Point of View

Caul Baby is written from a third-person omniscient point of view. The author chooses to employ this lens in order to grant her reader access to the inner emotions and thoughts of the majority of her characters. The reader witnesses Amara’s secret grief when she gives her daughter up for adoption, Maman’s fear that she will not be able to maintain the family traditions, and Josephine’s empathy for Laila. While the characters do not always confide their emotions in one another, the reader is able to understand their underlying motivations and emotional states through the third-person omniscient point of view. By way of example, after Hallow cuts Iris’s caul and the police officers barge into the brownstone to investigate, Hallow is disturbed by the other Melancon’s aloof demeanor. While she does not speak to her mother, grandmother, or aunt about...