Breath, Eyes, Memory

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of rape, sexual abuse, self-harm, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and suicide.

The two main characters, Sophie and her mother, Martine, struggle with confronting past traumas. Sophie deals with the trauma of undergoing “virginity testing” at the hands of her mother and with the culture of sexual shame that testing represents. Meanwhile, Martine is haunted by visions and dreams of the man who raped her. Each character struggles in their own way with this trauma, but it is Sophie who makes the conscious decision to confront it. As a result, she grows throughout the text, ultimately finding the strength and resilience to move forward with her life. In different ways, both Sophie and Martine show the importance of confronting trauma in order to face it, accept it, and move forward.

Throughout the novel, Martine struggles with the memory of having been raped and impregnated by a Tonton Macoute in a sugar cane field. Several times in the text, she wakes from nightmares and is comforted by Sophie and then Marc, with her terrors even becoming violent. Because of her assault, she becomes distrustful of men, and she takes that distrust out on Sophie through her virginity “testing.