The Farming of Bones

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 Senora'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 Desir 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 Senora'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 Alegria 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. --Jean Lenihan

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, a passionate and profound novel of two lovers struggling against political violence

The Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian-born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season. However, hostilities toward Haitian laborers find a vitriolic spokesman in the ultra-nationalist Generalissimo Trujillo who calls for an ethnic cleansing of his Spanish-speaking country. As rumors of Haitian persecution become fact, as anxiety turns to terror, Amabelle and Sebastien's dreams are leveled to the most basic human desire: to endure. Based on a little-known historical event, this extraordinarily moving novel memorializes the forgotten victims of nationalist madness and the deeply felt passion and grief of its survivors.

* New York Times Notable Book
* Named one of the Best Books of the Year by People, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, and the American Library Association
* The author was nominated for a National Book Award and named one of the "20 Best Young Novelists" by Granta

"A remarkable new novel . . . Danticat writes in wonderful, evocative prose, and she is especially adept at treading the path between oppression and grace. At times, it's a particularly painful path, but, always, a compelling one." --The Boston Sunday Globe

"[With] hallucinatory vigor and a sense of mission . . . Danticat capably evokes the shock with which a small personal world is disrupted by military mayhem . . . The Farming of Bones offers ample confirmation of Edwidge Danticat's considerable talents." --The New York Times Book Review

"It's a testament to her talent that the novel, while almost unbearably sad, is still a joy to read." --Newsweek

Penguin Readers Guide Available

Dominican Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in 1937 ordered the slaughter of an estimated (historically documented) 40,000 Haitians and Dominico-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.


Farming of the Bones   July 16, 2003
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

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.


A clear voice among the madness   November 24, 1998
Linda Linguvic (New York City)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful

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.


Give Praise Where Praise Is Due!   December 28, 1999
19 out of 54 found this review helpful

Unfortunately I cannot give this book the praise I would like to give it. Both Ms. Danticat and I are young women of African decent, which means I bought her book for two reasons: the nation's leading reviewers promised me an excellent read, ("it holds its own to Withering Heights and the Color Purple") and I wanted to support the author. But after reading the book I'm utterly baffled as to how reviewers could compare the Farming of Bones to either of those brillant novels. Once I got past the lyrical first three pages, I had a hard time staying awake. I was told (by reviewers) the book was heartbreakingly sad, (and I'd like to assume the reviewers made those kinds of statements because the novel was an historically based account of the needless slaughter of thousands of Haitian cane workers)because none of Ms. Danticat's characters evoked the slightest sympathy from me. It's as if Ms. Danticat forgot to breathe life into them (her characters). They're hollow, and devoid of emotions, like bad acters in a recondite play. Still I'm not as much disappointed in Ms. Danticat as I am these 'big time reviewers.' I believe Ms. Danticat is young and has plenty of time to grow as a writer. However, saying she is an awesome talent when she's just not there yet does no one any good. It makes readers not pay any attenton to reviews. It cauterizes the author by having her think she 'has arrived' when in reality she has a ways to go. Ultimately I think giving praise where praise isn't due, is especially damaging to young writers of color because it breaks the chain of competition--which is something we all need to be our best.

I think Ms. Danticat does have talent to build on, but I think the editorial reviewers should really question why they gave Farming of Bones such rave reviews. It's mediocre novel at best (when you consider Ms. Danticat is young, bi-lingual and from one of the poorest countries in the world). But again those facts are outside ther rules of competition. Only when Ms. Danticat writes an excellent novel should those facts be considered--as a testimony to her strength, drive and developed talent.


Endurance and Hope in Haiti   February 8, 2000
Kay Mitchell (Pensacola Beach, Florida United States)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

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.