Little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside. Hearts are so precious. They don't want to lose them.

 Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, first published in 1994

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Breath, Eyes, Memory takes place first in Haiti, in the small town of Croix-des-Rosets, and later in New York City, Providence, Rhode Island, and finally back in Haiti. It chronicles three generations of Caco women - Sophie (our protagonist), Martine (Sophie's mother), Atie (Sophie's aunt), and Granmè Ifé (Sophie's grandmother). The story begins in Haiti, with Sophie finding out she is to be moved to the United States to live with her mother, after spending the first twelve years of her life living in Haiti with her aunt (Tante Atie) and her grandmother. Sophie is understandably dismayed by this news, and has mixed feelings. She ends up in New York with her mother, Martine, who loves her, but struggles throughout her life with nightmares and PTSD from the rape that led to Sophie's birth. Martine carefully guards Sophie's virginity as part of a generational practice, and tests to see if Sophie is still pure as she ages, which causes Sophie understandable trauma. Eventually, Sophie elopes with a man named Joseph to go live in Providence. The book jumps forward in time to Sophie making an unexpected visit to her aunt and grandmother in Haiti with her own daughter, Brigitte. Sophie and Martine are eventually reconciled to a degree, and Martine gets pregnant a second time with her boyfriend, Marc. Unfortunately, this pregnancy only heightens and worsens Martine's existing trauma, and as she wavers between aborting the child and trying to love the fetus, she eventually kills herself and the baby in the process. Sophie takes her mother's body back to Haiti with Marc and she, Atie, and her grandmother bury her in her hometown on the hill, feeling that she is at last, free from being haunted.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well blobbers, it has taken me a while to be able to blog on this because it was very heavy content, as I'm sure you saw if you read the plot summary. It is not, in any way, this book's fault that I was reading it after Mrs. Dalloway and looking for a more uplifting experience, as how could the book know or be responsible for what I read before or after it? That being said, it was a rough pair to read back to back for me.

Since I have read only a handful of books by Haitian authors, I want to share part of the afterword that Danticat wrote, before I reflect on my experience with the book. 

To Sophie - You are being asked, I have been told to represent every girl child, every woman from this land that you and I love too much...I have always taken for granted that this story which is yours, and only yours, would always read as such. But some of the voices that come back to me, to you, to these hills, respond with a different kind of understanding than I had hoped. And so I write it to myself, praying that the singularity of your experience will be allowed to exist, along with your own peculiarities, inconsistencies, your own voice.

This is just to say that I hope you embrace this book and my responses to the book as simply that, and that you don't walk away from the blob with generalizations or misconceptions about life in Haiti. This is a work of fiction, and one story, and one person's response. 

Okay. Now that that's been said, I'll share my thoughts. I thought this book was beautifully written, and the characters were tender and lovingly crafted. It was a heavy book to read because of the material it dealt with, but it was an eloquent portrait of the Caco women. Here are some thoughts, in no real order.  

Letters on cassette

While Sophie is living in Haiti as a young girl, her family receives cassette tapes from her mother that act as letters or updates. I loved this, and it reminded me (I know, hilarious connection) of the TV show Felicity, as she is always recording and listening to cassettes for Sally. 

Saying goodbye amidst turmoil

There's a tension when Sophie leaves because Haiti is all she knows and it is her home and she loves it, but her aunt and grandmother and mother have concerns about safety and the political climate. At the airport, Tante Atie points to a violent scuffle between the police and a young woman and says: Do you see what you are leaving? 

To which Sophie replies: I know I am leaving you. I thought this was so beautiful and so lovingly juxtaposed.

Thirst

I love this exchange when Sophie is back in Haiti with her daughter:

Driver: While you wait for your people, would you like something to drink?

Sophie: I could drink an ocean. 

Driver: If Mademoiselle over there is selling an ocean, I will surely buy it for you.

Chagrin

To my grandmother, chagrin was a genuine physical disease. Like a hurt leg or a broken arm. To treat chagrin, you drank tea from leaves that only my grandmother and other old wise women could recognize. 

This reminded me of conversations I've had with other people about malaise, or maladies, or agues, in countries outside the US, and the way it feels like it feels a space we can't quite put our finger on. Oh, I don't know, I have chagrin today.  

Kin

I think what I liked most about this book was the narrative arc connecting the Caco women across various generations, and exploring the wide variance in their lived experience. This was my favorite moment: 

Granmè Ifé: 'Do you see my granddaughter?' she asked, tracing her thumb across Brigitte's chin. 'The tree has not split one mite. Isn't it a miracle that we can visit with all our kin, simply by looking into this face?' What an amazing sentence. 

Friendship

I also loved the friendship between Tante Atie and her bestie, Louise, in this small town in Haiti. Louise wanted to escape, and get away to America or elsewhere, and Tante Atie is very sad at the prospect of losing her, which leads to this exchange.

Tante Atie: 'When you have a good friend, you must hold her with both hands.'

Sophie: 'It will be hard for you when she leaves, won't it?'

Tante Atie: 'I will miss her like my own skin.'

I consider myself very fortunate in that I have many friends that I miss like my own skin when we are apart. I hope you have this, too, blobbists, and that you hold your good friends with both hands.

Sisters

As someone who has two sisters, I liked reading the exchanges between Atie and Martine, as they felt familiar to me. 

'Sa k pase, Atie?' asked my mother.

'You', answered Tante Atie fanning the flames. 'You're what's new.' I love how underwhelmed Atie seems to be at the return of her sister Martine to Haiti. Martine flees Haiti after the birth of Sophie, as it's too painful and triggering, but when she returns after some 20+ years, her sister is just like, oh, you're back? Mmkay. ;)

Languages - what do your languages sound like to you?

I heard an interview recently with Mila Kunis talking about how other people hear Russian when she speaks it versus how she hears it. She said other people think that she's fighting, or angry, and she feels at home and warm and cozy, or something to that effect. It reminded me of this moment in the book:

We were speaking to one another in English without realizing it. 

'Oh that cling-clang talk', interrupted my grandmother. 'It sounds like glass breaking.'

I think it's fascinating that we can hear languages in different ways, and perceptions, meaning, nuance, and feeling, are all attached in different ways. 

Ghost criminal

Martine's ongoing trauma from her rape was really painful to experience with her, but so eloquently expressed. I loved this exchange, after Martine tells Sophie her nightmares are worsening.

Sophie: Have you told Marc?

Martine: He thinks my body is in shock from getting pregnant.

Sophie: You should tell someone.

Martine: You cannot report a ghost to the police.

How do you find closure, or justice, or peace, when you have no recourse to the person who wronged you?

Deep feels

This line resonated with me (and I think, might also resonate with Clarissa Dalloway): 

'Us Caco women', she said, 'when we're happy, we're very happy, but when we're sad, the sadness is deep.'

Are you free? 

Martine's funeral and burial in Haiti is heart-wrenching but also provides a full circle moment, as she is buried near the fields where she was raped. Her sister, Atie, calls out to Martine's body, as the villagers call out to each other earlier in the book - Ou libere? - which means 'are you free? In response, Granmè Ifé says to her daughter, Ou libere - you are free.

As the book comes to a close, Granmè Ifé says to Sophie:

There is a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear your mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libere?' Are you free, my daughter?'

My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips.

'Now', she said, 'you will know how to answer.'

Words I Did Not Know:

flamboyant tree - amusingly, the two words I had listed were this, and poincianas; it would appear they are both names for the same tree: Native to Madagascar, royal poinciana trees are known for their showy flowers. The botanical name is derived from the Greek words delos (meaning conspicuous) and onyx (meaning claw), referring to their appearance.

Lines I Liked:

• Sophie, to Atie: Would it not be wonderful to read?

• Atie, to Sophie: As long as you do not have to work in the fields, it does not matter that I will never learn to read that ragged old Bible under my pillow.

• 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. 

• You look like someone who is going to be sad.

• We are a family with dirt under our fingernails.

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

• Louise: Have you come to buy my pig?

• Martine, on being pregnant with Sophie: I tried to destroy you, but you wouldn't go away.

• I kept my eyes closed so the tears wouldn't slip out.

• If she hurt me, it was because she was hurt, too. It was up to me to avoid my turn in the fire. 

I'll wrap up this post with two of my favorite passages from the book.

There is always a place where women live near trees like that, blowing in the wind, sound like music. These women tell stories to their children both to frighten and delight them. 

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'm off to Winesburg, Ohio, and I'll let you know how that adventure goes. Keep safe! Keep faith! Good night. ❤