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    The Farming of Bones
    The Farming of Bones
    The Farming of Bones
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Farming of Bones

    Written by Edwidge Danticat

    Narrated by Adenrele Ojo

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    It is 1937 and Amabelle Desir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastien are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.

    Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival-from one of the most important voices of her generation-is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 6, 2018
    ISBN9781977375865
    The Farming of Bones
    Author

    Edwidge Danticat

    Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah's Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures, Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She has written several books for young adults and children—Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama's Nightingale, and Untwine—as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.

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    Reviews for The Farming of Bones

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    • 4/5
      This is a beautiful love story interrupted by the cruel genocide of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Danticat is a poetic writer, whom writes in a descriptive language that invites us to share the beauty of her native land, rich with details of Haitian culture. It opened my mind to a period in history that I had no knowledge of and raised the kind of issues that need exploring. I found it very helpful to look up words and history in Wikipedia.com as I read the story. I found her technique of different voices (the telling of the present story and the reflections on the main character's inner voice) very creative. The interaction between the characters is very well portrayed. This is not light, pleasant reading or for the faint of heart. It is an enormously powerful book filled with raw emotion and brutal honesty. The first half of this story is truly riveting. You can tell that the story is leading up to something horrible, the massacre that takes place is where the story starts to slowly unravel. I felt like the story kind of fell apart at the end. There were moments I wished the book would pick up pace, the main character seemed to just float through moments in her life, not really seeming to be there as anything more than an observer,It is a harsh story that once finished, you remember the story, the plot, the characters, and the crisis in Haiti at the time. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, because it introduced me to a world I didn't know. Yet the overly formal poetic language distanced me from her plight. But still, it is worth reading.
    • 2/5
      Important historical event to know, but poor characterization and weak storyline.
    • 5/5
      Danticat tells a beautiful story about a horrific time. The Haitian Genocide had many victims one by the name of Amabell, whose narrative of loss, horror, fear, confusion, and also hope illuminated an event that is rarely talked about in history class. My high school only covered three genocides: the Holocaust, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides. This historical fiction adds a new event in history that should also be discussed in a high school history curriculum for its relevance to the importance that learning about these genocides have: how to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written story of a Haitian girl living in the Dominican Republic who experiences the 1937 Parsley Massacre. While most of the novel focuses on the weeks before and after the massacre it extends to her old age where we see the life-long effects of the trauma of her's and others' lives. I am still processing this novel. I thought is was extremely well-written; the characters and place came to life so clearly. While I hoped for a happy ending (as did Amabelle) I understand that the book would not only have been cheesy and ridiculous, but a horrible disservice to the Haitians who lived through the Massacre. In addition to memorializing the poorly-remembered/documented event, Danticat seems to be showing the reader that traumas (hurricanes, massacres, beatings, losing loved ones) don't just last for the moment but are with the survivors for life. Amabelle was haunted and could not really recover happiness though the opportunities were there. While not a tear jerker, the story was deeply sad, perhaps all the more because these types of tragedies happen all over the world constantly.
    • 4/5
      Danticat has one of those voices that just spills over you in a warm ooze. Be warned, though. She does not shy away from the harsh realities of extreme violence spurred on by dictatorial blind hatred. It begins slowly and subtly; almost a foreshadowing. A Haitian man, walking down the side of the road, is struck and killed by an automobile driven by a man rushing to get to the birth of his grandson. Consider this - the Haitian's corpse is unceremoniously thrown into a deep and dark ravine to cover up the accident. The Dominican Republican man continues his hurried journey home without a second glance. Days later said-same grandson dies in his sleep and is given an elaborate vigil, an orchid painted casket, and ceremonial burial of grandeur. These two families, the hit and run victim and the newborn babe, share the same level of shock and grief but only one is allowed to fully demonstrate their pain. The Haitian man doesn't even get a pine casket.This is just the beginning of Danticat's tale as we follow Haitian servant Amabelle Desir as she works in a wealthy Dominican Republic household. Life seems to be perfect considering the circumstances and her position in life. She is passionately in love with a cane worker she plans to marry and her employer was once a childhood playmate. They get along and Amabelle is treated well. Enter Domincan Republican dictator Rafael Trujillo and his plan to wipe out the entire Haitian population by mass genocide. Those who can not flee fast enough are subject to horrific torture before being hacked or burned to death. Amabelle's world is turned upside down when she is separated from her love as she tries to escape the massacre. The ending was perfect. I won't give it away, but in order for this book to mean something there was no other ending possible.
    • 1/5
      Glad I was able to get this from the library. Made it to page 25. I don’t care for the writing - it feels too contrived - like he’s trying to hard to be obscure and literary.
    • 5/5
      This is a fabulous book about the 1937 Parsley Massacre on the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. It happened close to the beginning of Trujillo's reign and was a massacre of Haitians living and working in the Dominican Republic. It's called the Parsley Massacre because parsley is a word that is pronounced differently between the Spanish and the Kreyol languages and was used to tell who belonged to what country. That is the historical background, but what makes this book great is the fantastic characters and the voice of Amabelle, the Haitian worker who escapes the massacre with her body but leaves her happiness behind. I thought the whole book was done so well - the writing, the characters, the setting, the pace - everything. I was afraid that a book with such a dark topic would be overwhelmingly sad to read, but Danticat has a way of making the sadness not seem dreary. I'll definitely read more of her books.
    • 4/5
      The Farming of the Bones by Edwidge Danticat was a surprising and eye-opening read for me. My first clue that this was going to take me somewhere that I would be uncomfortable to read about was when I realized the setting of this book was the Dominican Republic in 1937. Then I read of Generalissimo Trujillo, who I knew as the dictator who was responsible for the deaths of over 50,000 people. Yet this story opened gently, told in the words of the main character Amabelle Desir and gives no hint of the violence that is to come.The story overall is subtle and understated and builds slowly. This author writes of horrific events that came to be known as the Parsley Massacre in a sparse way yet vividly conveys the shock, disbelief and fear that was felt as Amabelle stumbles through this time of terror, searching for her loved ones and making her escape to Haiti.The Farming of the Bones is a story of loss and grief. I felt that this was a very personal novel for the author as it projected a feeling of giving evidence or bearing witness. For me, I found this story to be a hauntingly beautiful written example of man’s constant inhumanity to man.
    • 4/5
      The imagery is a surprise and delight. If I were to quote all the phrases that caught my imagination, this review would be too lengthy.Amabelle moves cautiously thru life since her parents' drowning when she was 8, and the first portion of the book reflects her distance, her yearning for her family's love. Still young, she is dependent on the approval of her employer (she works as a house maid in Dominica), and follows the lead of her lover. This all changes suddenly when the Dominican army (and civilians) began slaughtering all Haitians in their country. With a few other Haitians, she escapes across the river, back to Haiti. This section has some horrendous descriptions of the butchery that went on. Once across the river, time in the novel is compressed, and years pass. The novel shows more of Amabelle's reflections. Here, too, I find many sections I would quote. For this section alone, I will keep this book to reread and reflect on her words. "I did not want you to think love was not scarce because it is, that it flowed freely from everywhere, or that it was something you could expect without price from everyone." (p.208) "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." (p.266)
    • 5/5
      Amabelle is a Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic at the time of the conflict between the two countries in 1937. She was orphaned when her parents were swallowed by the river separating the two countries. She was taken in by a wealthy Dominican family, but it is no longer safe. She and her fiancee Sebastien are separated by the war. Yves helps see her back to safety in Haiti. Over the years, she clings to the hope of a reunion. I won't say more for fear of giving away the plot. This is a well-written novel that is touching. The author does a wonderful job building characters and in description. A very touching story.
    • 5/5
      Gutwrenching.
    • 4/5
      The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat chronicles the slaughter of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic in the 1930s. The story is told through the eyes of Amabelle Desir, a Haitian orphan who has lived most of her life as a servant to a well to do family on the border between the countries.Amabelle has already been through so much by the time the book opens. Her past is buried in her nightmares and soon she will be facing new dangers. Despite all the heartbreak, violence and death, Amabelle remains a survivor both in body and spirit.The book reminds me most of Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. Both have humanity in flight, violence brought on by state sponsored bigotry and a stubborn will to survive. The language is beautiful and heartbreaking.I learned of the book through Elise Blackwell's guest post. It was the first book on her list of recommended reads of historical fiction. She describes the genre as "lying to tell the truth." I plan to read through the remaining books that I haven't already read.Recommended by Elise Blackwell
    • 5/5
      "In the coal black darkness of a night like this, unless you are near it, the river ceases to exist, allowing you to imagine just for a moment that all of them - my mother and father, Wilner, Odette, and the thousands whose graves are here - died natural dealths, peaceful deaths, deaths filled with moments of reflection, with pauses and some regret, the kind of death where there is time to think of what we are leaving behind and what better things may lie ahead." (p. 308)The river that Danticat writes about separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. It is a river that many Haitians have crossed as they've gone to work as laborers in the cane fields of the Dominican Republic. It is also a river of sadness for Amabelle, a young Haitian woman whose parents drowned in the river when she was eight. She was found by a rich family from the Dominican Republic and has worked as a servant in their house since the tragedy. But in 1937, Generalissimo Trujillo decides to cleanse the Dominican Republic of the Haitians, and the lives of Amabelle, her lover Sebastien, and many other Haitians are put in danger. Danticat is one of my favorite authors. She excels at historical fiction, creating a story that not only pulls the reader into the dangers faced by Haitians at this time, but also stands on its own, with rich characters and a plot that rides atop the historical events that are its backdrop. The terror faced by Amabelle and the other Haitians is told in a stark, matter-of-fact way that never screams for attention, but lays bare their experiences and lets them speak for themselves. One of the most powerful parts of the book occurs not as the horrors are taking place, but afterward, as survivors share their stories. The ending of the book, which takes place years after the Haitians' flight, was somewhat disappointing to me, but it rang true, echoing the themes of the rest of the story. Like everything else that I've read by Danticat, I recommend this book highly.
    • 5/5
      Edwidge Danticat gives a voice to victims of the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Amabelle Désir was an orphaned Haitian on the Dominican Republic side of the river that divides the two nations when she was found and taken in by Don Ignacio and his daughter, Valencia. Amabelle and Valencia were playmates in childhood, but as adults, Amabelle is Valencia's servant. Amabelle is in love with Sebastien Onius, another Haitian refugee who works in the nearby sugarcane fields. Relations in the Dominican Republic between the Haitians and Dominicans are strained during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. As the hatred and violence increase it becomes more and more difficult for Haitians to trust any Dominicans, even those who have been their lifelong friends. Would it be safer for Amabelle and other Haitians to flee back to Haiti or to stay put, trusting their Dominican friends and neighbors to protect them from the soldiers?This is a novel of unfulfilled desire – Amabelle's desire for an impossible reunion with her long-dead parents, her desire for Sebastien, and most of all, her desire for belonging. She no longer has ties to Haiti, but she's an outsider in the Dominican Republic. No one in Alegría (“joy” in Spanish) is happy – not the Haitian field workers, not Don Ignacio, who is troubled by the actions of Trujullo's government, not Valencia, who shares no love with her husband, and not Amabelle. Edwidge Danticat's prose beautifully captures the pain, sorrow, and longing in a way that doesn't manipulate the reader's emotions. The descriptions of violence are not sensational. Without much effort, readers will become absorbed by Amabelle's story.When I was a child, I used to spend hours playing with my shadow, something my father warned could give me nightmares, nightmares like seeing voices twirl in a hurricane of rainbow colors and hearing the odd shapes of things rise up and speak to define themselves. Playing with my shadow made me, an only child, feel less alone. Whenever I had playmates, they were never quite real or present for me. I considered them only replacements for my shadow. There were many shadows, too, in the life I had beyond childhood. At times Sebastien Onius guarded me from the shadows. At other times he was one of them.
    • 4/5
      Fearsome beauty that exhausts itself easily, bursting with the sublime and falling back into a glazed stiltedness, like ... everybody's simultaneously a fountain of blood in the shape of a human and just a grumbling stock character after all. I start to get a sense of the strange Apollo–Dionysus dynamic of Hispaniola, the world's oldest black republic smack up against the colony of Spaniards and their tinpot dictator. Each group trying to shore up their sense that they're the real people and it's those others that are the savages or the bastards. Ending in massacre by the rich and the poor of the poorer. Dominican white privilege, where the sad old father who kills the black man's kid by accident wants the other man to take his sadness and put it with his own bereavement. Because the plantation owner is built to work hard and never fear that a succession of blessings isn't his birthright. The small gestures toward the republican attitude among the Haitians, even with endless thieves and ineffectualities in charge--religion to them, it seems, in Danticat's view, is flawed and leaking water as a life preserver, whereas in the Dominican, at least in 1934, it still helps cover a multitude of crimes.And oh, the trauma, the noncomprehension, the aging a century in a moment. And the sick irony that moral law is law, no more or less breakable, and when a Trujillo takes over "thou shalt not kill" becomes as ephemeral as the word perejil, its consequences as eternal as the speaking of that shibboleth, as eternal as separation.
    • 5/5
      While it has been described as "heavy" "depressing" and "a downer",this book is lyrical in its ability to describe unspeakable violence, revealing in its historical detail, stimulating in pushing the reader to search out more about this time and epoch. Seen through the eyes of a young Haitian orphan Amabelle Desir who was raised by a middle class Dominican family, and her lover Sebastian Onius, a Haitian who has come to the DR side of the island of Hispaniola seeking work in the cane fields (known as the farming of bones) we learn of the extreme racial tension between the Haitians, who speak a bastardized French knows as Kreyol, and the Dominicans who are of Spanish extraction and who also number among them many blacks of African descent. This story dwells almost completely on the massacre of Haitians who were living and working in the Dominican Republic during the reign of Generalissimo Trujillo, and certainly leaves this reader hungry to find out more of the background and history of the peoples of this island.The story of Amabelle's life before, during, and after the massacre is bone-chilling. It is difficult to imagine how any woman could survive such violence. Her inner strength seems to have come from her parents, who drowned crossing the river between the two countries, while she stood on the "wrong side" and watched it happen. In her mind, as she replayed the story over and over again, she heard her parents' encouragement, felt their love, and knew that someday she too would float off in the river to join them. In the meantime, she accepted her fate, used her inate talents, and became a trusted member of her adoptive family (although in a servant's role.)It was a difficult book to read, but it was so well written that once I picked it up and began, I found it even more difficult to put down. I finished it in less than a day. Edwidge Danticat has given us a striking picture of a woman's strength of character, and inspired us to look more into history to see what the world can do to insure no other women (or their menfolk) have to endure such atrocities in the future. It is not a book for the timid, nor is it a book for young readers, but by late high school, it is excellent reading for all who need to be exposed to the cruelty man has wreaked upon his fellow humans.
    • 4/5
      Amabelle is a Haitian orphan working as a maid, living in the town of Alegría in the Dominican Republic. Her lover Sebastian works as a cutter in the cane fields, a profession known as the farming of bones. Amabelle mostly naively ignores the signs of unrest around herThis is the Danticat I know and love, her writing evocative and sensual. Amabelle is a bit naive and distant from reality, but that quickly changes when reality bursts into her life with savage brutality and she is forced to flee the country that she has long considered her home. This is a beautiful and sad novel, based on events from real history. Really a lovely book.
    • 5/5
      The Farming of Bones is the story of Annabelle Désir and the progression of her life from young housemaid/midwife — to orphan — to lover — to survivor of the Dominican-Haitian Conflict of 1937, a massacre of enormous proportions. Her struggle is a memorable one. Even at a young age, Annabelle understood the degrees of separation between her life station and that of Senora Valencia. I liked that she was able to recognize the basic human instinct to love yet separate it from that of survival. Her love for Senora Valencia and her family was a nurturing one; and not self-sacrificing — as seemed to be the case with fellow servants Juana and Luis. We later watch her infatuation with sugarcane harvester Sebastien Onius clearly blossom into a mature love. The romance of their relationship is a respite from the hardships uncovered in this story. In my quest to learn more about Haiti, The Farming of Bones satisfied my curiosity to a degree. But I still need to know more. The use of copies of President Sténio Vincent’s letter from 1937 on the endpapers was a tasteful way to further engage the discriminating reader. This French document is a supporting one to this work. I will search for a translated English version. The cover art captures the scene of a cane field with the background of the waterfall to which Annabelle was continually drawn.Throughout the reading, I questioned the absence of a glossary to help the American reader understand Haitian terminology. But by the time I finished the book, I considered the omission of a glossary sheer genius. I wonder if Danticat knew the time would come when her works would be widely read. And did she feel it her native duty to merely pique the attention of her readers to the point of seeking further into the history of Haiti outside of her works?The author’s touching sentiment to her mother, in the Acknowledgements reads: To my manman, my muse, who taught me all about pèsi and other mysteries. Yes, I do always remember that these stories — and all the others — are yours to tell and not mine. I’ve interpreted the expression captured in the author’s jacket photo as an extension of this sentiment, saying, “I’ve poured my life into sharing the stories you told me. My heart is heavy with hope that you are pleased with my endeavor.”After viewing the author’s suggested reading list, I have selected The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier by Amy Wilentz as a trusted and documented source for more detail on the history of this country. I will read and review it in Spring, 2010. I can see myself reaching for The Farming of Bones again in the distant future. For now, however, I look forward to reading more of Danticat’s works. (1998, 312 pages, $23.00)
    • 5/5
      This book leaves you speechless. I have read much literature of the Dominican Republic lately, and there are always glancing remarks about Haitians. But this story of Haitians and dark skinned Dominicans, working in the DR sugarmills at the border with Haiti in 1937 is scary for its portrayal of people caught up in genocidal madness. There are the victims, but then there people who having lost their humanity, along with the killing officials, condone and cajole, and become exterminators of 'those' people, those vermin who deserve to be eliminated. The psychological scarring is breathtaking in its variety and persistence. One wonders what keep Amabelle alive.
    • 3/5
      The main character Amabelle is a Haitian born orphan. She is the servant of a Dominican family consisting of a widowed father and his young daughter who happens to be the same age as Amabelle. Amabelle was discovered by the widow and his daughter by the river the same day her own parents drowned. Amabelle's lover Sebastien works 'farming the bones" which is harvesting sugarcane. Their lives change forever when terror, madness and murder erupts throughout Alegria.The beginning of this book was quite intriguing but Amabelle's latter years did not quite take shape. It seems as if the author just did not know what direction Amabelle's life should have taken after the massacre. I was very disappointed when Sebastien was simply lost in the narrative when he was lost during the massacre. It is never confirmed if he is killed during the massacre or if he escaped. We are left to assume the worse. Amabelle escapes the massacre with Sebastien's best friend Yves. Even though Amabelle spends the rest of her life living with Yves and his mother, Amabelle and Yves never really form a close relationship of any kind. The most interesting part of the narrative for me is when death, during the massacre, was determined by whether or not a person could pronounce the Spanish translation of the word parsley. The Dominican people knew that the Kreyol speaking Haitians could not pronounce the trill of the "r" of perejil which was the Spanish translation of parsley. This reminded me of the word "shibboleth" used in the Bible to determine the regional origin of the displaced Ephraimites (Judges 12:5-6). I cannot help but wonder did the author have this in mind when writing this area of the text. Initially, I could not put this book down but the last stretch was hard for me to work through. I hated the ending. It was so elusive that I wanted to scream. This was my first Edwidge Danticat novel and I look forward to reading more of her work. Danticat's writing style reminds me of Toni Morrison's but without the complexity. Her characters have a lot of ambiguity like Morrison. I like the overall writing style of Danticat but I did not like the structure of this particular novel.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved The Farming of Bones. I had to read this for my college literature class. I think it's the first historical fiction that I've read, so I wasn't too into the book at first. However, Danticat told the story beautifully. Her writing was so real that I felt like I was there, first hand, experiencing what I was reading. She writes so vividly that she had me turning the page to see what was going to happen next. I've started reading her other books, because I love her writing so much. Actually, this book is what got me into reading historical fiction! Highly recommended!!
    • 4/5
      Heart-wrenching story set against the very real and disturbing 1937 Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic where tens of thousands of Haitians were slaughtered. Almost missed my subway stop a few mornings this week, that's how intense it gets.
    • 4/5
      This is a beautiful love story interrupted by the cruel genocide of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Danticat is a poetic writer, whom writes in a descriptive language that invites us to share the beauty of her native land, rich with details of Haitian culture. It opened my mind to a period in history that I had no knowledge of and raised the kind of issues that need exploring. I found it very helpful to look up words and history in Wikipedia.com as I read the story. I found her technique of different voices (the telling of the present story and the reflections on the main character's inner voice) very creative. The interaction between the characters is very well portrayed. This is not light, pleasant reading or for the faint of heart. It is an enormously powerful book filled with raw emotion and brutal honesty. The first half of this story is truly riveting. You can tell that the story is leading up to something horrible, the massacre that takes place is where the story starts to slowly unravel. I felt like the story kind of fell apart at the end. There were moments I wished the book would pick up pace, the main character seemed to just float through moments in her life, not really seeming to be there as anything more than an observer,It is a harsh story that once finished, you remember the story, the plot, the characters, and the crisis in Haiti at the time. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, because it introduced me to a world I didn't know. Yet the overly formal poetic language distanced me from her plight. But still, it is worth reading.