![]() ![]() The exploitation of factory workers in Haiti that is highlighted by the film is a global injustice, because unions are cheated and international companies profit from the labour of women who need to feed families. Despite her slight resources, Frisline’s story seems hopeful, in that although she was cheated of so much money she is able to support herself and her family by opening a business that she controls. ![]() Martine is able to send home remittance money from her job in New York, so Attie and Sophie have a much larger house than the one room houses of Hélène and Frisline documented in Poto Mitan. The cramped single room living conditions for large families, that are in common for all the women featured in the film, brought home to me the relative luxury experienced by the Caco family in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory. In contrast, the sections narrated by Edwidge Danticat in the Poto Mitan film celebrate the mother/daughter relationship, finding hope in the continuation of the struggle by daughters. ![]() Martine’s grief is caused by her rape in the cane fields at the hands of a Tonton Macoute – a member of the Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by dictator François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier. In this work, before Martine ‘tests’ her daughter Sophie for sexual purity, Sophie begins to have nightmares similar to those of her mother, and takes on aspects of her mother’s own grief. The portrayals of mother/daughter relationships in Edwidge Danticat’s 1994 acclaimed novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory published in 1994 are negative, because the mother is the source of sexual trauma. Although this film celebrates Haitian women, the film also presents how these women have been exploited, and the high cost of living in Haiti. Poto Mitan is a wonderful insight into life in Haiti, describing women as the ‘pillars’ of the globalized economy. ![]()
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