Tante Atie reads poems to Sophie and they speak openly about the struggles she faced growing up as a woman. She explains that their parents poked at their panties, they listen to them pee and if they pee too loud it means they had large spaces between their legs, this would provoke a test.

Sophie also declares that she wish she never left Haiti, she wished she never left Tante Atie. Tante Atie explained that she really never had a real life, she did all that was asked of her burned her hands learning to cook, endured the pains of the tastings and all was done for nothing. Women were ment only for domestic use, this seem very painful to Tante Atie.

It appears that women were held in low esteem in Haiti, this was evident when the baby was born, the light went out. This meant that the mother was left in the darkness with her girl baby to wallow in the sadness of not having a boy. This was very surprising to me I know this usually happen in places like China and India but never in the West Indies. This also shows why Tante Atie and her sister weren’t able to fulfil their true potentials.