The Farming Of Bones Summary
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02.29.08
Component B
“The Farming of Bones”
~Edwidge Danticat~
Talking about the culture brought throughout this book, your looking at a Latin American culture, specifically the Dominican/Haitian cultures. As I read this book, beyond the many numerous ways she worded her sentences and how the characters spoke, they often spoke with a definant difference than you would hear here in common U.S. language. They would constantly use inferences to what they were talking about rather than being direct to what they were saying. Things like, “they say we are the burnt crud at the bottom of the pot.” —Amabelle, this is Amabelle talking to her lover, Sebastian, about how there’s talk about the field workers and the housemaids to the Dominicans, and them being “nothing”, inferring that they are poorer than the Dominicans. Or specifically, the title, “the Farming of Bones”, and mentioned also in the book, talking about how because after a day in the heat of the fields, dodging snakes and rats, brushing up against the razor sharp edges of the sugar cane, the workers find their skin is shredded, their bones being, “closer to the surface than the day before.” Another one being when there was talk about the massacre between men, when a man stood and said,”I’m one of those trees whose roots reach the bottom of the earth. They can cut down my branches, but they will never uproot the tree. The roots are too strong and there are too many.” There are also inferences, I believe in the beginning when they talk about, when SeД±ora Valencia gives birth to twins and when the doctor finally arrives to check on the newborns health, he says to Amabelle, “Many of us start out as twins in the belly and do away with the other.” Here is where I feel another inference is posed. How Haiti and the Dominican Republic, racing for resources on the same island, can resemble like the twins in the same belly, both coming up at the same time, yet one to push the other one out, or to extinction.
Personally, as I read this book I had a mindset of a Latin accent, and with the knowledge I have of the Spanish language, I know that many times in the speech process, things aren’t as direct or presented as in English speech. As you listen to the differences in the patterns of English vs. Spanish, you easily see how, the author writing this being Dominican herself, knew how to pose the sentences, phrases and speech as close to a Latin dialogue as possible.
This brings me to the main and large background of the book, Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the same island and the issues thereon. Anyone who reads this book will immediately be tuned into finding out about the massacres of 1937 on these Latin American countries. I mean unless besides me, everyone knows about Haiti and the Dominican Republic, then you learn about how the two countries sharing the same island, one being poor, the other poorer. And how for decades, Haitians have been attempting to escape their countrys high poverty and stream into the Dominican Republic to work as laborers in the sugarcane fields or as domestic help. Examples being Amabelle, a Haitian born, orphaned girl serving as a Dominican housemaid, and Sebastian, also Haitian born, serving in the sugar cane fields of Senor Pico. Throughout the book there are many things to learn about this time period in this country, feeling how it was to be a servant of the other side, or by the tragedies that happened between both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. You read a lot about the lifestyles of the people there, basically how they lived and did their daily life. Many times in the book I was reading and had to stop and reread the sentence because I was like, what? Really? Things done there, seem to be way different than I see them done here. Another thing you get a hint of and learn about while reading this book is the language. She often threw in several phrases and lines in Spanish and in creol, another language spoken between the Haitians.
Towards the end of the book, when Amabelle is with a tour guide, he says to her,” Famous men never truly die,” he says, “It is only those nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke into the early morning air.”- This to me is my most noteworthy or memorable passage from the book. From the book’s stand point, you do not die if someone remembers your name. And if there is one thing that Amabelle passionately resolves to accomplish in the aftermath of the massacre, it is remembering names. Because if she forgets, she knows that all of their stories will be like, “a fish with no tail, a dress with no hem, a drop with no fall, a body in the sunlight with no shadow.” How she will remember names, most of all, remembering Sebastian’s. That is what I get for/from the book’s perspective, but for me this passage is pretty deep. It really talks to me in the sense of truth, that no matter what, if at least one person remembers your name you can never truly die or be forgotten. So, to me, as we live and die in this world it’s the people we care about and that care about us that carry us on, so that we never truly die, or are forgotten.
Personally, I did like the book. I’m not normally a reader but, this book was very intriguing and had a lot of interesting turns to it, it kept me wanting to know the end. I, at first, didn’t want to read the book, and was going to pick the smallest book I