How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #7
"Sometimes I wish I could go back in time with you, to when we were younger." She closed her eyes, as though to drift off to sleep.
"The past is always the past," she said. "Children are the rewards of life and you were my child." (27.173)
Sophie confides in Atie when she returns to Haiti with her own daughter, Brigitte. It's clear from Atie's response that she always thought of Sophie as hers—which explains her coldness to Martine when she finally appears. While Atie tries to play it off, we can see that there's pain in her declaration that "the past is always the past." In reality, she was a mother then. Now, she is an older woman with only her mother for company.
Quote #8
"Whenever I'm there, I feel like I sleep with ghosts. The first night I was there, I woke up pounding at my stomach." (29.189)
Martine explains why it is so difficult for her to be in Haiti with her family. She is never able to be free from the violent experiences of her past, no matter how much she loves her mother and sister. Martine is especially vulnerable in Haiti it seems because of the physicality of the place: those ghosts live there and might revisit her at any time.
Quote #9
Her nightmares had somehow become my own, so much so that I would wake up some mornings wondering if we hadn't both spent the night dreaming about the same thing: a man with no face, pounding a life into a helpless young girl. (29.193)
An interesting and terrifying thing happens to Sophie in this book: she inherits her mother's memories. Since her mother has horrific things in her past, this is not a good thing. The intensity of her experience of these memories shows that Sophie has a strong, empathic connection with her mother, despite Martine's absence in her early life. But Sophie is going to have to take her grandmother's advice and let go of the suffering that really isn't properly hers to begin with.