The Farming of Bones

Edwidge Danticat's 1998 novel bears witness to a historical atrocity that most of the world has forgotten: the 1937 Parsley Massacre, in which Dominican dictator Trujillo ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of Haitian workers. Danticat traveled to the Dajabon River region in 1995, found the events barely remembered, and built this novel as an act of literary memorial. Narrated by Amabelle Desir, a Haitian maidservant, the prose is lyrical and emotionally precise — Kirkus called it 'rich, lush prose that veers between rigidly controlled understatement and feverish emotionalism.' The honest caveat: this is not a book for everyone. Graphic violence, ethnic cleansing, child death, and sustained trauma are rendered in vivid literary detail. Adult readers only, and even then, go in knowing the emotional weight. For those who can bear it, it is a landmark work in Haitian-American literature.