Night Women

At some point in all our lives we are put into a situation where we must decide what we are willing to do in order to protect our family. That situation can be seen in this fiction story that we discussed in class called "Night Women" by Edwidge Danticat. This story in about a women with an internal battle about her own morality in her line of "work" and an external battle to support and raise her son in the right way. Throughout the story we are given clues that the husband is either an ex client of the women that has ran off, or he had died along time ago when the son was young. The "work" that the women does is not one that is seen in a positive way by the community. We are not told if the women is being paid for her actions, but it can be inferred that she is some form of a prostitute and sleeps with married men.

"The night is the time I dread most in my life. Yet if I am to live, I must depend on it." This is suggesting that she internally despises what her line of work is and knows that what she is doing is not morally right. However, she knows that the night is when she makes her needs to survive so she must bare through it every single day. She tries to hide her work from her son and uses this old radio that was given to him to play at night so he does not hear what is happening on the other side of the room. The women tries to keep her son as far away from her lifestyle as possible to make sure he does not end up on the same path.

"There is a place in Ville Rose where ghost women ride the crests of waves while brushing the stars out of their hair." I took this line as the "ghost women" being street hookers and that the stars in their hair is some form of glitter that is being brushed out. The women in the story does not seem to find herself in the same category at these "ghost women". It is almost inferred that she is some sort of "higher class" prostitute because she has clients that come to her on a regular basis, and does not need to walk the streets looking for some. Also her clients are typically wealthy men who are doctors and musicians.