Her mother would often test her vagina to make sure she was still a virgin. The main character, Sophie, is shattered throughout the novel, due to the traumatic experience of her mother’s continuous tests. The novel describes how family values and virtue of women are very important to the Haitian culture. A young woman growing up in a Haitian household is encouraged to value her virtue and virginity. During earlier times, Haitians associated the idea of virtue with a woman’s virginity. "Testing" has been a Haitian tradition for centuries. She is also in turn fighting the weight of her inheritance, as well as her mother’s past experiences. She grows into a woman who fights a battle with herself as a woman, wife, mother, as well as daughter. This, along with the fact that Sophie’s mother practiced the act of testing (which is when she basically checks on her daughter to make sure that her daughter is still a virgin), causes Sophie to grow into the same type of woman as her mother. Her mother came to resent her own self and body and constantly has nightmares about the rape. Her mother as a result of the rape remained this wounded but very resilient woman.
Because she is a child of rape (her mother had been raped at the young age of 16 by an unknown man), she is a reminder to her mother of the wounds that had been inflicted on her. The major conflict of the novel is the main character’s battle with her inner self. The novel deals with questions of racial, linguistic and gender identity in interconnected ways. The narrator, Sophie Caco, relates her direct experiences and impressions from age 12 until she is in her twenties. The novel is written in a first person narrative.
As she has recounted in interviews, the book began as an essay of her childhood in Haiti and her move as a young girl to New York City. Edwidge Danticat’s first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published when Danticat was only twenty-five years old.