Customer Reviews

The Farming of Bones

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This short novel was a real eye opener for me, before I picked it up I'd never heard about the government ordered massacre of approx. 30,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic in 1937. Danticat is truly a gifted writer. The story, told by an orphaned Haitian servant is as lyrical as it is tragic and is definitely worth picking up.

Danticat's debut with BREAT, EYES, MEMORY was more than impressive; it was magical and eloquently resonant. It was the voice we'd all been waiting for. But with THE FARMING OF BONES, what we have is Danticat's finely-tuned clarity of vision reaching the heights of authentic folk art. This novel is unforgettably vibrant in every regard. Entire seminars and workshops have rightfully been organized and presented around this literary icon. Edwidge Danticat is the single topic of scholarly discourse everywhere you turn, whether nationally or internationally. In THE FARMING OF BONES the author has masterfully returned us to a particularly shameful and hideous moment in the history of the neighboring countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic (sharing the Caribbean island called Hispaniola).

Dominican Dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in 1937 ordered the slaughter of an estimated (historically documented) 40,000 Haitians and Domínico-Haitians living and working in the Dominican Republic. This historical incident is virtually unknown to outsiders and to most people not of that era. Danticate has thankfully unearthed enough skeletons form the unknown graves to awaken the interest of today's generation, wherever they reside. But this is also a profound love story like no other you've read. The young protagonists Amabelle Desir and Sebastian Onius allow themselves to experience an all-powerful love in a land where love itself had been vanquished by brutal terror and unbridled hatred. This is truly a novel that rewards he reader over and over with the message of a people's suffering and unbelievable courage. If you haven't read this novel, you are denying yourself a genuine literary treasure.

The rhythm of the author's words ring with the cadence of the Caribbean and her voice is clear, wise and poetic. Written in the first person, the young woman, Amabelle, uses simple and deep cutting words to tell her story. Her words are sensual when describing her man, wise as she helps deliver the baby of the wealthy Dominican woman for whom she works as a servant; and deeply cutting as she flees from the slaughter and bears witness to the events going on around her.

I was moved and horrified, and was right there in her emotions as she simply told this story which takes place during the dictator, Trujillo's regime. Dominicans who tried to fight this madness met the same fate as the Haitians as their world, too, crumbled about them. Reading this book, I felt as deeply for the Haitians as I do for the sufferings of the Jews in the Holocaust, or the Cambodians who died on the killing fields.

I must say though, that in spite of the horror, the book is a pleasure to

read because it is a little gem of good writing. It also opened my mind to a period in history that I had no knowledge of and raised the kinds of issues that need exploring.

Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, has written another heartbreaking novel. This time in The Farming of Bones, she takes us to the 1937 Dominican Republic where Trujillo decides to rid his country of the many Haitians who work in the cane fields. We understand the terror, persecution, and despair of those who are maimed, slaughtered. or deported. Amabelle Desirt, a young Haitian girl orphaned at age eight, is rescued by a Dominican family in whose home she is raised with their daughter, Valencia, and later becmes her maid. When Senora Valencia marries Pico, a colonel in Trujillo's army, Amabelle is the one to deliver her first child. Amabelle has promised herself to Sabastian, a cane worker on a nearby farm, and when she fears that he has been take by Trujillo's army, she gathers her few belongings and begins the long trek over the mountains in hopes of meeting him across the Dominican/Haitian border. What follows is a story of heartbreak, horror , and despair. It is a story of man's savagery in the face of prejudice and hate; it takes us to an unimaginable place where racial cleansing once more emerges to make a civilized person sick and ashamed of the human race. We follow Amabelle as we sympathize and empathize with her plight. We admire her spirit and mourn her losses. More than anything though, we suffer with her and applaude her endurance. Danticat writes beautiful, descriptive language that invites us to share the beauty of her native land as well as to experience the ravages perpetrated by Trujillo. Although written from the Haitian perspective, The Farming of Bones reminds us of Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies; both books reveal the injustice and terror of Trujillo's reign and only knowing of his death lends any justice at all.

Edwidge Danticat is a powerful writer who economizes her words but not her emotions. Her descriptions of life love and death are short, and poignant. Amabelle, the main character in this short novel lives in you. She takes you into a complex uncomfortable world where good does not follow good and where your destiny is out of your control. The interaction between the characters is very well presented. It creates tension and anticipation. You know that what is coming is not going to be pretty and you are not disappointed. . This novel is not for the faint of heart. It is a harsh story told in excellent style. Danticat gets an "A" for the Story and an "A+" for her writing. Danticat is already a mature writer who tells the true story of the massacre of thousands of Haitians at the "Bloody River". First, you cannot put the book down till it's over and then, you are so sorry that it has ended. It will be hard for Danticat to best " The Farming of the Bones" This book should be required reading for Haitians and Dominicans. This is History told in a Powerful Novel. P.S. I also loved Esmeralda Santiago's "America's Dream" Andre from Chappaqua, NY

This book pulled on so many of your emotions. It made you feel the same terror and passion that many of the characters felt. I found myself feeling emotions at a higher intensity then under normal circumstances. Danticat personified everything. From the Waterfall to the sugar cane with raw emotion. This book was so marvelous. My only regret was that the story did not last longer. The story was woven with the threads of reality which made it so much more horrid. As you realized this terrible acts really did in fact occur. All because of hatred for things you can't or don't wnat to understand. The strengh these poor isolated, cold and abandoned people felt. Danticat opens your eyes to this little known horror very similar in fact to the Holocaust and the modern day Kosovo crisis. Danticat constructed this story beautifully. And it is a must read for everyone who feels anything in their hearts!

This was a moving novel about surviving unimaginable atrocities and living life afterwards with all that you experienced. The novel can be divided into three sections: Life before, during and after your world is turned upside down. Mere days can change the rest of your life by seeing what cruelty people are capable of. I read some of the negative reviews and I don't honestly understand their criticisms. I found Ms. Danticat's language to be lyrical and beautiful and I didn't feel distant from the story. Nor did I find it lacking in comparison to Color of Purple despite the fact that these two books don't have much in common besides both authors being good. I would recommend this book to any readers who want to get a glimpse of life outside our privileged borders.

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I read The Farming Bones and thoroughly enjoyed it. The author's style of writing was almost poetic and made for a light flow, despite the seriousness of the turmoil the characters face and the time period in which the book is set in. I was carried into Amabelle's world and found myself crying during her most tragic moments and yet hopeful just as she was despite the circumstances she was in. At times the main character seemed to just float through moments in her life, not really seeming to be there as anything more than an observer, however, I took that to be a part of how she dealt with the realities around her, sort of a survival mechanism. There were moments I wished the book would pick up pace, but also found that the slowness of the book added to the charm and overall effect of the book.

The Farming of Bones is Edwidge Danticat's second novel. It tells the story of a special group of people, the "nameless and faceless ones," caught in the grip of political terror.

Set in 1930s Hispaniola, this novel tells the tale of the dominance of the Dominican Republic over Haiti even though the two countries share a common ancestry: both countries are populated by people descended from African slaves who were imprisoned there in order to work on the sugar plantations. Despite the abolition of slavery and the coming of independence, the Dominican Republic has always been the economic leader of the island. Haitians, in a effort to simply survive, would cross the border in order to work in the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic.

In 1937, Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator friendly with the United States, responded to exhortations of racism, and Dominican soldiers routed Haitian workers from their quarters at the sugarcane plantations, either driving them back across the border into Haiti or massacring them together with their families. Because the murder victims were the descendants of slaves, the massacres attracted scant attention in the United States; they are but a footnote in most history books.

Danticat wisely chooses not to dwell on political motivations; The Farming of Bones is a powerful book of raw emotion, revealing the power of language and how language, as a single factor, can bind one person to another, bind one to a country and how it can be used to destroy those bonds. In The Farming of Bones, Danticat shows us the other side of "the language of love," the side that can rend the flesh and destroy the spirit.

The heroine of this book is Amabelle Désir, a young servant to a prominent Dominican family. Sensing the terror to come, Amabelle leaves the plantation and joins other Haitians who are attempting to escape, including her own lover, a cane cutter named Sebastien. It is during Amabelle's flight over the mountain range dividing the two countries and the crossing of the Massacre River that the true meaning of political terror becomes clear.

Danticat writes in a unique style and her prose is tart and spare yet still formal and poetic. The reader gains admission to the private world of Amabelle and the mystical undercurrent of her subconscious. It is when Amabelle is speaking of Sebastien, however, that Danticat's prose rings with the full power of her lyricism: "Silence to him is like sleep, a close second to death." Sebastien, himself, says, "...we must talk to remind each other that we are not yet in the slumbering dark, which is an endless death."

Language, says Danticat, serves to identify a people, either through the use of specific words and phrases or through accents and idioms that give the listener a clue as to where the people live. It is language that ultimately betrays the Haitians, more specifically a simple little word like parsley (perejill). Although the Haitians and Dominicans have identical or nearly identical ancestories, the Haitians cannot pronounce this one simple word in the way the Dominicans do. When tricked into saying, "perejill," the Haitians unwittingly betray themselves and their homeland, only to die in a river made red with their blood.

The book's most chilling scene tells of a priest who is punished for helping the Haitians cross the border. His Dominican captors manage to inflict a punishment of the most cruel and unbelievable kind: using extreme physical torture, the Dominicans literally force their words into the brain of the priest. The priest then parrots the the words of Trujillo: "...our country is the proudest birthright I can have...We as Dominicans, must have our separate traditions and our own way of living...If not...our children...will have their blood completely tainted unless we defend ourselves now, you understand?" The priest repeats the speech mindlessly, unable to stop. He has been robbed of his own words and they have been replaced by the words of his torturers.

Danticat, through The Farming of Bones brings the little known slaughter of Haitian sugarcane cutters vividly to life. She speaks for those who cannot speak and mourns for those who have heretofore gone unmourned. As she writes, "Famous men never truly die. It is only the nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke into the early morning air."

The Farming of Bones is not light, pleasant reading. It is an enormously powerful book filled with raw emotion and brutal honesty. Danticat writes for those who seek to know, for those for whom truth is of supreme importance. Danticat knows that while it is important to understand the motivations of those who kill and torture, it is even more important to discover and reveal the names of the "nameless ones." For only then will their stories be told and remembered.

In the spirit of nearly every novel that I love, I had the most difficult time getting past the first 30 pages. I, like many lead a life full of work and activities, usually the only things I read are very short articles in magazines. This book is not intended for light reading. Danticat is almost in the category of Toni Morrison. If you do not wish to think, do not pick this one up. However, if you enjoying thought-provoking literature that will forever remain in your memory, buy this one now.