Edwidge Danticat Breath Eyes Memory

The routes to cultural connections and bonds are imperative in the formation of an individual’s rooted identity. Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory uses the process of cultivating the Caco women’s past female experiences, in relation to the Haitian tradition of testing, to contrast its effect on them with that of Sophie’s. Danticat uses her personal experience as the start for her understanding of self. In Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, Pilar Puente’s Cuban heritage requires the recordation of her family’s history as a necessary route in creating an identity through shared maternal bonds. Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow narrates the reconnection of Avey Johnson to her cultural teachings from Aunt Cuney through a spiritual

Sophie’s inquisitive nature and demand of answers stimulate the start of a way to communicate. The narration of her plight transitions and distances from the other women’s having a real chance to liberate herself by seeking help from the psychotherapist. Through “courses of therapy, [Breath, Eyes, Memory] suggests the stakes of discursively a healthy subjectivity for women of color” (Counihan 42). Sophie “realize(s) her own power to rewrite gendered narratives and “liberate” herself” (Hewett 134), this remark suggests the body is used as a vassal of traumatic memories that are generationally dealt by escaping the memories. The fight in the end is Sophie standing in place of her mother, as her mother’s marassa, having the “release ritual” (219)—suggested in a therapy session—as a way to freedom. She attempts to reclaim a power that wasn’t tangible to Martine while alive. Sophie finishes the journey her mother couldn’t—comes to terms with her trauma and rises above it—using her journey into motherhood as the alternative to her family’s tradition of testing. Just like her female ancestors, she must suffer that unwanted penetration but unlike them she puts an end to its effect for her daughter’s sake. The process of liberating herself from the trauma is the foundation in which she can create her

A good long look. Not saying a word. Just studying the place real good. […] And they seen things that day you and me don’t have the power to see. […] They seen everything that was to happen ‘round here that day. The slavery time and the war gran’ always talked about, the ‘mancipation and everything after that right on up to the hard times today. Those Ibos didn’t miss a thing. […]And when they finished sizing up the place real good and seen what was to come, they turned, my gran’ said and looked at the white folks that bought ‘em here. […] And when they got through studying ‘em…They just turned, my gran’ said…They just kept walking right on out over the river.”