The Farming Of Bones Analysis

The Farming of Bones, a book filled with wounded and disabled individuals, includes lots of descriptions of body marks and physical injuries. The characters, especially the narrator Amabelle, present a complex perspective on the different meaning of injuries and the relationship between physical disability and mental trauma.
Injuries were unavoidable for the Haitian workers. Because they were the “burnt crud at the bottom of the pot”, they suffered from their low social status and the cane life, “travay te pou zo”, the farming of bones. In the first memory of Amabelle, Sebastien was described as face being “ripped apart” (1) by the cane stalks, “leaving him with crisscrossed trails of furrowed scars” (1). Not only Sebastian but also Kongo

She lost not only her lover and her friends but also her beauty, youth, and the body she was familiar with. Through Sebastien’s words, Amabelle was young, beautiful and perfect in terms of physical shape. However, after the long journey, her knee was badly injured; her flesh was simply a “map of scars and bruises” (227); and most importantly, she was aged. Moreover, she thought of herself no longer a “tempting spectacle”(226) as being so disabled and scarred when the children were giggling about her. She was haunted by past, as she “tried to pair young man with her younger self” (276). The disabled body forced her to change her own view of herself. Yet her memories refused to let her forget the time with Sebastian, the loss was also physical. She struggled to live in her new body. The worst of all was that she was worried that Sebastien “would not recognize me if he ever saw me again” (229). Her physical change led to an emotional sense of loss. Although the mental trauma may be healed over time, the physical wounds would be forever. Everytime she moved her body, the pain would remind her what had happened and what she had