Danticat was only twenty-five when Breath, Eyes, Memory was published. The book immediately attracted critical notice and acclaim for the clarity and precision of the writing, and its emotional depth. The book was the first novel by a Haitian woman to be published by a major press and to receive wide notice and readership among non-Haitian Americans.

Jim Gladstone wrote in the New York Times that the book "achieves an emotional complexity that lifts it out of the realm of the potboiler and into that of poetry," and in Ms., Joan Philpott described it as "intensely lyrical." Danticat was also compared to African-American writer Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple and other works. A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote, "In simple, lyrical prose . . . she makes Sophie's confusion and guilt, her difficult assimilation into American culture and her eventual emotional liberation palpably clear." Renee H. Shea noted...