In an interview with Megan Doll, responding to a question about how she went about researching the life of a woman who had died before she was born:
I find her comments important in relation to Edwidge Danticat’s work which also harvests the ‘rich landscape of memory’.
Maryse Condé’s novel V ictoire: My Mother’s Mother, a book that recounts the facts as she could gather them on the life of her grandmother, helps us understand the importance of memory in the context of a historical narrative of people’s lives. I woke up one morning and I was old myself.” But even if lightning should strike me now, I will say this: I am tired. I am supposed to lead her funeral procession. I am supposed to march at the head of the old woman’s coffin. I have been taught never to contradict our elders. “I know old people, they have great knowledge. Narrated from the point of view of the grand-daughter Sophie Caco, who we meet while she is living with her unmarried Aunt, Tante Atie in a village in Haiti, we enter the difficult world of being female and being raised by women, in an environment where an innocent life, a contented child can turn into a tormented adult, ravaged by recurring dreams and nightmares.