Upon arriving in New York, Sophie meets the mother she has not seen since she was an infant-and learns several secrets that reveal the generational trauma festering within the Caco family. But as Sophie travels to New York and the novel begins to unfold, Danticat shows how just being with one’s mother, without together facing the generational, structural, and emotional traumas of family and culture, is simply not enough. “A child belongs with her mother,” one of Sophie’s neighbors says, congratulating Sophie on getting the chance to journey to America. When readers first meet Sophie, she is a bright and happy girl living in the Haitian village of Croix-des-Rosets with her Tante Atie, who is looking after her-until Sophie’s mother Martine, who has gone on to New York, sends for her. Over the course of the novel, Danticat explores how generational trauma affects four women who are members of the Caco family-Granmè Ifé, her daughters Martine and Atie, and Martine’s daughter, Sophie. As Sophie Caco, her mother Martine, her Tante Atie, and her Granmè Ifé confront their family’s-and their culture’s-dark inheritance, Danticat ultimately suggests that unless female pain, trauma, and cruelty are directly confronted, these practices will continue to harm and oppress generations of women and girls. The Haitian practice of manually “testing” young women for virginity is a mother’s burden-and, in the case of the Caco women, a daughter’s unraveling. In Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, three generations of mothers and daughters wrestle with the generational trauma that has been handed down again and again and has come to define all their lives.
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