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‘A vision of female solidarity which transcends place and time’ Sunday Times: Edwidge Danticat’s groundbreaking debut.
At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child shouldever 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 her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti – and the enduring strength of Haiti’s women – with 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 Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child shouldever 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 her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti – and the enduring strength of Haiti’s women – with vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people’s suffering and courage.
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Reviews
A distinctive new voice with a sensitive insight into Haitian culture distinguishes this graceful debut novel... In simple, lyrical prose enriched by an elegiac tone and piquant observations, [Danticat] makes Sophie's confusion and guilt, her difficult assimilation into American culture and her eventual emotional liberation palpably clear
Stuffed with folk wisdom with a sprinkling of urban angst... a vision of female solidarity which transcends place and time
Vibrant, magic... Danticat's elegant, intricate tale wraps readers into the haunting life of a young Haitian girl
she delicately tiptoes with poetic intent...brief, lyrical, disturbing novel...
Extraordinary... a young and genuinely fresh voice
A novel that rewards the reader again and again with small but exquisite and unforgettable epiphanies . . . This quiet soul-penetrating story about four generations of women trying to hold on to one another in the Haitian diaspora . . . is loaded with folk wisdom and fairy tales, the imagery of fear and pain, and an understated political subtext that makes this first novel much, much more than the elementary domestic story it might have been.
A first novel of precious humanity which mingles past and present, the horrors and delights of Haiti, in a quiet and dignified prose that would be impressive in a writer twice her age.
A first novel of precious humanity which mingles past and present, the horrors and delights of Haiti, in a quiet and dignified prose that would be impressive in a writer twice her age
Stuffed with folk wisdom with a sprinkling of urban angst... a vision of female solidarity which transcends place and time.
Written in prose as clear as a bell, magical as a butterfly, and resonant as drum talk... An impressive debut
Danticat's calm clarity of vision takes on the resonance of folk art. In the end, her book achieves an emotional complexity that lifts it out of the realm of the potboiler and into that of poetry. The tale is lovingly dominated by powerful female characters who struggle to make better lives for themselves and their families . . . extraordinarily successful.
Danticat has created a stirring tale of life in two worlds: the spirit-rich land of her ancestry, whose painful themes work their way through lives across generational lines, and her adopted country, the United States, where a young immigrant girl must negotiate cold, often hostile terrain, even as she spars with painful demons of her past
She delicately tiptoes with poetic intent... brief, lyrical, disturbing novel
Extraordinary... a young and genuinely fresh voice.