Book Club Discussion Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
The questions and discussion topics that follow are designed to enhance your group's reading of Edwidge Danticat's
Breath, Eyes, Memory. We hope they will bring to life the many themes with which Danticat builds her story of a young Haitian woman's coming to terms with her country, her mother, and her own identity.
About This Book
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 fears frequently carry her to the verge of madness, and she inevitably brings her feelings of terror and guilt to bear upon her daughter. Sophie finds the palpable pain in her home impossible to cope with, and she elopes with Joseph, a musician some years older than she. But Martine has left Sophie with emotional problems that continue to haunt her in her new life, and in an attempt to come to terms with her past and her family, she takes her infant daughter to Haiti. There the four generations of women finally come to understand one another, and while life ends tragically for Martine, Sophie is able to go back to her American life with new strength.
For Discussion
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Edwidge Danticat has said that in Haiti, "Everything is a story. Everything is a metaphor or a proverb." How does the character of grandmother Ifé; personify this tendency? How do some of the proverbs and tales she tells Sophie relate to the events and themes of the novel?
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As a young girl, Martine's favorite color was daffodil yellow; in middle age she is obsessed with the color red. What significance and associations do these colors have for her? In what way does the change from yellow to red symbolize the change in Martine's own character? Does Danticat use color symbolically elsewhere in the story?
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Martine once hoped to be a doctor; later, she transfers her ambitions to Sophie. "If you make something of yourself in life," she says to her daughter, "we will all succeed. You can raise our heads" (p. 44). Why does Sophie consciously reject her mother's ideal of high achievement? Why does she choose to become a secretary rather than, for instance, a doctor?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
