Breath, Eyes, Memory (Oprahs Book Club) by Edwidge Danticat - A story that transcends its setting

Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 1998: 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. The place is Haiti and the speaker is Sophie, the heroine of Edwidge Danticats novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory. Like her protagonist, Danticat is also Haitian; like her, she was raised in Haiti by an aunt until she came to the United States at age 12. Indeed, in her short stories, Danticat has often drawn on her background to fund her fiction, and she continues to do so in her debut novel.

The story begins in Haiti, on Mothers Day, when young Sophie discovers that she is about to leave the only home she has ever known with her Tante Atie in Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti, to go live with her mother in New York City. These early chapters in Haiti are lovely, subtly evoking the tender, painful relationship between the motherless child and the childless woman who feels honor bound to guard the natural mothers rights to the girls affections above her own. Presented with a Mothers Day card, Tante Atie responds: It is for a mother, your mother. She motioned me away with a wave of her hand. When it is Aunts Day, you can make me one. Danticat also uses these pages to limn a vibrant portrait of life in Haiti from the cups of ginger tea and baskets of cassava bread served at community potlucks to the folk tales of a people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads.

With Sophies transition from a fairly happy existence with her aunt and grandmother in rural Haiti to life in New York with a mother she has never seen, Danticats roots as a short-story writer become more evident; Breath, Eyes, Memory begins to read more like a collection of connected stories than a seamlessly evolved novel. In a couple of short chapters, Sophie arrives in New York, meets her mother, makes the acquaintance of her mothers new boyfriend, Marc, and discovers that she was the product of a rape when her mother was a teenager in Haiti. The novel then jumps several years ahead to Sophies graduation from high school and her infatuation with an older man who lives next door. Unfortunately, this is also the point in the novel where Danticat begins to lay her themes on with a trowel instead of a brush: Sophies mother becomes obsessed with protecting her daughters virginity, going so far as to administer physical tests on a regular basis--testing which leads eventually to a rift in their relationship and to Sophies struggle with her own sexuality. Soon the litany of victimization is flying thick and fast: female genital mutilation, incest, rape, frigidity, breast cancer, and abortion are the issues that arise in the final third of the novel, eventually drowning both fine writing and perceptive characterization under a deluge of angst.

Still, there is much to admire about Breath, Eyes, Memory, and if at times the plot becomes overheated, Danticats lyrical, vivid prose offers some real delight. If nothing else, this novel is sure to entice readers to look for Danticats short stories--and possibly to sample other fiction from the West Indies as well. --Alix Wilber

A story that transcends its setting
Danticat's novel is written in a fluent style with a simple vocabulary. Although she won't send readers digging through their dictionaries, "Breath, Eyes, Memory" will string your emotions as the life of Sophie Caco unravels from her childhood in Haiti to her parenting the early years of her own daughter's life in New York.

As a middle-class college freshman guy, the hardships and joys (although seldom without the accompaniment of the former) are foreign to me. I have not experienced the pains of living without a father, the confines of Haitian culture that emphasizes family responsibility above all else, the horrors of sexual abuse, growing up a fatherless child, or heard the colorful and poetic language of Haiti's people. And yet, I found this novel extremely compelling. In essence it is a story of life's most important battles and how where we came from affects the way we deal with them.

I highly recommend this short but impactful and page-turning novel to everyone up for a poetic journey through a gamut of powerful emotions.

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