The Farming of Bones

by Edwidge Danticat

It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border. Amabelle, orphaned at the age of eight when her parents drowned, is a maid to the young wife of an army colonel. She has grown up in this household, a faithful servant. Sebastien is a field hand, an itinerant sugarcane cutter. They are Haitians, useful to the Dominicans but not really welcome. There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed. But there are always rumors.

Amabelle loves Sebastien. He is handsome despite the sugarcane scars on his face, his calloused hands. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror enfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins.

The Farming of Bones is about love, fragility, barbarity, dignity, remembrance, and the only triumph possible for the persecuted: to endure.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical, Book Club, Novels, School, Literary Fiction

312 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 1998

About the author

Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. Her work has dealt with themes of national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics. In 2023, she was named the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Samadrita · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as there's solace to be derived from bestowing much needed attention on non-white-male authored narratives which speak of the ones snubbed callously by literature, on no grounds can poor story-telling be excused. As if page after page of oblique but trite commentary on ethnic conflict, colonialism, slavery and racism lathered on to the bare bones of a plot was not enough, Danticat makes the task of finding redeeming aspects even harder with her stilted, cardboard cutout characters whose continuing plight at the hands of plantation owners, corrupt lawmakers and the military men fails to evoke any empathy. Top it all off with a toneless, drab narrative voice with sporadic stretches of brilliance and what you have is a beautifully-titled novel which never lives up to the promise it shows in the beginning and ends up becoming mere misery porn.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I looked to my dreams for softness, for a gentler embrace, for relief from the fear of mudslides and blood bubbling out of the riverbed, where it is said the dead add their tears to the river flow.

It is not often one reads a story with death and loss as its theme and still find beauty in the melancholy. This harrowing story balances its sadness with love interludes. Sensuality appears through bursts of lyricism, spurts of softness within pointed language.

Haitian lovers, Annabelle and Sebastien, find their worlds intertwined as they both try to make it in a new land; one a cane worker, the other a housekeeper. They sneak off to lemon-grass scented days and nights, each some form of solace for the other who has been forced to abandon family. Friends remain loyal to each other in a world where they are misunderstood. Within their community nicknamed Algeria, Haitian transplants settle in the Dominican Republic and try to make a living as cane workers. Sugarcane is a major product, as it is used to make the sugar for the popular cafecitos and dulce de leche.

The cane life, travay tè pou zo, the farming of bones.

This novel highlights the Haitian-Dominican conflict, the Parsley Massacre of 1937 that is rarely visited. Coexisting on the island of Hispaniola, there are deeply woven cultural and social differences between the two regions that have caused longstanding pain. It is an interesting read, scary even, particularly during a time when it is not just the "third world" but the western world that is currently being divided by social differences. Try to decipher what caused this uproar and you'll be left stunned at the ignorance of people.

Sometimes, after loss, the survivor finds it difficult to live in the present, or perhaps go on as if he or she has forgotten his or her loved one. Sometimes the survivor finds it difficult to move on. The narrative flow is a reflection of this. Yet there remains a symbol hidden in some small act together, some routine to be remembered, and this becomes the silver lining for grief management. For Annabelle, it is the waterfall. I didn't care too much for Claire of the Sea Light, but I'm glad that Danticat won be back with the illuminating prose in this novel.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1937 General Rafael Trujillo, dictator of The Dominican Republic, ordered the slaughter of Haitians living and working in his country. They were rounded up and slaughtered with machetes, made to plunge off high cliffs into the sea, and shot in the back of the head during forced kneeling.

Edwidge Danticat tells the story of Amabelle Desir, a Haitian girl living and serving a Dominican family, who is caught up in the horrors of this massacre. She tells the story with such skill that I felt I was present and bearing witness; wanting to scream and fight back, but forced to just move forward with the other sad survivors who had witnessed too much.

I must have been standing over her body for several hours. Wherever I go, I will always be standing over her body. No farewell could be enough.

I was reminded of reading In the Time of the Butterflies and being shocked at the history that had occurred so close to American shores, but of which I was so entirely uninformed. Trujillo visited upon the people of the Dominican Republic the kind of terrors and injustices that we associate with Hitler, Stalin and Ceausescu, and yet for me, before reading these two books, he was just a name, just a footnote.

While Trujillo appeared in the flesh in In the Time of the Butterflies, Danticat has brought him to life here without ever showing his face. This is not his story, but Amabelle’s, and that of all the innocents who perished and did not live to tell their own stories. The writing is vivid, moving, deeply personal, and sometimes beautiful.

His name is Sebastien Onius. Sometimes this is all I know. My back aches now in all those places that he claimed for himself, arches of bare skin that belonged to him, pockets where the flesh remains fragile, seared like unhealed burns where each fallen scab covers a deeper wound.

The themes Danticat addresses are so universal and ever-present. These are Haitians, but they could be any displaced people. Many of these people were born in the Dominican Republic but of Haitian descent, all of them were established there with jobs and homes. When the survivors returned to Haiti, they must have struggled, as emigrants do, with how to forge a new identity and how to build a new life, especially in the face of the losses they had endured. Such strength is awe-inspiring.

I hope I never cease to be shocked at the horrors men are willing to visit upon one another or the presence of so much evil in the hearts of those who only care for power and never for people. I wonder if we can ever mourn the losses enough.

Everyone should read this! 5++ stars.

[Debbie W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why I chose to listen to this audiobook:
1. after reading GR friend, Kathryn in FL's review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I added it to my WTR list; and,
2. February 2025 is my "C and D Authors" Month!

Praises:
1. author Edwidge Danticat's historical fiction introduced me to the 1937 Parsley Massacre, a genocide against Haitian laborers led by Dominican Republican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, an event that I was totally ignorant about. We follow Amabelle Desir, a Haitian woman working as a servant in Dominican Republic when all hell breaks loose! Unable to meet up with her lover, Sebastian, Amabelle is exposed to many horrific events as she tries to escape;
2. through Amabelle's eyes, Danticat describes how thousands of Haitians were hacked to death and thrown into the Massacre River, all within a week's time;
3. I learned why "parsley" played such a pivotal role in this massacre;
4. Danticat develops her characters well - I could feel their pain and anguish; and,
5. narrator Adenrele Ojo tells this story with true authenticity.

Overall Thoughts:
This is a story about love and survival. If you, like me, were unaware of this ugly corner in history, I highly recommend reading this book!

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edwidge Danticat has written a work of literary fiction centered around the 1937 massacre of Haitians who were working in the Dominican Republic. This was done under the direction of the Dominican dictator Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo. The island of Hispaniola is divided by a river into two countries--the Dominican Republic which had been colonized by Spain, and Haiti which had a mix of people of French and African ancestry. Tensions ran strong between the two small Caribbean countries.

The narrator is Amabelle Desir, a Haitian working as a maid in the Dominican Republic. Her parents had drowned when she was a child, and she was taken in by a Spanish Dominican family. Amabelle tells the story in chapters that alternate between actual events, and her troubling dreams and memories. She loves Sebastien, a Haitian worker in the cane fields, but he is captured by the Dominican soldiers during the massacre. Amabelle tries to return to Haiti with another group of people, and is seriously beaten. The story continues with Amabelle's life in Haiti, and her search to find Sebastien.

The title, The Farming of Bones, comes from the sugar cane stalks which sound like chicken bones breaking. After the massacre of twenty thousand Haitians, it took on a new meaning as skeletons were found in mass graves and in the rivers.

This was a beautifully written book with strong images, sensual language, and characters one could care about. It was heartbreaking to read about the genocide of the Haitian workers, but the book helps us to understand the conflicts that still remain in the Caribbean today.

[Layla Strohl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book from a guy on the street for a $1. It had no cover and no description except for a handwritten inscription which read, "Ben, know I am your Amabelle and you my Sebastian. Here's to holding on tight in the middle of the night. I love you, Sarah".

Being a complete sucker for open declarations of love, I bought the book.

Farming for Bones is absolutely not at all the sappy love story I thought it would be. It is a beautifully written story that follows a group of Haitians through the genocide that took place during the Parsley Massacre in the late 1930's. Danticat's style, which is simple, clean and poetic, illustrates the chaos and fear of the characters without creating chaos on the page for the reader. It is as though, in order for Danticat to relay this story which is filled with fear, violence and death, she must maintain a calm, firm less emotional tone in her writing, as the events described need no additional touches for affect - they are grim and gruesome enough as is. The real tragedy is not just the mass genocide and torture that so many Haitians endured, but the emotional suffering and grief of the of the survivors to persevere, despite the many lost and missing family member and loved ones who never returned home.

Thanks to Ben for tossing his heartfelt gift in the trash (and thanks to Sarah for a great inscription). I don't think I would have ever found this on my own and that would have been a shame because this book is is truly excellent!

[Jon Adcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 ½ stars. To give context to the story, I’m going to start this review with a brief history lesson: located in the Caribbean, the Hispaniola island is basically split in half, with the former French colony of Haiti on one side of the island and the former Spanish colony of the Dominican Republic on the other. During the 30’s, Rafael Trujillo came into power in the Dominican Republic, and, like so many other demagogues both before and after him, decided to demonize and scapegoat some of his country’s citizens (in this case, Haitian immigrants). From a speech he gave in 1937:

“For some months, I have traveled and traversed the border in every sense of the word. I have seen, investigated, and inquired about the needs of the population. To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations by Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labor, I have responded, 'I will fix this.' And we have already begun to remedy the situation. Three hundred Haitians are now dead in Bánica. This remedy will continue.”

From October 2, 1937 to October 8, 1937, government troops attempted to purge the country of Haitians in what became known as the Parsley Massacre. According to reports, Dominican soldiers would hold up a sprig of parsley and ask their captives what it was. How they pronounced the Spanish word for parsley (perejil) determined whether they would live or die. Spanish speaking, native Dominicans would be able to pronounce the Spanish trill in the word, but French and Creole speaking Haitian immigrants would not be able to (and would be killed). Estimates vary on how many Haitians were slaughtered, with some estimates being as high as 20,000.

The Farming of Bones is set during the Parsley Massacre and while this attempt to document the events that occurred is commendable, the book is not completely successful. The book is narrated by Amabelle Desir, a Haitian servant in an upper-class Dominican household and this first person narration is one of the weaknesses of the book. Frankly, Amabelle’s life and the events that occur around her in the first half of the book are mundane. Her Dominican employers treat her fairly and the class differences almost play out as a Dominican version of Downton Abbey. While there are a few established, well off Haitians, most of the Haitians in Amabelle’s orbit are either domestic servants or laborers in the cane fields. While poor, these Haitians do not experience overt prejudice nor are they subjected to brutal treatment. Beyond a few references to rumors and a few snatches of Trujillo’s speeches, there is little evidence of the societal tensions that would suddenly explode in an orgy of violence and genocide. I would have liked more explanation and foreshadowing in these early sections of the novel. By limiting events to only Amabelle’s perceptions and interactions a broader understanding of why things spiraled out of control so quickly is lost. The transition from domesticality to terror is too abrupt.

Once the Parsley Massacre begins, the novel swiftly becomes a testament to man’s inhumanity to man as Amabelle and several others attempt to flee to the border and stumble across the death and destruction left in the wake of the genocidal purge. This section is tense and heartbreaking at times.

While symbolism abounds in the book, Danticat’s prose style is clear and accessible. Her characterizations are good and Amabelle, in particular, comes across as a fully realized, three-dimensional person. The novel reduces a genocidal event to the experiences of a single person and while that may create a sense of intimacy and immediacy, it loses the deeper understanding that a broader view could have given.

Still, the book is worth reading if only as a reminder of the power of demagoguery. It shows the effect that pandering to the fears, prejudices, and base instincts of a population can have. Know this: whenever someone stands in front of a microphone and attempts to cast some of those around us as “The Other”, they’re participating in an ugly tradition that stretches back through Rwanda, Auschwitz, the cane fields of the Dominican Republic, and beyond.

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I know what will happen," he said. "You tell the story, and then it's retold as they wish, written in words you do not understand, in a language that is theirs, and not yours."

This is a story carried out of a genocide. It's fiction loaded down heavily with the kind of truth you wish you didn't have to believe - maybe that's why the lyrical sentences are so full of images of sinking, falling and opening, of spaces and flesh pressed, distorted, cut.

There is nuance here. Our Haitian Black woman narrator is impromptu midwife to the White Dominican woman she serves, and the twins she delivers gather subtle and stark signs of racism & sexism around them in shapes of compromised love, complicated grief... I wanted to know what became of the children, and I know Danticat was making me feel with Amabelle there, while she was struggling with survival and through the primacy of other loyalties.

If Danticat allows us to imagine that Amabelle's emotional ties are in tension across national and class boundaries, her focus is clearly on Amabelle's own reality and the lives of the sugar cane workers. This narrative belongs to a servant and worker class of Haitians; even though its sweep is broad and generous, class and national solidarities are at its core. Shared knowings and defiant, deep valuing of each other among Anabelle's people drive the cooperation that saves lives and the storytelling that saves memories.

Danticat teaches that memories are a mixed blessing. Most of them, in this book, are painful. But the sweet ones, just as necessary, are a saving grace...

Oh and as a love story, this is gorgeous.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at a vendor table while at the 2013 Harlem Book Fair . I had never heard of the author and the cover wasn’t particularly attractive but, after reading the back, I checked the price. I figured for $3, it was worth it. It was.

I enjoyed this book from the beginning, but about half way through “the slaughter” begins and the book really takes off. Killings are described in graphic detail, but the story is written in a way that it’s not too much.

All the characters find themselves faced with the most challenging decisions of their lives. How long would you wait for the love of your life to return if he or she went missing? What would it take for you to betray someone to whom you’ve always been loyal? How much could you take before your faith wavered?

The last several chapters came together nicely and the conflicts of all the characters come to some sort of resolution. The end of the story truly felt like the end of the story. But it left me wanting more from Danticat. And when I finished my second book by her I knew I loved this author :-)

Historical fiction books always make me go and do research to learn the facts about the actual event. The Haitian genocide on which the actual historical event that was central to the story.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this wonderful, yet harrowing novel of the Parsley Massacre of 1937 that took place in Haiti under the Trujillo Regime is like reading a poet in top form. I first became familiar with novels having Trujillo as its subject, and veiled antagonist from having read Julia Alvarez's classic "In the time of the Butterflies" and from Junot Diaz's dazzling "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao".

Trujillo, my friend was one bad dude. Ms. Danticat's take on the horrors of Trujillo is written with quiet sensibility, full of heartache and sadness.

The protagonist, Annabelle is separated from her lover Sebastien, after El Jefe's decree that ethnic cleansing of Hispanola must begin; emulating that of his European counterparts, Adolf Hitler, and Franco. Annabelle's story is a slow burner of sadness that rises and peaks with violence, just like the river that pervades much of the novel's setting.

Rising, and flowing, ebbing with sadness and violence, with blood imagery spilling into its pages, it definitely is a tragic read.

[Jen Fordyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is keeping me awake at night. It is beautiful, even in anguish.

(later)

Ok, I finished. While I was waiting to get on an airplane at 9 a.m. I was waiting in line and reading and crying and handing the airline man my boarding pass and crying and finding a seat between these two nice ladies and crying. It was so sad...but also lovely.

[Ratko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Овом роману привукла ме је његова историјско-политичка тема, односно, оно што је у описима назначивано. Главна тема романа требало је да буде етничко чишћење хаићанских радника из Доминиканске Републике спроведено почетком октобра 1937. године, по наређењу диктатора Рафаела Трухиља, познато као Parsley massacre.

Пратимо причу младе Хаићанке Амабел, која ради као кућна помоћница у једној добростојећој породици из суседне Доминиканске Републике, која је за многе Хаићане због бољег економског статуса „обећана земља“ (нешто као Немачка за наше просторе). Она се дружи са другим својим сународницима, који су такође из нижег социјалног миљеа и углавном су запослени као радници на плантажама шећерне трске. Први део, дакле, спомиње тај обични живот из перспективе главне јунакиње, како се она обрела ту, шта је било са њеном породицом, породицом њеног вереника и слично.
Онда се одједном, као гром из ведра неба са „обичних“ ствари прелази на протеривање Хаићана из Доминиканске Републике, описе бежања, масакр и убиства. Нема никаквог постепеног грађења неповерења и тензије „домаћих“ према „странцима“, нити су осенчени неки разлози за то; убачени су понеки делови Трухиљових говора, али ми је некако тај аспект остао недоречен. Језик којим Дантика пише је једноставан и јасан. Сви ти описи су упечатљиви, премда на нашим просторима разних масакара није недостајало, тако да тешко да код овдашњих читалаца могу да изазову неки већи шок.
У сваком случају, књига ме је подстакла да нешто више сазнам/истражим о делу света о коме не знам пуно, као и о историјским догађајима који су код нас потпуно непознати, а веома су значајни за тај део света.

Едвиџ Дантика (Edwidge Danticat) је списатељица пореклом са Хаитија, која живи у САД, за коју сам први пут чуо по пријему Neustadt награде (тзв. америчког Нобела) 2018. године. Колико сам успео да истражим, на српском је објављен само један њен роман „The Dew Breaker“ (преведeн као „Крвник“, у издању Порталибриса), уз још понеку причу разбацану по књижевној периодици. За „The Farming of Bones“ се каже да није њена најбоља књига, тако да ћу јој се у неком тренутку сигурно вратити.

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The slaughter is the only thing that is mine enough to pass on.”

Beautifully written historical fiction about the 1937 Haitian massacre in Hispaniola. Haitian workers had emigrated to the Dominican Republic, many to serve as sugar cane cutters. Protagonist Amabelle Désir, a Haitian orphan, is a domestic servant to a wealthy Spanish family. She has formed a relationship with one of the cane cutters, Sebastién, and they plan to marry. She fulfills the role as preserver of memories, and this story is her testimony. While she tells her personal story, she also speaks for the many voiceless victims of the massacre that took place under Trujillo’s regime.

The story is told in a linear fashion. It is interspersed with chapters told in present tense that allow the reader a glimpse into Amabelle’s interior world, as she attempts to work through her traumatic experiences. These sequences include haunting dreams, disjointed memories, and painful reflections. They are short and in bold type. It feels like a creative way to reflect the delay between the onset of a harrowing experience and the ability to speak about it. And the reader is relying upon Amabelle to tell a coherent story.

This is historical fiction of the highest quality. It is easy to empathize with the characters. While there is much death, there is also hope. The conclusion, which could have easily gone awry, is deftly handled and provides a sense of closure. It is superbly crafted. This book will linger in my memory.

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not very impressed by my first Danticat novel at all. The Farming of Bones is written as a sort of romance, sort of historical fiction novel, sort of bildungsroman, and this hodge podge of indecision made for an incredibly dull reading experience. I was disappointed because the action swirls around the incredibly violent Parsley Massacre of 1937 in which tens of thousands of Haitians were slaughtered by Dominican troops and civilians on orders given by the dictator Rafael Trujillo (which is only vaguely explained in the novel.) Sounds like a heavy but ultimately gripping and rewarding narrative right....?

Yah, didn't happen here...the difficult thing with historical fiction is that an author must skirt the line between imagined events and historical facts. The failure here is that the romantic story at the forefront is way too quaint and intimate (and honestly uninspired and a little writer's-workshoppy) for such a violent and expansive historical backdrop. Ultimately the elements of the story converge in a sloppy and unsatisfying way.

All the real excitement of the novel happens in the background, which left me totally not caring about what happened to any of the characters (they don't even react to seeing people brutally murdered before their eyes; how??). This, added to the fact that sentence by sentence it lacks depth and is pretty poorly written in places. I kept comparing this novel to The Book of Night Women (reading later this month) which is a novel that puts the reader right into the devasting and brutal line of fire. Reading this just felt like being splashed with lukewarm water.

[Kathryn in FL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I read this years ago and it still echos in my mind. The characters were challenged by great terror and yet, they did not sacrifice their love for one another but fought like only those with a great purpose will.
Set aside an entire day (depending on how quickly you read), this will be a book that demands to be completed from the time you read the first page.
Ms. Danticat has phenomenal talent and I think it is best showcased in this particular story.

[Dusty Myers · Rating 2 out of 5]

A diasporic novel in line with Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K and McCarthy's The Road. Which is to say, it follows people trying to escape turmoil, in this case Amabelle and other Haitian workers as they try to escape the Dominican Republic during the "Parsley massacre" of 1937—called such due to the shibboleth used by the Dominican soldiers to determine a person's heritage. (They'd hold up a sprig of parsley and ask, "What is this?" and if you answered in the Haitian Creole, you died.)

All this shit I had to Wikipedia, but it's there, in the book. Like, the book is a great historical account of the five days or so that the massacre lasted, and for this I have to give it a lot of credit. It's peculiar that Danticat selects such a narrow scope for his novel; Amabelle's our narrator, and so we see only her immediate world throughout the book, and thus any figures such as the Generalissimo or the Dominican army are shadowy figures relegated to the novel's margins. But then again, such is the experience of massacres/disasters from a victim's viewpoint. Danticat's novel isn't so much about the massacre itself as it is about the massacre's effect on people like Amabelle—people who for a time lived on two sides of a border, forced one day to choose one or the other.

The novel opens with the birth of twins (Amabelle works in the Dominican Republic as a midwife), and a car accident that has killed a Haitian cane worker. It still remains unclear what this accident is doing in the novel. The way it's presented, it seem like what's to come is a novel about two different communities clashing over this event. But once the massacre comes, decreed from on high, there's little time or interest in arguing over justice for the dead man's family. And nothing ever comes of it.

A struggle to get through. Very little going on on the sentence level. POV in straightforward delivery. I wouldn't recommend the book.

[Savvy · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 all have names and faces.

[Ana Ovejero · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.'

This story tells the masacre of Haitains in Dominican Republic in 1937. These two countries are divided by a river, a borderline easy to cross by thousands of peasants looking for work harvesting the sugarcanes. Here is where we find Amabelle, a young Haitian who works in the house of Señora Valencia since she was a child, becoming an orphan as her parents died trying to cross the river/border.

She loves Sebastian. She delivers Señora Valencia's babies. She talks with Papi, as he listens to the radio, trying to get news from Spain, involved in war. During the first part of the book, we get the daily life in the Dominican Republic, people's traditions and beliefs.

A car accident tells us that the situation of the Haitians is pretty unstable. Suddenly, danger arrives and the atmosphere changes completely, becoming the book a page-turner, the reader escaping alongside the narrator, feeling the edge of the machetes, the burning of whole villages.

The mention of vultures clouding the sky gives us the exact measure of the killing; survivors retelling what they have been witnesses of; the reader grasping the horror developing unstoppably.

The memories of the survivors become the collective history written in the wind, the dead kept alive by those who remember them, by those who went through hell and stand alive, a journey that has no end.

[Cherisa B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The heartbreaking story of a young Haitian woman who survived the Parsley Massacre in the DR in 1937. Trujillo's vilification of immigrants he imported to help in the sugarcane fields to justify the genocide is the same ancient sickening story of power and tyranny and blood that we've heard and read about myriad times. Danticat does a fine job with her telling of the Dominican manifestation with the story of the orphan Amabelle.

3 1/2 stars

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two-point-five stars
This book really wants to be "literary" fiction, but it lacks the necessary warmth and depth. The characters are flat and underdeveloped, such that it's hard to feel sorrow for their suffering. The only way I could work up any kind of caring was to remind myself that these characters had real-life counterparts who did in fact suffer the atrocities inflicted by Trujillo.
The author seems to assume a lot of prior knowledge on the part of the reader about the events portrayed. The information provided is seriously inadequate. I'm still not really sure exactly what happened, except that Generalissimo Trujillo ordered the large-scale slaughter of Haitian immigrant workers in the Dominican Republic in 1937.
An easy enough read, and I wouldn't say it's terrible. Just oversimplified and unsatisfying.

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew nothing about the Haitian massacre in the 30's before reading this book. It is similar to the tales of horror told by Rwandan survivors. Mans' inhumanity to man.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

When one reads the news, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that despite all the good things people do, humankind's capacity to do evil to one another and to depersonalize one another is virtually limitless. When one reads literature, one realizes that this phenomenon is not unique to the present but has existed throughout the entirety of human history. This is not a happy realization; but it does contain a sliver of a silver lining -- apparently, we somehow persevere and carry on as a people despite our inherent inability to refrain from greed, envy and violence. Time and time again, we are given a chance to do better and time and time again we fail. Still, there is hope that one day we will learn and will get it right. Ms. Danticat's gut-wrenching book is about one of those times in history when we failed: 1937's parsley massacre, or el corte, or kout kout-a, when between 12,00o and 35,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic were massacred by the Dominican army and civilians. This story is told through the eyes and in the voice of one Haitian woman who, through a sad of series events is living in the Dominican Republic until the kout kout-a, at which point she returns to Haiti, losing everything that is important to her in the process. Ms. Danticat's writing is beautiful even as she recounts horrific events. And it is a testament to hope, perseverance and survival. But it pulls no punches and never takes the easy way out. By the time you have finished this book, you will feel older, wearied and depleted but you will not regret the journey despite its cost.

[Huy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Văn chương đôi lúc có thể phơi bày những câu chuyện về lịch sử của một cuốn chiến tranh mà nếu không phải người trong cuộc thì mau chóng bị lãng quên mất, về những đất nước quá xa xôi mà tiết học lịch sử chẳng có thời gian để đề cập, về những phận người mà cuộc sống đã vĩnh viễn thay đồi mà có lẽ chẳng liên quan gì đến cuộc sống của chúng ta hiện tại.
Mình cực kỳ thích những tranh minh hoạ trong cuốn sách này, và "cuộc chiến rau mùi" cũng khiến mình khá bất ngờ vì lần đầu tiên được nghe nói đến. Bản chất chiến tranh rốt cuộc vẫn mãi không thay đổi, và lí do để bắt đầu chúng cũng chẳng thể đổi thay.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a tough read, maybe made more so by what was happening in the USA as I read it.

This book delivers a fictionalized account of the Parsley Massacre, an event that took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937 where the nationalists decided the Haitians (who were mostly in country to work fields and were considered to be only slightly useful and were barely tolerated) had to go. Because skin tones were often similar, the way the DR identified the Haitians was to carry parsley and ask them to tell them what it was (Haitians, whose ancestors were from Africa, did not pronounce it the same as those from the DR whose ancestors were Spanish). I didn't even know such an event had occurred until I read this book.

So, basically, this book just made me realize people have never really needed skin color as an excuse to hate one another, and that nationalists have just been trash since forever.

The loss, the grief, the pain of not knowing the fate of loved ones—all these things combined to make this a painful experience. Sometimes reading was too much and I'd have to set it down, then I was hesitant to pick it up again.

Danticat's prose is—as it was in Breath, Eyes, Memory—beautiful and sparse, but at times cuts sharp with bone-deep accuracy.

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1937, Amabelle, an orphaned Haitian woman working in the Dominican Republic, dreams of returning to Haiti with her lover Sebastien, a sugarcane cutter (the scar-inflicting “bones” of the title). Instead, they are both caught up in the racist anti-immigrant furor stirred up Trujillo, and the killing, which will be latter be known as the Parsley Massacre, or El Corte, begins. Amabelle flees, separated from Sebastien, and tries to forge a new life that is nothing like the one she dreamed of.

This is a deep and powerful novel. The characters are fully realized, the prose not complex, but dreamlike and richly evocative. The story is tragic, and important to tell (20,000 Haitians died in this massacre, though it is rarely remembered outside of Haiti), but the haunting message of the book is that “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.” Decades after the event, Amabelle cannot find closure; this is the tragedy of the survivor.

[S.R. Weems · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I immediately sank my teeth into the mango, letting the thick, heavy juices fill my mouth" (p. 21). So describes the experience of reading this book.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is told in the first person by Amabelle Désir. At the beginning of the novel she is a servant and the woman she serves is in labor, much earlier than anticipated. Amabelle safely delivers the twins before the doctor arrives. Amabelle is Haitian but is serving on the Dominican side of the island. She loves one of the cane workers, Sebastien.

On the day of the birth of the children, a Haitian can workder was run down and killed by the father of the twins as he hurried to be with his wife and to see the babies. We are left to believe that though it was probably an accident, nothing was done to avoid it. Amabelle says of Sebastien I knew he considered Joel lucky to no longer be part of the cane life, travay tè pou zo, the farming of bones.

I had trouble with about the first third of this. I remembered reading this author before and looked to see what I thought. Well, gosh darn, I gave that 2 stars mostly because of the writing style and the simplicity was in this one too. Danticat redeems herself when the novel tells of the genocide of the Haitians by Trujillo. It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.

Dear Dr. Claudine Gay: there is never any "context" that would make calling for the genocide of any race or ethnicity acceptable. You, of all people, should know this.

Most of the last half-plus was very compelling. I thought Danticat didn't know how to end the novel and the last chapter was weak. I said in my other review that I wouldn't be reading this author again. I hope I remember not to buy another title. This barely ascends into the 3-star group.

[Ming · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome and inspiring book. Danticat demonstrates how language can move a person and can describe the most horrific circumstances YET keep the reader from turning away. I could not and will not turn away from her stories or her writing. In her TED piece, someone described her writing as "healing by wounding." Yes!

Her writing is absolutely gorgeous...I finished yesterday, picked up two new books and could not read neither much because the lingering impact of Farming will not fade.

The only remedy is another Danticat book.

A favorite passage:

The cave is a grotto of wet moss, coral and chalk that looks like marble. At first you are afraid to step behind the waterfall as the water in all its strength pounds down on your shoulders. Still you tiptoe into the cave until all you see is luminous green fresco--the dark green of wet papaya leaves.... All you hear is water sliding off the ledge and crashing in a foamy white spray into the plunge pool below.

When the night comes, you don't know it inside the cramped slippery cave because the waterfall, Sebastien says, holds on to some memory of the sun that it will not surrender. On the inside of the cave, there is always light, day and night. You who know the cave's secret, for a time, you are also held captive in this prism, this curiosity of nature that makes you want to celebrate yourself in ways that you hope the cave will show you, that the emptiness in your bones will show you, or that the breath in your blood will show you, in ways that you hope your body knows better than yourself.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This one was a reread from my early Peace Corps days. At that point, I was acquainting myself with Dominican history, and was less preoccupied with Danticat's writing: a pity, since this is a beautifully rendered story.

What worked for me: the dreamy quality of the novel, particularly the dream sequences themselves. I loved the motif of seeking refuge and remembrance in dreams, complicated by the bitter truth that they often bring the horrors of wakefulness to life in a bizarre, enhanced reality.

I also liked the framing of the story with the birth of twins (one dark, one light...it's a bit heavy handed but she makes her point) in a novel about two nations that share an island and an involved history. Danticat invests great care in the symbols she uses throughout the book.

What didn't quite work for me: the same thing? Beyond the dream sequences, the novel itself had a sort of surreal quality; even before the Parsley Massacre, Amabelle is living in a suspended, benumbed state, which is translated beautifully in Danticat's eerie, often lovely, prose. But in several instances it kept me from fully inhabiting the plot and understanding the characters. Reading this book felt like being submerged in water (another of Danticat's mesmerizing motifs); I strained to really experience the full weight of what was happening. Again, I imagine this was quite intentional, and is actually a brilliant and proficiently executed technique. I can appreciate it, and even recognize that her words have worked their intended magic on me, but I didn't fully enjoy it.

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars - It is tough when I read a book that so many people simply adore. What should have been a heartbreaking narrative of a massacre of thousands of Haitians by the Dominican Republic government in 1937 left me cold. The characters of Amabelle, Sebastien, and Yves, and others were so flat and one-dimensional that I couldn't work up much interest in their fates as the horrors were occurring.

The narrator, Amabelle, was part of my part of the problem. Danticat employs dreamy sequences which detracted from the seriousness of the events for me. Amabelle dreams of the deaths of her parents in a flood years ago, and then she dreams of Sebastien after his purported death as well. Ultimately she seems almost too removed from the deaths as she recounts them. Even so, Amabelle can't move on to a new life beyond the basics of living and spends the rest of her life mourning Sebastien, wondering how others could let go of the bad things that happened. I could barely feel anything for Amabelle and the others who suffered which makes me sad since the events were historically based. I have loved other books by Danicat, but this one was not for me.