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Breath, Eyes, Memory: Summary and book reviews of Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, plus links to an excerpt from Breath, Eyes, Memory and a biography of Edwidge Danticat.
Breath, Eyes, Memory
by
Edwidge Danticat
Hardcover: May 1998,
236 pages.
Paperback: May 1998,
234 pages.
At an astonishingly young age, Edwidge Danticat has become one of our most celebrated new novelists, a writer who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti--and the enduring strength of Haiti's women--with a vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage.
At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.
Book Reviews
Library Journal - Marie F Jones
The book's strength lies in the rarity of its Haitian viewpoint, a voice seldom heard in American literature. However, the writing itself falls a bit flat. The characters and plot are interesting, but the narrative style doesn't evoke the emotional response that would seem appropriate to the action. Danticat is herself a 24-year-old Haitian American who, like the novel's narrator, came to the United States in her early teens to join her family. Her first novel shows promise of better works in the future. Recommended for larger fiction collections.
Publishers Weekly
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....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.
New York Times Book Review
Ms. Danticat's clarity of vision takes on the resonance of folk art. Extraordinarily ambitious extraordinarily successful.
The Boston Globe
Magic illuminates the beauty and family life of Haiti in a way no news report has done.
Washington Post Book World
A novel that rewards the reader again and again with small but exquisite and unforgettable epiphanies.
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Breath, Eyes, Memory
Library Journal - Marie F Jones
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