The Farming of Bones

When Amabelle is following the tour guide, he remarks about Henry I that “He could be anywhere in this palace or nowhere here at all” (279). After following him, Amabelle lapses into her dream of Sebastien, telling herself that “I sense we no longer know the same words, no longer speak the same language” (283). These lines retain a certain echo, as a sense of identity or belonging in a place is ultimately determined in part by how well you are understood, and how well you understand those around you. Throughout the text, Danticat weaves bits of Haitian Kreyol, immediately translated, among the English. However, very few Spanish words appear, the most prominent of those being “perejil.” Why write a text in English centered around the dangerous prospect of mispronouncing a word? Why incorporate so many moments of translation between the creole and the language of the adopted country (the U.S.), but refrain from immersing the reader in the language of the perpetrator? The Parsley Massacre hinged on the pronunciation of a word, but ultimately, it also hinged on a shared and contentious history. History is not just a matter of “Famous men [who] never truly die” (280). Is Danticat attempting to reintegrate the memory of the “nameless and faceless” back into the historical record? Certainly.

But then why not make this a grand love story of Amabelle and Yves finding one another in the wilderness of the massacre? Why repeat “His name is Sebastien Onius” (282, emphasis mine). To what extent is existence tied to memory?

But perhaps more importantly for this work, we must ask to what extent existence is predicated on recognition? The lack of recognition of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic—the lack of recognition of their right to be there—is what made the slaughter possible. While the Holocaust began years afterward, it is reminiscent of this more familiar genocide in that the killing is predicated on the denial of a group’s right to live on a particular patch of land. When Amabelle goes to visit Senora Valencia many years after the massacre, she thinks to herself “That she did not recognize me made me feel that I had come back to Alegria and found it had never existed at all” (294). But here, we find an important ambivalence—a coming to knowledge of the distinction between the land and the body—because it is not that Amabelle never existed, but the place where she was had never been.