Rating: 
Summary: The Destructive Power of Language
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read!!
Review: This was a great read. I read this book during research on the Dominican Republic. What a surprise to find that it was a book to spark my interest on the history of a beautiful country like Haiti. The story contained more than just historical information, cultural, political and human relations between two neighbors. Two countries who have and had more in common than what they don't. I highly recommend this book as well as, the authors others.
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Summary: The Farming of Bones
Review: Had Edwidge Danticat asked me, I might not have been enthusiastic about her concept for THE FARMING OF BONES. Sure, it revolves around murder, mayhem and persecution, all strong elements for a plot. But the story unfolds more than a half century ago among destitute foreigners. Too great a leap, I might have argued, for today's audiences conditioned to sit passively, hoping to be mugged by entertainment. I would've been wrong. In THE FARMING OF BONES, Danticat concocts a powerful antidote to brand name-plastered video millionaires and formulaic bestsellers. Her spot in the lineup of fresh new voices with something real to say is indisputable. Beneath Danticat's hand, what is traditionally dominant recedes. In its place, barefoot sugarcane cutters and dutiful house servants step forth, powerful and observant. They lead us across landscapes littered with life's tyrannies: birth, death, love, cruelty, despair, and hope. So much turns on so little: a slip of the tongue around a single word--parejil; one false step crossing a river; lingering a moment too long amid a bloodthirsty horde. Danticat works her readers with such sleight of hand, we're worn out--good and tired--at the end. Good and tired. Despite such weighty themes, though, Danticat wields no moral bludgeon. And so, without warning, readers are ambushed by good men who commit evil acts and evil men who act human; by mistress and servant, neither strangers nor friends, yet equally bound by the twin betrayals of death and survival. Without even so much as a happy ending, THE FARMING OF BONES promises to seduce a whole new generation of readers. It lures them with the notion that we are all connected through history by choice, chance and enduring. It reminds us that there is no final moment of redemption unless we--resisting, acting, and remembering--make it so.
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Summary: Listen to the words
Review: Edwidge Danticat is one of those writers whose words must be read out loud to be given full impact and life. I've heard some criticisms of this book, and I think the text is only flat to the reader who skims and loses the sound of the character's voice, which is profound and sad and beautiful. I recommend reading the book out loud to the accompaniement of the Snow Falling on Cedars soundtrack. Do this, and I promise you, from beginning to end, Danticat's tale will take your breath away.
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Summary: "THE FUTURE PAST"
Review: Here is a young woman who has gone where no other woman, younger or older has ever attempted to go before. " The farming of bones". In a very sophisticated way, Edwidge Danticat, has put into words the true image of every Haitians. This young woman is making sure that we are no longer in war with ourselves. She's making sure that we look at our ancestors, and be proud of where we've been. We always talk about how hard it was, how scary it was. But to deprive our children of finding out where they've been, is no recovery for misery. We learned the words of our great grand parents tongues. We were forbidden to ever repeat them, we rejected their style, appearance, simply because we could not face who we realy are. Edwidge Danticat, a woman with a face of today, an age of the future, a mind of the past, is proud to have had everyone in general reacquainted with their true identity. No review can give this book the rates it deserves. No award can signify this woman courage and capability to travel above and beyond to bring a lost population to life.
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Summary: Waiting for the Fourth Book
Review: This book is simply compelling. I read it in two settings. It's impossible for a book to hold one's attention if it isn't told in a fashion that taps the emotions of the reader. "The Farming of Bones" is a work of art, not just another book to occupy a spot on a shelf. Having read "Breath, Eyes, Memory" and "Krik? Krak!" I am accustomed to Danticat's writing style, and truly appreciate her delivery of her stories. She has -- probably an unconscious -- way of making the reader feel somewhat a part of the story. It's refreshing to read something where you do care for the characters. Ceci était un très bon livre.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfair
Review: Ms. Danticat offers a non-objectical view on the egregious crimes committed against the Haitian People in the 1930s. Although it is true that the Dominican government killed thousands of innocent and defenseless people, Ms. Danticat makes it sound as if the Dominican nation as a whole participated or applauded these actions. Even the name of the fictional character of Pico Duarte(which bears the last name of one of the Dominican founding fathers) symbolizes that imagined generalized hatred. This would tantamount to saying that the German people as a whole were guilty of Treblinka. Yes, it is true that Trujillo killed and fomented hate and distrust towards the Hatians(some of which is unfortunaltely still felt today) but to ignore the actions and risks of scores of Dominicans to protect Haitians would not only make her book inaccurate, but openly unjust.
Rating:
Summary: great
Review: i really learned a lot from this book, about what haitians had to go through, and i enjoyed annabel's characther, and shared the pain of her loses.
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Summary: Endurance and Hope in Haiti
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: praise is more than due!
Review: Ms. Danticat has written a stunning, moving book. She deserves praise for it. Her characters will touch anyone without an extra agenda of putting others down, anyone whose heart is open to a new and special kind of tale.
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