Sexual History and Haiti

From Donette Francis’s essay. ‘Silences Too Horrific to Disturb’: “Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory” I learned that the sexual abuse Sophie and her family has confronted was not a terrible accident- it was part of a systemic attack on Haitian women perpetrated in order to gain political control. Haitian women often were very vocal political activists. They held protests to rally against government corruption and injustice but as Francis explains, “the very vehicle that women used to protest—their bodies—became the site that the state targeted” (79). I suppose that the theory was that a woman who had been raped would feel such shame and degradation that she would be stripped of her power and voice. The “shame” of having been raped would silence her and neutralize her political power.

I think that reading Breath, Eyes, Memory in the light of Francis’s essay brings the text to life in an entirely new way. Virginity is not prized because this is a mysoginistic, sex-fearing culture but because it represents control over ones body. A virgin is someone who has a voice, someone who has not been silenced by the government. In that light, Martine’s testing of Sophie is in line with her dreams to have her daughter become a doctor, and a great woman. To Martine, virginity is a necessary precursor to the completion of these goals because a woman who has had sex no longer has a voice and a future.

Another interesting point that Francis brings up is that Haiti’s history of sex, violence, and power is not something that evolved naturally in Haitian culture. “Testing” is not the result of an ahistorical, primitive culture but a collision of nations, cultures, and post-colonial domination.