"Between the pool and the Gardenias" portrays the story of a poor woman that finds an abandoned baby on the street and decides to keep her. The story is set in Haiti, a poor country consumed by malnutrition, abandonment, and suffering. Edwidge Danticat uses the main character, a poor, lower class, black woman from Ville Rose, to make a political commentary on the situation in Haiti. The story suggests the desire of poor people to escape their harsh reality and become consumed in a world outside their own.
Danticat makes various social commentaries in "Between the Pool and the Gardenias." The story begins by describing a baby left abandoned in the middle of the street. It seems she has been left there for at least hours without anyone …show more content…

The speaker's description of her mother having wings is a way to lessen the shock of the event. It would be much harsher to deal with her grandmother jumping off a cliff than her having "wings".
The character in "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" also portray the role superstition, magic, and religion played in society. The speaker says that in her village you had to "save every piece of flesh and give it a name and bury it near the roots of a tree so that the world doesn't fall apart around you". The master of the house comments that the woman is one of those people that "think they have a spell to make themselves invisible and hurt other people." These allusions to the supernatural show the fear and underdevelopment of the people in Haiti. The middle class people believed the poor people practiced "voodoo" and blamed them for holding Haitians back. Danticat uses this ironic statement to portray that it is the ignorance of the people and their unwillingness to help the poor is what is truly holding back Haiti.

Edwidge Danticat wrote "Between the Pool and the Gardenias", as well as numerous other stories, to make a political comment about the situation in Haiti in the mid-90s as well as now. The woman in story represents many aspects of the struggles in Haiti to survive. Through her characters, she portrays society's views and