Critic Heather Hewett suggests that The Farming of Bones “explores the impact of nationalism, race, and gender on the bodies of men and women.” Certainly, racial prejudice runs rampant through the novel. In an opening scene illustrating the respective positions of three races, Amabelle serves as an involuntary midwife to her former friend, assisting at the birth of Valencia’s twins. Pico arrives at his wife’s bedside, dismisses Amabelle, and is delighted with the birth of his fair-skinned son Rafael, proudly named in honor of the dictator. He is less pleased with his tiny, dark-complected daughter. Later, after cane workers invited by Valencia take refreshment on their veranda, Pico smashes the cups they have used.

As another critic points out, cane itself becomes symbolic of Haitian suffering. Cane stalks are the “bones” of the title, their sound reminding Sebastien of the breaking of chicken bones. Cutting cane is difficult, brutal work: “ . . . cane stalks have ripped apart most of the skin on [Sebastien’s] shiny black face, leaving him with crisscrossed trails of furrowed scars,” and he bears infected boils on his legs. Watching women workers bathing in a stream, Amabelle notes that “one was missing an ear. Two had lost fingers. One had her right cheekbone cracked in half, the result of a runaway machete in the fields.” Such disfigurement is both real and emblematic.

As the workers bathe, they scrub themselves with parsley, as they would corpses. For them, parsley is not only a food and a cleansing agent, but also an instrument of torture, as is language (perejil). Haitian bodies cruelly testify, “We are nothing.”

Exile
As Scott Adlerberg noted in the Richmond Review, "Exile increases the poignancy of memory." Many characters in the book experience exile, separated from their families or homes by death or distance. Amabelle frequently recalls her parents, replaying the memory of their drowning in a swollen river, and shares these memories with her lover, Sebastien, who in turn recounts his lost childhood in Haiti. The impoverished, displaced Haitians in the story all share a sense of a lost home, which helps to bond their community. As Amabelle observes, "In his sermons to the Haitian congregants of the valley, he often reminded everyone of common ties: language, foods, history, carnival, songs, tales, and prayers. His creed was one of memory, how remembering—though sometimes painful—can make you strong." The Haitian sugar cane workers see themselves as "an orphaned people, a group of vwayaje, wayfarers."

The Haitians are not the only exiles in the book. Amabelle's employer, Don Ignacio, was born in Spain and came to the Caribbean to fight in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Each night, he tunes into the radio to hear news from Spain about the progress of the Spanish Civil War. Amabelle perceives his homesickness, understanding that "he felt himself the displaced child of a now orphaned people."

Despite these signs, Amabelle, Sebastien, and the other Haitians are unprepared for the impending bloodbath, which will further exile those who survive. The survivors, cut off from their past, loved ones, and sense of security and purpose, become spiritual exiles, searching for meaning and direction. Some find it, while others do not.

Genocide
The mass killing of Haitians is the book's central event, described with nightmarish clarity. The narrative may remind readers of more recent atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda, along with the refugees fleeing these and other nations. Danticat acknowledges that although such events are frequently shown on the news, they often seem distant. She told Calvin Wilson in the Kansas City Star , "People don't want to believe...