Breath, Eyes, Memory is a book that has been on my radar for a long time. I first remember coming across it in 1997 when I worked at a bookstore that stocked course books for NYU and the New School. I have no idea what class it was for, but someone had ordered it as a text book. I think the title struck a chord with me? For all these years, it has just kind of remained there, at the edge of my awareness. I actually have no idea how I ended up owning a copy or how long I've had it, though I think I must have found it at a thrift store, probably after I started reading for my world books project. I had it in the back of my head for Haiti, though I had a couple other books in mind for Haiti as well -- books that didn't center on emigrants. But, of course, large-scale emigration is a reality of modern Haiti. And immigrant stories are a major part of the American story. This book has both: the stories of those who emigrated, and of those who stayed behind. Best of all, for me personally, it has Brooklyn. A Brooklyn close to the one I live in. Physically close, at least. The narrator's mother's Brooklyn home is on Nostrand Avenue, which is my cross street today. On her arrival in Brooklyn, the narrator attends a Haitian Adventist school; I live directly across the street from a Haitian Adventist school. (Not the same school -- if the school in the book is based on a real school, I imagine it's one in Flatbush.) Even as a kid in Brooklyn in the 80s, our landlord was Haitian and his daughter was my babysitter. But of course, I also live (and lived) in a completely different Brooklyn. Families are complicated things. Breath, Eyes, Memory takes in four generations of women and the love and hurt between them. This book beautifully, painfully illustrated how trauma can be passed down from generation to generation, from parent to child. It also leaves open the hope of breaking this cycle.
When I finished Breath, Eyes, Memory this morning, I definitely didn't expect I'd finish a second book by this evening, but I went downstairs to check the mail and there was Party of Two waiting for me. I think I read Royal Holiday over two days, but that one aside, I've read every one of Jasmine Guillory's books in the space of a day. Her books are perfect for those days when you want to do nothing and read something that will leave you smiling and satisfied. I needed one of those days so badly after the week I had, so this book arrived at just the right moment. It was delightful in all the ways I wanted it to be.
