Breath, Eyes, Memory

April 4, 1994
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. Paperback rights to Vintage; author tour.

Robin Miles is the perfect narrator for this moving, morally complex novel about 12-year-old Sophie, raised in a stunningly poor village in Haiti by her aunt and grandmother, who is sent to New York to live with her mother whom she barely remembers. Danticat brilliantly realizes the contrasts Sophie must make sense of, the beauty and deprivation, safety and danger of Haiti, the love and harm that descends through generations of her matriarchal family, the culture and mores of native-born African-Americans versus the Haitian traditions of her mother's generation. Miles captures the shades of difference among these cultures and generations and, above all, the distinctive Haitian Creole accent of Sophie's world. Her work is sympathetic and skillful, a match for Danticat's ultimately harrowing novel. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine