[In the following review, Brice-Finch offers a positive assessment of The Farming of Bones.]

Readers of Caribbean literature are no strangers to the harsh conditions of the cane field, particularly in the French Antilles during the early twentieth century. Joseph Zobel in La Rue Cases-Negres (1950; Eng. Black Shack Alley) and Simone Schwarz-Bart in Pluie et vent sur Telumee Miracle (1972; Eng. The Bridge of the Beyond) graphically related the degradation that workers endured to eke out a subsistence living. However, it is the second novel by Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones, which is the focus of another aspect of the history of cane workers, the massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic in 1937.

Due to a growing xenophobia under the rule of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, the Dominicans were told:

Our motherland is Spain; theirs is darkest Africa, you understand? They once came here only to cut sugarcane, but now there are more of them than there will ever be cane to cut, you understand? Our problem is one of dominion. …Those of us who love our country are taking measures to keep it our own.

Thus, a wave of genocide which decimates the Haitian emigre population is justified. What is striking about this historical fact is how relevant the situation is to current immigrant backlash in many countries around the world. While the workers were initially welcomed to build or to create a thriving infrastructure, they become an encumbrance when they choose to stay in the host country. This story of emigres is particularly revolting because the slavelike conditions endured by the Haitians are imposed on them by their neighbors sharing the island of Hispaniola. Danticat is careful to illumine just how perverse is the prejudice. Color is not the determinant, for the melanin is apparent in both groups. Only language separates these people. For example, while Dominicans could trill the r in parsley, in response to the question “¿Que diga perejil?,” many Haitians could only voice “pewegil.” Thus, when Trujillo ordered their roundup, Haitians would be spared if they “knew as well how to say the Spanish ‘pesi’ as to say the French ‘perejil.’”

The Farming of Bones is a stark reminder of the massacre as well as a tribute to the valor of those Haitians who escaped the terror. The love story of Amabelle Desir and Sebastien Onius frames the novel. After her parents drown, Amabelle becomes a maid to the Dominican officer Pico Duarte and his wife. Sebastien, her Haitian lover, works in the Duarte cane field. During the roundup, Amabelle manages to escape, but Sebastien dies, presumably shot by Duarte's regiment. Many of the pursued are forced by soldiers to jump from cliffs; others face being beheaded or beaten to death by civilian thugs before reaching their homeland.

While Danticat's novel is a searing indictment of Dominican barbarism, the Haitian government also merits some censure. In the aftermath, Haitian President Stenio Vincent dispatched government officials to various sites only to record the testimonies of victims and to give them stipends. The citizens wondered why the Haitian government did not avenge the slaughter of its people. By writing her vivid account, Danticat memorializes this farming of human bones and all those “nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke into the early morning air.”