HAITI

READ

Edwidge Danticat’s heartrending book, Breath, Eyes, Memory, tells the story of Sophie Caco, who lives in Haiti with her Tante Atie. Sophie’s mother Martine has gone to New York to work in order to send money back to help her family. Sophie is happy with this arrangement, since she doesn’t even remember her mother and she loves Tante Atie. But when Sophie is twelve years old, Martine sends for her, and Sophie is forced to leave Haiti and move to New York.

Sophie goes to school and does everything that’s expected of her. As she and her mother start to develop their relationship, she learns that the reason she has never known her father is because she was the product of rape. Some unknown man pulled her mother into a field and raped her when she was just a young girl, and her mother still has terrifying nightmares about it every single night.

When Sophie is eighteen, a man moves into the house next door. Joseph is a musician, and he is the same age as Sophie’s mother. Sophie and Joseph are attracted to each other, and since Sophie’s mother works two jobs and is away from the house for many hours every day, it is a simple matter for Sophie and Joseph to spend time together. When Sophie’s mother finds out about the relationship, she is angry. She takes Sophie upstairs, makes her lie on the bed, and tests her to see if she is still a virgin. This virginity testing is every bit as invasive as it sounds. She tests Sophie every week until Sophie decides she’s had enough and takes matters into her own hands.

This experience and Sophie’s response to it cause long-term emotional damage to her, even though she knows it’s a practice that has been passed down over the years. Her own grandmother had regularly tested her daughters’ virginity. “I have heard it compared to a virginity cult, our mothers’ obsession with keeping us pure and chaste.” Sophie sees a therapist to help her work through the issues and joins a sex phobia support group, but her mother never does seek therapy to help her deal with the trauma of her rape.

Throughout Breath, Eyes, Memory, the struggles of the Caco women – Sophie, her mother, her grandmother, and her Tante Atie – are portrayed with honesty and tenderness. Each of the women try to do what is best for their loved ones and for themselves, although the consequences of their actions are often not what they intended. “There is always a place where nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms.” In the end, what they are all seeking is freedom from the burdens they have been forced to bear simply because they are women.

COOK

The happiest time for Sophie in Breath, Eyes, Memory was her childhood, during which she lived in the village of Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti, with her Tante Atie. One morning after Sophie has been told that she’ll be going to New York to live with her mother, Tante Atie makes her cinnamon rice pudding for breakfast. The smell of it “scented the whole kitchen.”

That sounded pretty great to me, so I looked online and found a recipe for Du Riz au Lait on the “Haitian Recipes” website. The only tricky part of the recipe was that it called for condensed milk, something that can’t easily be replaced with just one of the usual plant-based milks. Fortunately, I found a recipe for vegan condensed milk on the Karissa’s Vegan Kitchen website, and it worked perfectly.

This rice pudding was so good that I would eat it every morning for the rest of my life if it weren’t so time-consuming to make. I’m not a fan of raisins, so I left those out except for the few I added for the sake of the photo below.

GIVE

I was certain after reading Breath, Eyes, Memory that I wanted to donate to an organization helping women who face gender-based violence. Fortunately, I found the perfect project on the GlobalGiving website. The Foundation for the Advancement of Haitian Midwives is training midwives in “identifying barriers to seeking care, cultural/societal norms affecting health, sexual and reproductive health, respectful and privacy protected care, principles of trauma informed care, types of gender-based violence, human/women's rights according to Haitian law, medical exam of the victim, medical-legal aspects/reporting and ethics/professional development.”

According to the project description, “Haitian Midwives are part of the community in which they live and work. They are in the optimal position to provide culturally sensitive evidence based care to Haitian victims and survivors. Midwives attending the training will come from each of the 10 departments of Haiti and return armed with the proper tools to adequately address the issue.” More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/gender-based-violence-training-haitian-midwives/.

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