How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #1
[...] my grandmother said that it was best that we leave before she got too used to us and suffered a sudden attack of chagrin. To my grandmother, chagrin was a genuine physical disease. Like a hurt leg or a broken arm. To treat chagrin, you drank tea from leaves that only my grandmother and other old wise women could recognize. (3.24)
According to Grandmè Ifé, affection for and dependence on family is not just a psychological phenomenon—it's a physical condition. It affects the balance of life for each of the Caco women, and when a person is missing, things are "off": personal emotional equilibrium goes completely out of whack.
Quote #2
As a child, the mother I had imagined for myself was like Erzulie, the lavish Virgin Mother. She was the healer of all women and the desire of all men. She had gorgeous dresses in satin, silk, and lace, necklaces, pendants, earrings, bracelets, anklets, and lots and lots of French perfume. She never had to work for anything because the rainbow and the stars did her work for her. (8.59)
Young Sophie confesses to herself (but not to her mother) that she really did have something quite different in mind for a mother than the frail-looking and frightened woman before her. Erzulie, the Vodou goddess of love and beauty, is a combo of contraries: desire and virginity, motherliness and sexuality. It's a tough mother-image to live up to. Sophie relates many of these qualities to her own mother, but Erzulie actually pulls it off with divine grace—no disasters befall her.
Quote #3
Tante Atie walked between the wooden crosses, collecting the bamboo skeletons of fallen kites. She stepped around the plots where empty jars, conch shells, and marbles served as grave markers.
"Walk straight," said Tante Atie, "you are in the presence of family." (23.149)
For Sophie, the weight of the family's past nearly crushes her. And yet, she takes a quiet pride in her family name and feels affection for all those who went before her. Tante Atie's command to "walk straight" becomes a pressing theme for Sophie, who feels the pressure to be strong and succeed in life, particularly for the sake of family honor.