s life that we share.

Much of the hurt in the women's lives are caused by other women - the virginity tests, the abandonments, the guilt - but much comes from the macouts - rapine men without regard for the humanity and fragility of the women and girls they force themselves on brutally. Though both Marc and Joseph are good and compassionate, they can't help their women overcome what others before them have done. The nights are long, lonely and painful. Life is hard, and Martine's way out is truly horrifying. Much sadness within these pages.

"'You look like someone who is going to be sad.'"

"'You must never forget this. Your mother is your first friend.'"

"'No crying,' she said. 'We are going to be as strong as mountains.'"

"The woman continued attacking him, shouting that she was tired of cowardly men speaking against women who were proving themselves, women as brave as stars out at dawn."

"Tante Atie once said that love is like rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you."

"He looked like the kind of man who could buy a girl a meal without asking for her bra in return."

"'He is not a vagabond.'
'How do you know? Do you think he will walk up to you and say, 'Hi, I'm a vagabond'?'"

"The girl she said, I didn't tell you this because it was a small thing, but little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside."

"...she is going to be a star. She's going to be a butterfly or a lark in a tree. She's going to be free."

I was excited to finally get around to reading this book. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped I would. Danticat's writing style seemed very abrupt and that made it hard to get into a good "flow" with the book. I found that I didn't really connect with any of the characters as they weren't fully developed. By the end of the book, I was just glad that it was over. I didn't feel that any of the storylines were developed as much as they should have been and this was extremely annoying.

I will give Danticat another try because I realize that this was her early work, but I was just really disappointed with this book.

This is a book I read shortly after it was published in the mid-90s. It hangs at the edges of my memory, but sadly I can't remember it as well as I would like. Having just finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao my mind has been hovering over that island (Dominican Republic/Haiti) and Edwidge Danticat. I do remember the wayward struggle of one who doesn't belong and the reluctant discovery of her roots in the DR.

I've added the Farming Of Bones, to my knowledge one of the few pieces of American literature that addresses the horrors of Trujillo's regime, to my TBR.