How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #7
According to Tante Atie, each finger had a purpose. It was the way she had been taught to prepare herself to become a woman. Mothering. Boiling. Loving. Baking. Nursing. Frying. Healing. Washing. Ironing. Scrubbing. It wasn't her fault, she said. Her ten fingers had been named for her even before she was born. Sometimes, she even wished she had six fingers on each hand so she could have two left for herself. (23.151)
Atie uses a traditional educational tool (the names of the fingers) to point out how the cards are stacked against Haitian women before they're even born. She emphasizes that a woman's life is often not her own, since she isn't given the option of choosing anything for herself or for her own pleasure. But Danticat does give Atie the power to articulate her displeasure over this situation, which is a hopeful opening for Sophie, who has the opportunity to lead a different life.
Quote #8
"From the time a girl begins to menstruate to the time you turn her over to her husband, the mother is responsible for her purity. If I give a soiled daughter to her husband, he can shame my family, speak evil of me, even bring her back to me." (23.156)
Ifé states her case for virginity testing, in response to Sophie's questions. Sophie, Atie and Martine have clearly been traumatized by this practice, but Ifé wants Sophie to understand the absolute importance of "cleanness" for a young Haitian woman. It's the obsession with a woman's virginity that ultimately becomes problematic for Sophie, who can't bring herself to have a relationship with her husband because she's learned that female sexuality is a dirty thing that must be denied.
Quote #9
Slowly, everything in Dame Marie became a blur. My grandmother and the vendors. Tante Atie at the flaming red tree. The Macoutes around Louise's stand. Even the hill in the distance, the place that Tante Atie called Guinea. A place where all the women in my family hoped to eventually meet one another, at the very end of each of our journeys. (27.174)
The Caco family really is a network of strong women: we very rarely hear anything about the patriarchs of the family, as if they never were there. This bleeds over into the conception of the afterlife, Guinea, the place where the women in the family will reunite. Spirituality in this work is very strongly feminine as well, with the goddess Erzulie ruling over Sophie's understanding of what it means to be a woman and a mother.