Reclaiming History: A Century of Intervention in Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones and Brother, I'm Dying

Abstract

This essay analyzes Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones and Brother, I'm Dying to reconsider the vexed history of US militarism on the island of Hispaniola. Danticat's work demonstrates that literature has the potential to provocatively examine the lived experiences of multiple histories at once. Countering the rhetoric US administrations have long used to justify intervention, Danticat's literature reclaims the telling of history for those who have lived and felt its consequences. Narrating racialized state violence in hemispheric, transnational, and transtemporal domains, Danticat's work surfaces collective histories of resistance and demands for justice by Haitian and Haitian diasporic communities.