Farming of Bones
A historical novel about the 1937 massacre in the Dominican Republic, told through memory, love, and survival.
Work Information
A historical novel about the 1937 massacre in the Dominican Republic, told through memory, love, and survival.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Soho Press
- Published
- 2003-07-01
- Pages
- 312 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.61 x 3.18 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781569471265
- ISBN-10
- 1569471266
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Contemporary
In a 1930s Dominican Republic village, the scream of a woman in labor rings out like the shot heard around Hispaniola. Every detail of the birth scene--the balance of power between the middle-aged Señora and her Haitian maid, the babies' skin color, not to mention which child is to survive--reverberates throughout Edwidge Danticat's Farming of Bones . In fact, rather than a celebration of fecundity, the unexpected double delivery gels into a metaphor for the military-sponsored mass murder of Haitian emigrants. As the Señora's doctor explains: "Many of us start out as twins in the belly and do away with the other." But Danticat's powerful second novel is far from a currently modish victimization saga, and can hold its own with such modern classics as One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Color Purple . Its watchful narrator, the Señora's shy Haitian housemaid, describes herself as "one of those sea stones that sucks its colors inside and loses its translucence once it's taken out into the sun." An astute observer of human character, Amabelle Désir is also a conduit for the author's tart, poetic prose. Her lover, Sebastian, has "arms as wide as one of my bare thighs," while the Señora's complicit officer husband is "still shorter than the average man, even in his military boots." The orphaned Amabelle comes to assume almost messianic proportions, but she is entirely fictional, as is the town of Alegría where the tale begins. The genocide and exodus, however, are factual. Indeed, the atrocities committed by Dominican president Rafael Trujillo's army back in 1937 rival those of Duvalier's Touton Macoutes. History has rendered Trujillo's carnage much less visible than Duvalier's, but no less painful. As Amabelle's father once told her, "Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of." Thanks to Danticat's stellar novel, the world will now know.
Edwidge Danticat was nominated for the National Book Award in 1995 for her story collection, Krik? Krak! Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory , was published to acclaim when she was twenty-five.
Reviews
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A deep read
I think Danticat is a gifted writer. This novel is a touching story of 1930s Haiti, where intrigues , passions, schisms and hardships fuelled instability which amongst other things also resulted to the massacre of Haitians by Dominicans under the Trujillo regime . Brilliantly told by Danticat , this sad epoch of Haitian history ends up making a captivating read. Recommended along with Disciples of Fortune, Breath Eyes Memory, The usurper and Other Stories, Triple Agent Double Cross
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Wonderful and heartbreaking
I think that Edwidge Danticat is a great writer, if not one of the best! I have been going to Haiti on medical missions for 17 years. The people and the stories will always be on my heart, along with Edwige's books. She captures the heart and soul of Haiti.
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Powerful historical fiction
Carefully plotting the life of a girl whose coming of age is set against the horrific backdrop of the 1937 Parsley Massacre, Edwidge Danticat has once again gifted us with a moving probing tale, this time of perhaps the Caribbean's most unreconciled tragedy of the 20th century, around which was cloaked a taboo-like silence until the 2013 echoes were evident. Through Amabelle Désir an orphaned girl semi-adopted by wealthy Dominicans in the 1920s, we glimpse the fates of her partner Sébastien, a scarred cane cutter determined to find a way to a better, happier life, his friends and co-workers Joel and Yves, Joel's father Kongo, Sébastien's sister Mimi, his mother Man Denise, and Yves' mother Man R. Their lives are all upturned and end as they've known them. The Dominicans with whom some of them live side by side are also deeply affected, sympathetic priests and doctors are destroyed, and those not actively engaging in the genocidal craze or against it are forced to hide their actions from those closest to them. The Farming of Bones is wonderfully respectful of the lives lost. It does not offer gratuitous violence, nor simplistic heroes and villains. Danticat slowly builds a chilling tension in a small village community in the Dominican Republic, where settled migrant workers of Haitian origin are accustomed to - if unhappy with - life as second class citizens whether Haitian-born or 3rd generation Dominicans who are monolingual Spanish speakers. She illustrates the nuance and life-saving imperative of ascertaining when widespread prejudice turns genocidal, and the impact of policy on everyday lives. Crucially, as the world does not stop turning when horror ends, the novel continues. We see the impact of the tragedy as people struggle to anticipate it, live through it, survive it, retain their sanity and humanity after it, rebuild their lives with or without loved ones, and mourn or try to find those lost. Skillfully, Danticat takes us decades into the future revealing both the immediate and longer term impact of the Massacre, and the myriad ways people recall and make meaning of it, and even the number of names given to the horror. It is a truly unusual gift to depict the worst of humanity with deep care, beauty and respect for those who suffered most, while reminding us that carnage always extends far beyond its intended targets. This is an incredible achievement of a novel, a wonderful read, and reparative historical fiction at its very best.
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Dominican Republic Experience?
Was going to the Dominican Republic for the first time so wanted to read a novel which was appropriate to get a feel for the history of this country. Great book. Was intrigued from start to finish. Was disappointed it didn't have a happy ending! (Sorry!)
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Breaking Bones.....
Sad, but stunningly beautiful, FARMING OF THE BONES is a powerfully written evocative account of the horror of the genocide committed in 1937 against poor Haitian cane workers and others by the Dominican General Rafael Trujillo. Through the voice of a young orphaned Haitian woman, Amabelle Desir, we follow the lives of desperate Haitian exiles working the Dominican cane fields in deplorable conditions with paltry wages and sparse living conditions. Danticat is a master storyteller and her prose lifts and carries, even as the atrocities of what she is telling unfold on the page. She travels a very painful path with humbling grace. She allows the reader to witness grave injustices while keeping them safely wrapped in her beautiful and poignant prose. . Dreaming... remembering...and family are strong elements which serve to enrich the story and draw the reader in as the reality of the despair becomes readily apparent. Trujillo wants to 'whiten' his populace and thus begins the recounting of an unimaginable and shocking ethnic cleansing. Towards the end of the novel, a man says "Famous men never truly die... It is only those nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke in the early morning air." ...on the island which Haiti and The Dominican Republic share. Through the eyes of the narrator, Amabelle working as a maid in the Dominican Republic, we see scores of Haitians cruely massacred. None of those killed is anyone famous, nearly all the slaughtered are poor Haitians working as cheap labor in the neighboring country, but Amabelle's story serves to refute those words spoken about the nameless and faceless of the earth. In this book, they are remembered, and in her story they do have names and faces.
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Sad read
I like Edwidge Danticat's style of writing. The topic of this book is real while the characters are not. Still made it a very sad read. It also made me read me on the topic.