the farming of bones by edwidge danticat

The dictator at the time was a man named Rafael Trujillo who ordered his troops to massacre as many as 15,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. Yet Señora Valencia’s fear of death is nonetheless real-the two women’s experiences illustrate how death is universal, yet its influence is unique in each person’s life. The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat revolves around the true events that occurred in 1937 in the Dominican Republic. Señora Valencia’s comment that her previous greatest pain in life before childbirth was a bee sting highlights her privileged upbringing, and how different her experience has been from that of Amabelle, who has clearly suffered real loss and grief since childhood. More broadly, the opening hints that Amabelle’s parents aren’t around, and weren’t even when she was a fairly young girl-she has had to grow up among non-family members, and so her conception of home is complicated. As adults some of that friendship seems to remain, and yet Amabelle’s status as servant-shown bluntly in the way Don Ignacio shoves her-is never lost on her. It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border.

As a child, Amabelle and her mistress were in some ways more like friends, jumping on the bed together. The Massacre River runs along the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic it is named for a conflict that took place between France and Spain when they were the colonial powers on. Based on a little-known historical event, this extraordinarily moving novel memorializes the forgotten victims of nationalist madness and the deeply felt.

Yet the novel also shows how such clear lines can at times be blurry. In its opening the book establishes Amabelle’s social situation as a servant to Señora Valencia and Don Ignacio.

The farming of bones by edwidge danticat