Breath, Eyes, Memory

by

Edwidge Danticat

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Breath, Eyes, Memory makes teaching easy.

Tante Atie Character Analysis

Sophie’s aunt and Martine’s sister. As Sophie’s primary caregiver throughout her childhood, Tante Atie is kind and generous, but stokes longing, pain, and trauma of her own that she does her best to hide it from her niece. Rejected by the only man she ever loved, abandoned by her sister, and burdened by memories of her mother, Granmè Ifé’s, invasive testing, Tante Atie is often uncertain of how to handle deep emotions and hard situations—for instance, she doesn’t tell Sophie that her mother has sent for her to come live in New York with until just a few days before Sophie’s departure, and even then admits that if the secret hadn’t been exposed by Madame Augustin, she wouldn’t have told Sophie the truth until it was time to leave for the airport. Though Breath, Eyes, Memory is Sophie’s coming-of-age story, Tante Atie—who learns how to read, love, and cope with loss over the course of the novel—also grows emotionally throughout the book. She learns through her tenuous relationship with Louise and her complicated emotions towards her mother, her sister, and Sophie (whom Tante Atie views not as her own daughter, but as her “child”), that betrayal, tenderness, violence, and care can all coexist in the complex relationships among women who are part of the same line of deep generational trauma.

Tante Atie Quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory

The Breath, Eyes, Memory quotes below are all either spoken by Tante Atie or refer to Tante Atie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma  Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

[Tante Atie] took the card from my hand. The flower nearly fell off. She pressed the tape against the short stem, forced the baby daffodil back in its place, and handed the card back to me. She did not even look inside.

“Not this year,” she said. […] “It is not mine. It is your mother’s. We must send it to your mother.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Tante Atie (speaker), Martine Caco
Related Symbols: Daffodils
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Tante Atie told me that my mother loved daffodils because they grew in a place that they were not supposed to. They were really European flowers […] meant for colder climates. A long time ago, a French woman had brought them to Croix-des-Rosets. […] A strain of daffodils had grown that could withstand the heat, but they were the color of pumpkins, […] as though they had acquired a bronze tinge from the skin of the natives who had adopted them.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Tante Atie
Related Symbols: Daffodils
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“You’re a good girl, aren’t you? […] You understand my right to ask as your mother, don’t you? […] When I was a girl, my mother used to test us to see if we were virgins. She would put her finger in our very private parts and see if it would go inside. Your Tante Atie […] used to scream like a pig in a slaughterhouse. The way my mother was raised, a mother is supposed to do that to her daughter until the daughter is married. It is her responsibility to keep her pure.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Tante Atie, Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Who would have imagined it?” [Tante Atie] said. “The precious one has your manman’s black face. She looks more like Martine’s child than yours.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco, Martine Caco , Brigitte
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“They train you to find a husband. […] They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee… If you pee loud, it means you’ve got big spaces between your legs. They make you burn your fingers learning to cook. Then still you have nothing.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
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Breath, Eyes, Memory PDF

Tante Atie Quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory

The Breath, Eyes, Memory quotes below are all either spoken by Tante Atie or refer to Tante Atie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma  Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

[Tante Atie] took the card from my hand. The flower nearly fell off. She pressed the tape against the short stem, forced the baby daffodil back in its place, and handed the card back to me. She did not even look inside.

“Not this year,” she said. […] “It is not mine. It is your mother’s. We must send it to your mother.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Tante Atie (speaker), Martine Caco
Related Symbols: Daffodils
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Tante Atie told me that my mother loved daffodils because they grew in a place that they were not supposed to. They were really European flowers […] meant for colder climates. A long time ago, a French woman had brought them to Croix-des-Rosets. […] A strain of daffodils had grown that could withstand the heat, but they were the color of pumpkins, […] as though they had acquired a bronze tinge from the skin of the natives who had adopted them.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Tante Atie
Related Symbols: Daffodils
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“You’re a good girl, aren’t you? […] You understand my right to ask as your mother, don’t you? […] When I was a girl, my mother used to test us to see if we were virgins. She would put her finger in our very private parts and see if it would go inside. Your Tante Atie […] used to scream like a pig in a slaughterhouse. The way my mother was raised, a mother is supposed to do that to her daughter until the daughter is married. It is her responsibility to keep her pure.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Tante Atie, Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Who would have imagined it?” [Tante Atie] said. “The precious one has your manman’s black face. She looks more like Martine’s child than yours.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco, Martine Caco , Brigitte
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“They train you to find a husband. […] They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee… If you pee loud, it means you’ve got big spaces between your legs. They make you burn your fingers learning to cook. Then still you have nothing.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis: