An empowering journey

In Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory begins in Haiti in the early 1980s. Danticat's heroine is Sophie Caco, who has spent a happy childhood in rural Haiti with her grandmother and her beloved aunt Atie, who raised her as her own child. Sophie's mother, Martine, lives in New York City and supports the family with the money she sends home. When Sophie is twelve years old, Martine sends for her, and Sophie must leave the only home and family she knows and begin a new life in a strange country with a mother she hardly remembers. As Sophie overcomes her initial fears and becomes closer to her mother, she learns that Martine has for many years been tormented by memories of the anonymous man (Sophie's father) who violently raped her when she was a teenager. Martine's move to Brooklyn was a form of escape, since she was raped at age sixteen by a Tonton Macoute, or guerrilla, one of many allowed by the government to kill, torture, and rape anyone he wanted to. This rape resulted in Sophie's birth, but Martine, unable to bear the painful memories of her past, Martine brings her feelings of terror and guilt to bear upon her daughter. Even though Sophie has to deal with such emotional problems, she continues to empower herself to keep going in life.