"Welcome to New York?"

After she comforts her mother's first nightmare, Sophie looks in the bathroom mirror and relates that her face seems to be saying to her "Welcome to New York." After reading the following chapters, however, I couldn't hep but be skeptical at that expression. After all, the New York that Sophie enters is essentially her mother's New York, and her mother's New York is Little Haiti. The book seems to emphasize how much of Haiti and Haiti culture Sophie and Martine absorb on the streets of New York and in everything they do, so much so that one loses sight of the huge transition Sophie makes in moving to a different country because so many aspects of her life don't really change from the Haitian ways she was used to. Sophie's first time walking on the streets of New York consists of visits to, among other places, Haiti Express, the post office that strengthens communication and connections to Haiti, and by her description of the other stores and shops on the street, you get a pretty good sense that the only vendors are Haitian vendors. When Sophie, her mother, and Marc go out to dinner, they go to a Haitian restaurant, and Sophie's mother relates that the often visit Haitian restaurants, apparently avoiding any distance with their culture, and thereby impeding their own, and Sophie's progress in adapting to other aspects of New York life. This idea is strengthened by the fact that the book makes the jump from that first summer of Sophie's life in New York to 6 years later, after she has grown accustomed to New York, after she has learned English, after she has assimilated as much as she will. We completely miss that process, only reading snippets of it in the beginning of Chapter 9. Even then, Sophie acknowledges that she has not been distanced from Haiti because of her bilingual school (66). This book seems to deemphasize Sophie's transition into a new culture, instead focusing on Sophie's relationship with her mother, and later on her relationship with Joseph. I found this choice pretty interesting, and am curious to see how it is further developed. Will we see Sophie struggle at all with the new city and new cultures that surround her, or will she, like her mother, stay in her Haitian bubble? Or will the novel not at all focus on that part of her transition, and instead continue to focus on the interpersonal relationships of the characters? For now it seems like the relationship between Sophie and Joseph is at the forefront of the plot, but even that relationship highlights a way in which Sophie broke from her mother's Haitian bubble--Joseph is an African-American. I guess maybe Sophie will embrace some of the other cultures in New York's meting pot.