At the Intersection of Trauma and Testimonio: Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones

Abstract

The terms “trauma” and testimonio (or “testimony”) have been linked so often in literary studies as to seem inextricably connected, suggesting that literature of “trauma” and testimonio narratives are one and the same. This essay examines some of the pressing and unreconciled tensions between literature of historical trauma and testimonio literature, at least as these have been critically construed, through an analysis of Edwidge Danticat's novel The Farming of Bones, which represents the massacre of ethnic Haitians within the Dominican Republic in 1937 at the orders of dictator Rafael Trujillo.