International Journal of Language & Literature

Textual Pleasures and Violent Memories in Edwidge Danticat Farming of the Bones
Patrick Sylvain

Abstract
This paper analyzes circular narratives and emotional intensities of Danticat’s The Farming of Bones that are woven through her structured portrayals of an ordinary Haitian as an individual and as part of a collective group. Through intimate thoughts and dreams Danticat takes her readers through textual pleasures in light of social hatred and violence that work to induce deep-seated primal fear and evoke long-buried memories of massacre in many of its characters. Danticat’s circular narrative in The Farming of Bones is not autobiographical, but rather dialogic. It is a conversation with the past through a mosaic of memories that is multivocal, multigenerational and consisting of multiple genres. At Massacre River, she fuses literature with oraliture in order to dialogue with remnants of the past; memories of the dead are relocated and reconstructed to overcome the boundaries between those who experienced the massacre, those who did not, and those who were never aware of it. In this paper, Danticat’s Farming of Bones is analyzed and critiqued within a multidisciplinary discourse as it provides a rich and particular racial and military archive to the 1937 massacre.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v2n3a1