Books: “Breath, Eyes, Memory” by Edwige Danticat

My 1982 trip to Haiti was far from a picture-perfect Caribbean vacation. The unpaved streets had no gutters, posters of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s face hung from every lamp post, and a voodoo ceremony was conducted on Easter Sunday.

All the above is all true. But there is a kinder, gentler vision of Haiti you’ll find in “Breath, Eyes, Memory,” Edwige Danticat’s 1994 novel about growing up in a village far from Port-au-Prince.

Our young protagonist Sophie is raised by her elderly Aunt Ate and her grandmother. One day, an airline ticket to New York City arrives, along with a directive to put Sophie on a plane so she can join her mother Martine whom she hasn’t seen since she was 2.

Turns out Sophie and Martine’s life on Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn won’t be an easy one. Her mother puts in punishing hours working in a nursing home by day and has nightmares of her rape back in Haiti (which produced baby Sophie.) Martine is especially vigilant about keeping her daughter “pure” and she conducts humiliating “tests” of her daughter every so often to make sure she’s still a virgin.

Nevertheless, Sophie does become friendly with a man—a jazz musician twice her age, whom she marries and whom she becomes pregnant by. However, her mind has been poisoned by the memories of her mother’s rape, which makes her unable to enjoy sex and at one point causes her to leave her husband and return to Haiti with the baby.

Sophie’s grim experiences in Brooklyn and Haiti are salvaged by the author’s poetic observations about the natural beauty of the island and her genius at capturing Haitian creole patois. The novel also shows how a matrilineal family, consisting of Sophie’s grandmother, aunt, and female neighbors can still call the shots in a land overrun by tonton macoutes.

“Breath, Eyes, Memory” was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Since then, Danticat has written or edited several more books and receiced numerous awards and honors. She is now the Wun Tsun Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Another immigrant who started with nothing and who’s made something of herself. Something big.

For a glimpse of a country that is worlds away from a society currently being destroyed by gang rule, you couldn’t find a better picture of the real Haiti than “Breath, Eyes, Memory”. Jwi (enjoy!)

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