Do you ever hear about an author and instantly know you're going to love their work? That was me with Edwidge Danticat. I heard her read on New Yorker Fiction podcast and I knew she'd be an author I'd love. I bought three books by her before I got around to reading one, and of course, I was right. I love Danticat's writing. Give me any coming-of-age story set in a country other than my own and I'm on board. Breath, Eyes, Memory is set in Haiti and in the US, but it still counts because even the parts set in the US are still very different from how I grew up. This is a story of generational trauma, mothers and daughter, what it's like to be an immigrant, and just women's lives in general, together with Danticat's beautiful prose. What's there not to love?

I found this book a little difficult to read, it was chopped up in little segments & for me, it made it hard for me to follow.
Sophie is a young girl who has been raised by her aunt & grandmother in Haiti & at the age of 12 her mother sends for her & she moves to NYC to live with her mom. Quite a transition for Sophie for a variety of reasons, new home, new country, & a mom she doesn't know & her mom has her own demons.
We move quickly over several years to Sophie becoming a young woman & we see her resist her mom in some of the "old" ways of Haiti.
It was a sad story, my heart broke for Sophie & even though I knew her mom had bad memories & many deep problems, I could never quite get a good feeling for her, which made me feel bad.

Felt like I was pushed out of a plane.

I thought the book was a well written "Coles Notes" version of what should have been a more in depth story. I would have enjoyed reading more about each character and thought some story lines should have been expanded.

This is a short novel of 200 pages. It is tightly constructed although with a very linear plot. The story is of a Haitian girl who, as an 18 year old, comes to join her mother in America. The book spans 15 years and switches back and forth between the family in Brooklyn and family back in Haiti. Insights into Haitian customs and the way of life permeate the entire book.

The mother in the book, we find out early on, was raped by a stranger and gave birth to Sophie. The mother has nightmares about the rape for the rest of her life. There is some uncomfortable subject matter, a customary gynecological purity test performed by mothers on their teenage daughters that figures prominently. Some of these fears are passed to Sophie as she herself progresses through motherhood. There is a sad scene at the end of the book that is not totally unexpected.

Overall, I think the plot is interesting enough, consistent and vivid. In closing, the author did a decent job with female character development and conveyed a lot of Haitian customs that were interesting and gave the book its authenticity.

"Spilled water is better than a broken jar."

I’m not sure I would have heard of Edwidge Danticat if it hadn’t been for reading Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State last year. Gay’s name was frequently paired with this other ground-breaking Haitian-American author. And it’s not just their nationality that twins them – both stories cover similar ground, including horrific rape and its aftermath, Haitian traditions and culture as modified/corrupted by American influence, mental processing of trauma and the use of physical escape as a (flawed) coping mechanism.

Gay’s Miereille Duval is kidnapped and ransomed and, when her father won’t play ball, is brutally raped and multilated for six agonizing days. By comparison, Sophie Caco’s entire family is defined by her mother’s rape (which birthed her) at the hands of a masked member of the Tonton Macoute, an event that caused her brutal nightmares for the rest of her life, nightmares so vivid, that anytime someone shook her awake, she thanked the person for “saving her life.”

Sophie’s very existence is a constant reminder of the day (Sophie looks like no one in her family, giving rise to the belief that all children born of rape look like the father), and even without that day as a traumatic place-setter, there is a cycle of abuse passed down from mother to daughter, as each week, generations of mothers “test” their daughters to ensure that they are still unsullied for their potential husbands. Sophie is almost as haunted by these “tests” as her mother is by that day in the cane fields. One is a manifestation of evil in the world. The other, a ritual built from what are thought to be good intentions (no man will want to marry a fallen woman, I’m just protecting you, dear), brings equal pain and tragedy. Is the preventative worse than the disease? When Sophie finally “fails” the test, it is by her own hand (in a sequence so poetic, it took me until the last line to see – and shudder – at what she had done) and only to make the tests stop.

As I say, both books work with similar story arcs, but in drastically different ways. Gay’s book, especially the second half, is delivered at a fever pitch, as Miereille does everything shy of peel her own skin off to make the physical and emotional damage go away. By comparison, Danticat plays the key events in Breath, Eyes, Memory with a surprisingly numb detachment. I haven’t checked this empirically, but I honestly can’t think of a single crucial moment in the book that was accompanied by an exclamation point. The effect is so extreme, in fact, that several pieces of dialogue that look like rational conversations have to be emphasized by the narrator with a line like, “I was nearly hysterical as I shouted this.” One isn’t necessarily better than the other, but it’s interesting to see how differently these stories can be told.

The book is less about the traumas that spike our lives than the continuum between mothers and daughters, homelands and new worlds. Danticat sees both good and bad in Haiti and America. Haiti is patrolled by violent soldiers, one of whom kills a fruit vendor for the crime of stepping on his boot. But it’s also a beautiful land of storytelling, vibrant cooking, close friendships with neighbors. By contrast, America lacks soul, but without the group therapy she gets, Sophie might never be released from her fears and traumas surrounding her mother’s rape and her own testing. She gets an education, but is also bulimic. Her mother chastises her (“how wasteful! Food was so scarce in Haiti!”), but also admits that within her first six months of coming to America, “I gained 60 pounds because I ate every meal as if I didn’t know whether I’d find another for two or three days.” Two sides of the same fear.

This is a slim book and is a fast read, but it’s not insubstantial. Elements of Haitian culture and traditions are embedded deeply, not constantly explained for “tourist” readers. It reminded me a bit of Their Eyes Were Watching God in the way it treats a community of family and friends, but the emphasis here is not on marriage, but the things that mothers pass down to their daughters, both the joys and the fears, the strengths and the shortcomings. The subtlety of the prose and the muted tone of the book hide moments of deep pain and joy amidst straightforward dialogue, before suddenly opening the aperture to let in a blinding shaft of light.

I come from a place where breath, eyes, and 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. Yes, my mother was like me.

I’m eager to read Danticat’s short-story collection, Krik? Krak!, and perhaps a collection of Haitian folk stories. The embedded culture is taken as given, which was good as a storytelling device, but I’d like to seek out a bit more context for myself.

Breath, Eyes, Memory is a book that feels like a comfortable companion, a story of a young girl Sophie, growing up with her Aunt, Tante Atie, in Haiti, her grandmother not far away. The Aunt is is the edlest child in the family, an unmarried woman, taking care of her sister's child.

Sophie's mother is in New York and when she is 12 years old sends a ticket for her to come. Sophie thinks of her Aunt as her mother, she makes her a mother's day card, her Aunt encourages her to take it with to the mother she doesn't remember.

Sophie's mother works as a care worker, she takes her daughter with her, until she can start school, she presses on her the importance of an education. She has terrible nightmares most nights, connected to the reason she left Hiati and her daughter behind.

It is a simple read and yet an extraordinary book, the lives of these characters seep into the reader, these generations of women raising their daughters alone, living with their demons of the past, trying to ensure nothing of their suffering passes on to the next generation.

It is the first of Edwidge Danticat's books I have read, I can't wait to read more.

My complete review here at Word by Word.

This is a beautifully painful story. But does Danticat ever write happy stories? (Because 'Krik? Krak!' had some sad elements in most of the short stories lol). I don't even know how to review this... Breath, Eyes, Memory is a sad book that is written in such a calm manner - Danticat style! Its deep with so many issues that span across 3 generations of women. Grandma Ifé (Manman) and her daughters -Tante Atie, Martine (who moved to NY) and her granddaughter Sophie (the main character of this book) seem to be victims of terrible circumstances, constantly living in a nightmare. I have questions though: was Tante Atie a lesbian? Her relationship and attachment with Louise made me think so... Also, was Martine suffering from psychosis?

Reading this book teaches you to empathize with others. So many people in this world are going through shit. Some women can't sleep at night because of sexual abuse; Some (women) hate themselves and their bodies because of sexual abuse; Some peoples' marriages are suffering because of sexual abuse from the past; Cultural/Family practices that police girls' sexuality have severe, adverse effects on women. There are so many layers to this tale and Danticat's passionate writing definitely makes you empathize. I doubt I'd ever read Breath, Eyes, Memory again, but I'm glad I finally read it :)

MORE ON THE BOOK BLOG SOON! - africanbookaddict.com

At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.
A distinctive new voice with a sensitive insight into Haitian culture distinguishes this graceful debut novel about a young girl's coming of age under difficult circumstances. "I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place where you carry your past like the hair on your head," says narrator Sophie Caco, ruminating on the chains of duty and love that bind the courageous women in her family. The burden of being a woman in Haiti, where purity and chastity are a matter of family honor, and where "nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms," is Danticat's theme. Born after her mother Martine was raped, Sophie is raised by her Tante Atie in a small town in Haiti. At 12 she joins Martine in New York, while Atie returns to her native village to care for indomitable Grandmother Ife. Neither Sophie nor Martine can escape the weight of the past, resulting in a pattern of insomnia, bulimia, sexual trauma and mental anguish that afflicts both of them and leads inexorably to tragedy. Though her tale is permeated with a haunting sadness, Danticat also imbues it with color and magic, beautifully evoking the pace and character of Creole life, the feel of both village and farm communities, where the omnipresent Tontons Macoute mean daily terror, where voudon rituals and superstitions still dominate even as illiterate inhabitants utilize such 20th-century conveniences as cassettes to correspond with emigres in America. In simple, lyrical prose enriched by an elegiac tone and piquant observations, she makes Sophie's confusion and guilt, her difficult assimilation into American culture and her eventual emotional liberation palpably clear.

Breath, Eyes, and Memory is an extremely great book of the past. Edwidge Danticat uses flashback to support his theme of the past. The book leads the readers to many possibilities throughout the book. It leaves you thinking one thing, and then the exact opposite happens. Danticat is very good at tugging the reader through. It is a highly effortless read. The characters battle with their haunting past as they try to reveal their future.

The story takes you through a roller-coaster of emotions. All the main characters are battling with their past. As the characters try to free themselves of their past, it only gets worse. When Sophie realizes she might be more like her mom than she thought, her emotions take a toll on her and her family. When violence, anger and insanity come in play, the book takes a huge turn and leaves the readers with an unexpected ending.

Danticat wrote this book in a very unique way. At times, she went very deep into the story. Almost to the point where it became magical. Then, she wouldn’t go deep enough and it left me hanging. Her message was wise and strong. Throughout the first couple of chapters, I already had an idea of a theme to the story. Danticat was very clear in her writing. The topic was on point the whole time. She never went away from the topic and every event that took place, lead back to the theme. Though Danticat left me hanging at times, she always had a way of making more sense of the event later on in the story.

“You carry your past like the hair on your head.” -Edwidge Danticat. I believe, this was her main theme in the book. This quote was said later on in the chapters, but I knew right away the book was revolved around it. Danticat made her point very clear. It’s a book of the past and it was rare for the future to ever be brought up. This made the book really interesting. Instead of thinking about what was going to happen next, she made you think back to what has already happened. Her ways of using the past was remarkable. The book wouldn’t be as good if the future was present. With that being said, I was never confused by her writing. If something didn’t make sense to me, I just kept reading and eventually it all made sense.

In conclusion, the book was very flowy. I never wanted to put the book down. Not that it was always exciting, but it was effortless. I didn’t have to force myself to keep reading. The words, events, and characters flowed together as I read. I liked how Danticat had every emotion possible present. The whole book wasn't based around sadness. There were many happy events in the story, which kept the story interesting. Not only was the book very well wrote, but it taught me a lot of life lessons. The book was very realistic. Minus a few events. I could relate to many things throughout the story. Danticat took an odd story line and made it real to the readers. Therefore, this is now one of my favorite books. As a matter of fact, I hate reading, but after reading this remarkable novel, I want to read many more.

A girl from rural Haiti is shipped off to New York to be with her mother. She grieves the aunt who had raised her, and her feisty grandmother. However, this is not really an immigrant story, or one about biculturalism. Rather, it is a story about the strength of women in the face of poverty, rape, and insanity, as well as the wounds women inflict on other women and themselves.

I can't decide whether I loved this book or not. It was certainly engrossing and very well written. But it was also really raw and depressing. Yes, we had scenes of atonement. But you could come away from the book thinking that Haitian women (or maybe poor women, or even almost all women...) are so mistreated in life that it's understandable when they flee, become frigid, go insane or commit suicide.

I don't think this book could have come out of Jamaica. It lacks the wry humor that we find mixed with grief and despair in Jamaican voices. Which makes me realize how dissimilar the two island nations are, and want to learn more about Haiti.