A noção de espaço e lugar em The Farming of Bones

Abstract

The notion of place and space is a frequent theme in postmodernism, since it is connected to the idea of lack of roots. We can say that, when moving to an empty house, we encounter space. However, when we include our belongings, it becomes a home, a place. According to David Harvey, a place offers security, and the space of a home is distributed so it can contain and reproduce gender and age relations. This can be observed in The Farming of Bones, Edwidge Danticat's 1998 novel, in which she writes about an important happening in the history of two nations, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In the massacre of 1937, General Trujillo ordered the killing of Haitian sugarcane workers who lived in the Dominican Republic. In the beginning of the novel, before the massacre, the characters in The Farming of Bones divide a space, but not all of them are able of making it a place. Amabelle, the Haitian maid and protagonist of the novel, sees her lover, Sebastien, as her safe harbor. When he disappears, she desperately looks after him, and her search represents an attempt to find a home. During her search, she narrates a nation's effort in forgetting a heinous past. Forgetting history leaves a space, which must be filled in by a place – memory. The present article analyzes these notions of space and place and relates them to Danticat's novel, which is in itself related to history and to the cultural identity of two peoples.