A review by abbie_
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

I picked up this copy of Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat secondhand, not realising that it was filled with someone else’s underlinings and notes in the margins. While I find it interesting to see other people’s thoughts (when I can decipher the handwriting), I find my eyes flicking to the annotations far too often and it takes me out of the story. I genuinely have a hard time remembering much about this book that I read two weeks ago because most of what I could concentrate on was the previous reader’s fixation on Danticat’s use of colours 🥲
.
I do remember enough to tell you that this is a harrowing read filled with sadness. It explores mother-daughter relationships, examining how trauma is passed down from generation to generation. Sophie grows up in Haiti with her aunt after her mother moves to the US, and when she eventually sends for her, both women are forced to confront the past which still haunts them. It’s a very difficult read, with rape, sexual trauma and self-mutilation all playing a part, but I found it especially difficult to read the parts where mothers inflict the same violences they experienced at the hands of their mothers on their daughters, despite recognising the irreversible damage it will leave/did leave on them. The cycles are hard to break, but the ending (‘Ou libéré? Are you free, my daughter?’) does offer a small glimmer of hope.
.
Despite the overwhelming pain of this novel, I’d quite like to read it again, with a clean copy this time, as I don’t feel I gave it the benefit of my full attention with all the annotations!
Expand filter menu Content Warnings