Exile and Relation to the Mother/Land in Edwidge Danticat's
Breath Eyes Memory and The Farming of Bones1
By Florence Ramond Jurney
My father reaches into the current and sprinkles his face with the water […]. My
mother crosses herself three times and looks up at the sky before she climbs on my
father’s back. […] Once [Papa] is in the river, he flinches, realizing that he has made a
grave mistake. […] The water rises above my father’s head. My mother releases his
neck, the current carrying her beyond his reach. […] I scream until I can taste blood in
my throat, until I can no longer hear my own voice. (Bones 51-52)
The young Haitian-born Amabelle from Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones
stands on Dominican soil, facing a personal tragedy that threatens to put into question her
identity. She is on the edge of two worlds, and on the border between her past and her
future. Borders in Edwidge Danticat’s works, whether they are real or imagined, are the
starting point from which the characters are able to find a sense of belonging as well as to
understand their experience of exile. In Caribbean literature, exile is a constant. Whether
a voluntary or forced geographical exile, a threatening political or economic situation, or
an internalized exile stemming from cultural and linguistic upheavals creating a situation
of uprooting, exile must be understood as a primary motivating factor in the development
of both the character and the narrative in Caribbean literature.
The predominance of exile in Caribbean literature is underscored by the very
geography of the Caribbean. Because geographical boundaries are very quickly
transgressed, the island itself calls for exile. Focusing on the specificity of the Caribbean
islands, Antonio Benítez-Rojo suggests that "the Caribbean is not a common archipelago,
but a meta-archipelago [...], and as a meta-archipelago, it has the virtue of having neither a
boundary nor a center" (4). He further suggests that the transgression of the island is a
direct consequence of its very nature, and concludes: "Thus the Caribbean flows outward
past the limits of its own sea with a vengeance" (4). It is necessary to understand that the
geopolitics of the Caribbean play an important role in the discussion of the problematics of
exile, as it brings to light the complexity of a postcolonial society. The geopolitical borders
of certain islands uncover the possibility of a double transgression, as is the case with Haiti
if we focus particularly on Francophone Caribbean islands. Haiti is a country located on
an island where the unknown calls from beyond the sea, and at the same time, this
independent nation shares a common piece of land with the Dominican Republic. The
border to be found between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is an imaginary line traced
almost randomly, having evolved as a result of various conquests. It is a significant
physical sign that is continually crossed, which establishes the border as a space in
constant evolution.
For Gloria Anzaldúa, Chicana critic, poet and essayist, a border is usually established
"to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them" (3). In her
study, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa focuses on MexicanAmerican women who have experienced moving back and forth across the border between
the United States and Mexico, and thus, have developed an acute understanding of the
border. Anzaldúa goes further in differentiating the border, which she refers to as "a
dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge" (3). She contrasts this definition of the
border with the concept of the borderland, which is "a vague and undetermined place
created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" and which finds itself "in a
constant state of transition" (3).
Edwidge Danticat’s female characters can be seen both as border crossers and as
inhabitants of the borderland, a fact barely surprising for this Haitian-American author who
experienced early the implications of border-crossing as she was transplanted
geographically (from Haiti to the United States) and linguistically (from French and Creole
languages to English). In her novels, Danticat strategically places her characters at the
moment in their lives when a geographical exile forces them to come to terms with a new
identity, the creating of a new self. Furthermore, her characters must allow this new
identity to emerge through an exploration of their lost origins and specifically the loss of
the mother/land. Thus, the character of the mother stands out as an important character
because the efforts of the daughter are concentrated around her.
Through an exploration of the questions – What are the reasons that lead the
characters to choose exile? [and] What is the impact of exile? – several issues can be
examined. The impact of exile, not only upon women, but also as it concerns the
transmission of heritage from the mother to the daughter, from one woman to another, can
be examined toward a new understanding of how exile can forge a new identity both
within a woman and between groups of women who are linked by a common genealogy.
Because of their experience of traveling back and forth across borders as well as the
heritage they possess, female characters develop what Gloria Anzaldúa calls a “border
consciousness.” Just like Anzaldúa's new “mestiza,” whom she describes as a universal
being who draws her strength from her original hybridity,2 exiled women characters in
Danticat’s works exhibit a transient identity and tell an ever-evolving story. In Caribbean
literature, can we see in these women what the new “mestiza” is for Chicana literature?
In “Reflections on Exile,” Edward Said defines the notion of exile and of exiled
person. He differentiates between, for example, exiled persons –who are banished and
isolated—between refugees –who ask for assistance—and expatriates –who choose to
leave. The image derived from his analysis is that of a land of exile as non-chosen, and
that does not suggest any feeling of welcome. Exile represents in fact the burden carried
by the pilgrim since “[e]xile is not, after all, a matter of choice: you are born into it or it
happens to you” (Said 365).
In Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, the main character Sophie is introduced as she
begins the journey of exile from Haiti to the United States. This decision of the Other
imposed on the self motivates Sophie’s trip when Sophie’s mother decides to have her join
her in New York after a twelve-year separation. The departure from the island is perceived
by the young girl as a punishment, a twist of fate that tears her apart from the only place
she knows, Haiti. After hearing the news of her upcoming departure, Sophie’s first
reaction is an attempt to separate herself from the surrounding world: "I only kept wishing
that everyone would disappear so I could go back home" (Breath 14). Her Aunt’s home,
the only home she has known, a symbol of her self and of an undivided identity, seems to
be the proper refuge. Eventually, New York will become for Sophie the synonym of exile
because she never really accepts that first trip and keeps looking at Haiti with nostalgia.
The same theme of imposed departure or exile forced by exterior events is at the
center of The Farming of Bones, and is highlighted by the character of Amabelle who loses
her parents in the river that separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. As the family
returns from an errand on the Hispanic side of the island, Amabelle sees her parents drown
in front of her. Left alone on the Dominican side of the river, she is taken in by a wealthy
Dominican family as the playmate of the daughter of the house. At the beginning, her first
move --from Haiti to the Dominican Republic-- is not lived like an exile by the young girl
because when she is asked who she belongs to, she answers that she belongs to herself
(Bones 91). She thus severs any nostalgic links with her past as well as any territorial or
family links that remain. Her own situation as an exile however takes possession of her
through her dreams that, night after night, remind her of the death of her parents, her
childhood in Haiti, thus, underscoring the certainty of her divided self.
To the instability caused by exile is added the instability caused by the identity crisis.
In each of Danticat's novels, the introductory scenes (wherein the moment of exile and its
cause are established) are followed by several scenes in which the female characters
undergo a series of back and forth movements between [several] specific geographical
places --Haiti and the Dominican Republic in The Farming of Bones and Haiti and the
United States in Breath, Eyes, Memory. These back and forth movements are an
illustration of the divided self as it is experienced by the main character. What can be seen
as missing here, as Françoise Lionnet points out, is the way in which a woman names
herself in her own story, the way in which women like Amabelle and Sophie can come out
of their exile by moving from a position of object where they are named by the Other to
the one of subject where they can name themselves (Lionnet 3).
Amabelle and Sophie's exile shows a decentering of the female character's identity.
This decentering of identity is illustrated in The Farming of Bones through the narrative
techniques used to tell the story. The novel is told in the first person singular by Amabelle,
a young woman originally from Haiti but living in the Dominican Republic. The story that
unfolds in front of us is one of a woman dispossessed of her land and community of
origins. The first words of the novel are an attempt to identify the Other, to name him so
as to give him a tangible existence: "His name is Sebastien Onius" (Bones 1) while the self
remains a simple pronoun, a symbolically frightened "I," described as prey to the shadows,
before it is finally named by the Other (Bones 6).
The narrative then follows a back and forth movement between the main story and
the narration of memories. The memories, which appear as interruptions throughout the
novel, mirroring the physical back and forth movements of exile, serve to explain key
events of the main story. The first back and forth movement takes place in the telling of
the main story wherein each movement brings to light another aspect of the protagonist.
Amabelle appears to the reader through a series of impressionistic strokes. For example,
she is only named in the second chapter, by Señora Valencia, and almost by chance (Bones
6).
When Amabelle chooses to introduce Sebastien first in the narration and to place him
in a position of subject, she places herself implicitly in a position of object. As an
objectified being, Amabelle is thus pushed into invisibility, into a no man’s land of
identity: “I thought of my own situation. I had no papers to show that I belonged either
here or in Haiti where I was born” (Bones 70). Her identity is thus summed up as
something rather hybrid because of the loss of her family and her community of origins.
Technically speaking, Amabelle is in exile during her prolonged stay in the
Dominican Republic. Yet, because her family structure as well as her community of
origin(s) have disappeared, her exile is such that her own point of origin is erased. When,
for example, Doctor Javier asks Amabelle to become a midwife in a clinic on the border
separating Haiti from the Dominican Republic but on the Haitian side, she does not give
either her agreement or her refusal, rather she answers: “There is much to consider” (Bones
21). Rightly, there are many things to take into consideration. Primarily, since Amabelle
doesn’t have any links to the land of her origins, is she ready to leave behind what she now
considers that which defines her identity, the only identity through which she can
recognize herself?
In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Sophie undergoes a similar loss of identity. Her departure
from Haiti forces her into a certain dependency and culminates in her being placed in the
position of object vis-à-vis her mother –whom she doesn’t know—and who takes the
almighty position of subject: “My mother came forward. I knew it was my mother because
she came up to me and grabbed me and began to pin me like a top, so she could look at me
[…]. “I cannot believe that I am looking at you” she said “You are my little girl” (Breath
40-41). The objectification of Sophie becomes complete as she is totally silenced: “ ‘You
must be very tired’ she said” (Breath 41). Sophie is thus a quasi object as she is even
prevented from having feelings and personal emotions.
In order to understand Sophie's position as object, a position which ultimately will
require Sophie to act, [if she is to be able to grow and evolve], it is useful to turn to
Edouard Glissant's Le Discours antillais, in which he studies the effects of forced removal
and transplantation by slavery upon the people of the Antilles. He shows how, having
been dispossessed of their identity as a people, Antilleans have been forced to become “an
other people.” He illustrates his theory in explaining the difference between the “retour”
(return or reversion) and the “détour” (detour or diversion).3 In his words, the reversion is
symbolized by a journey back to African origins, back to the mythical Africa. As for the
diversion, it is, according to Glissant, the last recourse of those who are so dispossessed
that reversion is impossible. Diversion forces them to ground their yearning to belong
elsewhere: neither in the place of the origins or in the place of exile, but rather in a third
place.
In Breath, Eyes, Memory, the return is part of the story even if it is perverted since
for the main character Sophie, the origins are not in Africa but rather in Haiti where she
was born and raised until the age of twelve. If, as Edouard Glissant suggests, a reversion is
possible for the exiles and the dispossessed population –at least as a motivation, they need
to keep a link to the land of origins. In Sophie’s case, the link she keeps is a nostalgic one
to the female community of her Haitian land of origins through the memories of her Aunt
Atie and her maternal grandmother who both live in Haiti.
Thus, in Danticat’s novels, the act of reversion is sometimes possible, if only as a
motivation, while the act of diversion, as Glissant describes it, is not clearly expressed. In
Amabelle’s case for example, even though she undergoes the consequences of diversion
(expressed by the feeling of not belonging anywhere and of being rejected by the Other),
she never reaches a third place. In fact, as she does not have a family of origins anymore,
she could think of herself as a Dominican. Yet, because she cannot pronounce correctly
the word “parsley” in Spanish (the telltale sign of a true Dominican), she finds herself
excluded from Dominican society and thus forced to reconsider her situation as a Haitian
national. In many ways, Amabelle reflects the identity of a chameleon. As she was
dispossessed of her identity when her parents died, she lives in uncertainty. Because of
this, she cannot really have a point of origins, is unable to name one clearly, and seems to
have chosen not to think of her origins (she will even abandon the idea of trying to find the
land where her dead parents lived). But without a clear geographical origin, who is she
really?
Exile is dual in nature, for even as it produces a decentering of self and identity, it
triggers the search for a new, more evolved identity. This search is described as a journey
of initiation and is illustrated by psychological and physical back and forth movements
between the place of exile and the place of origins. Both Amabelle’s back and forth
movements between Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well as Sophie’s journeys
between the United States and Haiti enable the female character to become aware of her
decentered self and give her the possibility of expressing what will become her new
identity. These journeys play the role of those trips necessary to the development of the
coming of age novel, or Bildungsroman. In the coming of age novel, there is often “a
young male hero [who] discovers [for] himself his social role through the experiences of
love, friendship, and the hard realities of life” (Esturoy 8). In many cases, the
Bildungsroman ends in a positive fashion, announcing a new departure for the protagonist
even if his psychological journey –which parallels the geographical journey—throws him
into a determinism that contrasts with the idealism that was first driving him.4 However,
the Bildungsroman as it is developed in German literature is a genre that includes a male
hero, and as Annie Esturoy underlines, female characters are relegated to the invisibility of
the background, or if they are mentioned at all, they are stereotyped and, as such, are
rendered according to the usual dichotomic description of women as virgin or prostitutes
(13-15). The female voice is negated as it is forcefully adapted to the masculine analysis.
Thus, the female Bildungsroman must be studied through a critical apparatus that includes
theories about women, that is, a corpus that addresses the problems and questions relevant
to their reality (oppression, invisibility, and self-affirmation).
The traditional male Bildungsroman places a male character at the center of the
narration and concentrates on his evolution as soon as an exterior element destabilizes his
initial innocence. In contrast, female novels adopt a slightly different perspective; instead
of being the obvious center of the narrative discourse, the protagonist is placed in the
margins of the narration, while exterior elements occupy the forefront.5 As such, in The
Farming of Bones, the decentering of the self that allows the focus of the narrative to be
placed on Sebastien Onius rather than on Amabelle is only apparent when the last chapter
draws a final conclusion as concerns the character of Amabelle rather than the expected
conclusion which would have synthesized Sebastien's story. A conclusion which, finally,
places the character of Amabelle in the center of the narrative alters the perspective by
which the entire novel is understood. It then appears clearly that while events and various
characters of the novel seemed to have barely influenced Amabelle’s evolution, they were
in fact placed so as to shape her persona more precisely.
Another way in which the female Bildungsroman is different than that of the male is
that one of the goals of the male Bildungsroman is for the main character to be able to
define himself so as to take his place in the patriarchal society by becoming in many ways
a copy of his father. On the contrary, in Edwidge Danticat’s novels, the link to the mother
is dominant. Rather than a young male hero who is trying to take the place of his father,
we are presented with a young heroine attempting to define the relationship that links her
to her mother (instead of trying to be her copy). In doing so, she defines not only the
relationship to the character of origins but as well, the relationship that links her to other
women around her.
Sophie's story exemplifies this search for the mother, which connects her also to the
community of women of which she is historically a member. Sophie writes a Mother’s Day
card for her Aunt Atie who is raising her in Haiti and is confused and even angry when her
Aunt refuses to read it. Aunt Atie announces to her that she will be able to give it directly
to her mother when she sees her in New York. In fact, it is less the unplanned trip to New
York that angers Sophie than the fact that she considers her Aunt Atie to be her mother and
that she is being refused that very link. Moreover, whereas she has a place in the
community of Haiti women, she doesn’t know the story of her mother, which puts her own
identity into question. Thus, she announces in a fateful tone: “It took me twelve years to
piece together my mother’s entire story. By then, it was already too late” (Breath 61). By
this statement, Sophie demonstrates her inability not only to identify vis-à-vis herself, but
also to claim her right to the heritage that is hers because she doesn’t know her mother’s
story.
Moreover, in her reality, her true origins –symbolized by the character of the
mother—do not seem to be linked to her geographical origins since she gets acquainted
with her mother in New York, as opposed to Haiti. Sophie cannot place her mother –as the
person of origins—and Haiti –as the place of origins—on the same level. The rupture of
identity is too great. Therefore, in order to link these two points of origin so as to discover
the self, there must be a return, a voyage of initiation. The return for Sophie, (as well as
for Amabelle) is expressed by a physical return to the place of origins –or the Motherland-in order to undo what was done or, rather, to find again the innocence of the moment
preceding the displacement. The influence of the mother is present in the return in several
ways. The mother’s presence is associated with the movements towards the land of
origins, as the mother herself is linked to the Motherland. The maternal influence is
present in the return because the mother instigated it, and the influence of the mother is
present in the return when it symbolizes for the daughter an opportunity to become an ally
of the mother, to keep her memory alive.
Amabelle considers becoming a midwife as was her mother. As such, Amabelle’s
return illustrates the existence of a link to the Mother/Land (the mother and the land of the
mother). For Amabelle, this link to the mother is symbolized in the novel by a voice which
she imagines to be her mother’s, encouraging her to go back: “Maybe I had been hoping
for a voice to call to me from across the river, someone to arrive saying, ‘I have come for
you to bring you back.’ Maybe this was that voice, that someone disguised as the doctor.
Perhaps I should seize this chance” (Bones 80).
The existence of, or establishment of, relationships between women, whether linked
to the return or following it, forms the basis of a female genealogy. In Edwidge Danticat’s
works, this emergent female genealogy takes form in two ways: by encouraging the link
to the mother and celebrating the movement of the main female character towards She who
helped build the origins (Sophie towards Martine/ Atie), or by offering the possibility to
replace the mother with a substitute mother (Amabelle and Man Rapadou).
The introductory scene in Breath, Eyes, Memory shows the ambiguity in these
relationships between women due to the truncated nature of the relationship with the
mother of origins: “A flattened and drying daffodil was dangling off the little card that I
had made my Aunt Atie for Mother’s Day” (Breath 3). It is quite clear that, from the very
beginning, the Aunt is celebrated as a real mother, a woman of the origins, even though she
is not the biological mother but rather a substitute one. The symbol for the celebration of
the link to the mother, Mother's Day, is transgressed, which then forces Aunt Atie to reject
both the card and the role imposed upon her.
Sophie is led to understand that the link to the substitute mother is lesser than that of
the link to the mother, as Aunt Atie refuses the card meant for her, and, summarily,
encourages return to the mother of Sophie’s origins. Atie then justifies Sophie’s departure
for New York when she pleads for the return to the natural order of things: “That was
supposed to happen” (Breath 19). It is, however, ironic that she would invoke that natural
order of things as it is also a synonym for her rejection of Sophie. In fact, Martine was the
one who, as Sophie’s “natural” mother, entrusted her to the care of her sister. Martine is
also the one who refuses to see any physical resemblance with her daughter when it is the
last opportunity the girl sees to identify with this mother she doesn’t know, an opportunity
reduced to nothing by Martine: “I thought Atie would have told you. I did not know this
man. I never saw his face. He had it covered when he did this to me. But now when I
look at your face I think it is true what they say. A child out of wedlock always looks like
its father” (Breath 61). The daughter’s rejection by her mother is quite subtle and begins
with a contradictory language since Martine is the one who manages to bring her daughter
to New York but, at the same time, denies any common points she may have with her
daughter. Such an attitude from Martine explains why, when exiled in New York, Sophie
lives a double exile: first, vis-à-vis the entire female community of Croix-des-Rosets since
she is no longer surrounded by her grandmother, Aunt, nor any other women, and
secondly, vis-à-vis her mother, a woman who refuses to acknowledge the hyphen that
could exist between mother and daughter.
In contrast to Sophie, Amabelle's parents are no longer living. The mother’s absence
recurs like a leitmotiv in The Farming of Bones since it is that absence that links together
the Haitian Amabelle and the Dominican Señora Valencia. Facing the emptiness left by
the disappearance of her parents, Amabelle tries to recreate her roots and to invent a past
for herself so that she can find a substitute familial structure, or even a substitute
community. She thus tells Sebastien: “The señora and her family are the closest to kin I
have” (Bones 110) in the hope of placing herself in a genealogy. She no longer has roots
and she is aware of it (70). However, the other women she subsequently meets do not
place themselves on the same level (Señora Valencia) or do not think of creating a female
community of support with her (Mimi). When Amabelle realizes how fragile the link that
unites her to Señora Valencia is –as the latter will never openly confront her husband to
save Haitians and eventually save Amabelle herself—she opts for the return, a return
towards her origins, a physical return to the Motherland. However, this return becomes for
her another exile since even in Haiti, she feels different, a stranger in the community,
defined as marginal by others' looks. Even in the streets of the Cap, Yves and Amabelle
stand out without even trying to: “They recognized us without knowing us. We were those
people, the nearly dead, the ones who had escaped from the other side of the river” (Bones
220). Their experience as survivors of the massacre carried out by the Dominicans,
prevents them from being able to fully take their place in the Haitian community.
As such, Amabelle’s exile is paradoxical. She is “home” or at least she has gone
back to her physical origins, and yet she doesn’t feel at home anywhere. Her first return to
the city of the Cap in Haiti is paralleled with a return to see Haitians she knew in the
Dominican Republic, those who could help her define her identity. She tries to find Father
Romain, a Catholic priest who lived in the Dominican parish of Alegria before the events.
Because he has barely survived an extensive period of torture, he doesn’t recognize her and
cannot help ground her identity. Amabelle then tries to go back to the place from where
many of her memories came, the citadel of the Cap. The citadel stands for protection and
security in her reality because it is linked to the dreamlike presence of her parents.
Nevertheless, the group of tourists she instinctively follows whispers in Spanish and is led
by a Haitian guide who explains to them the history of the fortress in Spanish. There
again, she is not able to choose one culture or the other and finds herself, neither on one
side of the border or on the other, but rather in a borderland where identities are expressed
through the valence of experiences rather than through nationality, culture and language.
The common point that Sophie and Amabelle share is the isolation from their own
self that they each experience which is expressed at first, by an absence of, or a break from,
the links to the mother and to other women. In Sophie’s case, the mother is not, in the
beginning, a real presence (when Sophie is in Haiti) and then, even though mother and
daughter are together, Martine is further invisiblized due to her lack of connection to her
daughter (when Sophie is in the United States). In the first instance, the mother marks her
absence by regularly sending tapes from New York while she is only a picture on Aunt
Atie’s nightstand (Breath 8). In the second instance, mother and daughter do not connect
in part because they spend the majority of their time alone, separated from each other
because of the mother’s job constraints (Breath 58). This isolation from her self –marked
by an absence of communication between a mother and a daughter who are unable to
recreate a community for themselves—leads Sophie to attack her own femininity as she
hopes to break the vicious circle.
Her first attempt at individuation presents itself through the mutilation of her body.
When she breaks her hymen with a mortar, Sophie denounces not only patriarchal society
but also her mother, who has been manipulated by customs that were created by and for
men (in particular, the everyday testing of the hymen for proof of virginity that Haitian
women endure at the hands of their own mothers). When she flees after her mutilation,
Sophie is not trying to get away from her mother but rather from all the women stifled by
the patriarchal society whom her mother represents in her eyes. Sophie will find refuge in
the community of women (Atie, her grandmother, and the women from Croix-des-Rosets)
which symbolizes the female presence of the origins.
In the aftermath of the massacre, Amabelle does not mutilate herself but lets her
body go. She is both depressed and doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere. She gives up
any attempt to gather strength for her hurting body: “[…] I felt myself sliding back towards
sleep. It was either cry or sleep. That’s all my body seemed to be able to do” (Bones 215).
Here again, a woman –a substitute mother represented by the character of Man Rapadou—
gives Amabelle the opportunity to be saved. Man Rapadou welcomes Amabelle without
asking questions: “’Her name is Amabelle,’ Yves said. Hearing him say it, listening to the
mother repeat it, made me feel welcome” (Bones 223), Man Rapadou creates for her a
space in the community where she can evolve beyond time. As such, after the death of the
Dominican general who ordered the massacre of the Haitians, Amabelle is startled when
someone in the crowd acknowledges her as she is dancing in the streets: “I didn’t even
realize that I had been dancing. Didn’t even know I could dance. Still, it wasn’t the
compliment I heard but the title belonging to an elder –a “Man” like Man Irelle, Man
Denise, or Man Rapadou—before my name. I saw young men and women leaping with
maracas and tambourines that day who were not yet born when I’d returned, and I felt time
slither around me in a way it didn’t when I was alone with Man Rapadou and her people in
the courtyard” (Bones 269).
Young women like Amabelle and Sophie are able to define themselves and assert
their identity only when they are part of a female structure that respects and honors
women, and which does not [only] serve the interests of men. In Danticat’s novels, the
consequences of exile go beyond the simple notion of border that separates the Self from
the Other, or, to go back to Anzaldúa’s terminology, the “us” from the “them” (3). The
heritage that is passed down to women is not just geographical. In fact, women don’t seem
to be grounded in the land, but rather, appear as ever-evolving beings. From that constant
evolution is born a woman with a new identity, expressing herself through a community
rather than a territory. Amabelle and Sophie need the maturity and wisdom of age and
experience in order to become aware of such a dynamic transformation. Once they have
faced the impossibility of the return to the mythical origins, they must begin to discover
their identity in a new setting rather than in the nostalgic realm, as first imagined.
Both women are ultimately freed from the lack of identity that has defined them
when they are able to reestablish a link to their mother. The first step in the search for
identity is then understood as a need to identify oneself within the context of a feminine
structure, or to connect to a woman who has played, and will be able to play again, the role
of the mother (Atie/ Man Rapadou). The second step is completed by the reconciliation
with and/ or the symbolic return to the mother of the origins (as mother or Mother/Land).
This reestablishment of the link to the mother enables the young heroines to write the story
of their origins so that they can place themselves within the framework of a female
genealogy and, as well, find their place in the story of women.
Sophie is clearly a woman belonging to a borderland, a cultural in-between. She has
to find an identity that cannot be found in a known territory. Even though her identity has
to be expressed in a space that will reflect the "in-between [ness]" of her character, it is
grounded in her link to the maternal. We see this illustrated in the episode of Martine's
burial when, after staying at the church ceremony, Sophie runs away to a nearby sugarcane
plantation. There she enters a physical battle with the canes of sugar in the field that
symbolizes the place where her mother was raped. This physical battle culminates in the
destruction of Martine’s story which was until then manipulated by imaginary faceless
men who symbolized the rapist and which generated nightmares.
It is only due to the sound of her grandmother's scream that Sophie seems to come
back to the narrative reality, and only after she has triumphed over her imaginary
adversary: "From where she was standing, my grandmother shouted like the women from
the marketplace, "Ou libéré?" Are you free? Tante Atie echoed her cry, her voice
quivering with her sobs. "Ou libéré!"" (Breath 233). Sophie's liberation is not being
reported by Atie or the grandmother, but by Sophie herself. She truly belongs to an inbetween space, having rediscovered all of her Haitian roots yet, still choosing to return to
America where her life awaits her. She is a hybrid character in the narration, neither
American nor Haitian, but the result of a blending of cultures that she is finally able to
bring into harmony. Her liberation allows her to understand the story of other women that
she had not before understood. Moreover, because she can now tell her own part of the
story, she becomes a part of the larger collective story. The long chain of women is never
broken and the narrator suggests that it is the power of words that enable women to have
freedom. In a parallel manner, it is clearly stated that mothers are an essential part of this
continuum: “I come from a place where breath, eyes, memory are one, a place from which
you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as
butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. My mother was
as brave as stars at dawn. She too was from this place” (Breath 234).
For women like Sophie, then, the answer to their exile is not to be found in a specific
territory, neither in Haiti, nor in the United States, but rather --and in a very symbolic
manner-- in between. In this light we can see that the various trips back and forth between
different countries transform the novels and make them examples of non-traditional
narratives. As Hélène Cixous suggested in talking about Bildungsroman written by
women, the return is not a return to the place of origins, or even a return to known origins.
On the contrary, it is a dépassement --a transcendence-- questioning by its existence the
traditional definition of the border as a dividing line. In these novels we see the emergence
of what Gloria Anzaldúa calls a “new consciousness” for women.6
Furthermore, what Anzaldúa terms the mestiza, of a being without a country but from
all countries, without race but of all races, and without culture but of all cultures, can be
applied to the women we find in The Farming of Bones. From the first chapter to the last,
we can follow the pattern of back and forth movements of the main character Amabelle.
Through language, Amabelle defines herself beyond time and borders. Her point of view
shows us that she is one of those new mestizas who has had to combine the different
aspects of her identity while refusing the act of reversion as well as that of diversion and in
contrast seeking complementarity without defining it as a compromise.
Amabelle in The Farming of Bones also illustrates this new reality described by
Anzaldúa. Born in Haiti, raised in the Dominican Republic, and forced back to Haiti, this
protagonist has no country and no culture, rather she is the product of two cultures. Her
exile ends when she finds a symbolic "in-between," when she chooses to go back to the
river between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where her mother drowned many years
before (Bones 310). She enters the river to connect herself to her origins –to her own
mother, but also to her father, to Sebastien, and to Mimi, essentially, to all those who
form[ed] her community.
The last page of the novel can be analyzed in two different ways. The first one is to
see Amabelle’s death as a return to the origins, to the death of the mother. The other, on
the contrary, is to read it through the theme of life. A new birth is clearly suggested in the
last sentence: “He [the professor], like me, was looking for dawn” (Bones 310, my
emphasis). This new birth is symbolized by the wait, followed by the arrival of dawn, and
with it a new day and the possibility of a new story. Amabelle was indeed looking for
dawn, drifting away, carried in the arms of water, metaphorical mother of the origins. In
Edwidge Danticat’s novels, exile then, as defined by women, is a symbol for
transformation. This transformation is produced by the female character who positions
herself as a subject in her own story refusing to be defined by the other. In these novels,
exile also becomes a symbol for redefinition and construction. Redefinition takes place
first as geographical limits are challenged and the borders lose their traditional meaning.
Construction can then occur, as symbolized by the making of women's story written by and
for women.
" Ou libéré"? "Are you free?" say the Caribbean women, in the hope of seeing their
daughters be able to express themselves beyond geographical, racial, and sexual
boundaries, knowing full well that when borders cease to exist for women, their stories can
begin to live.
________________________
Florence Ramond Jurney, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian
at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
________________________
NOTES
1
I would like to thank Honora NíAódagain for her suggestions and editorial comments which
were both insightful and helpful.
2
In her essay, Gloria Anzaldúa identifies with the new mestiza, and she defines her as such:
“As a mestiza, I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am
every woman’s sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me;
but I am all races because there is the queer of me in all races.) I am cultureless because, as a
feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/ religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and of
Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new
story to explain the world and our participation in it” (80-81).
3
The English terms of “reversion” and “diversion” are those adopted by Michael Dash in his
translation of Edouard Glissant’s essay.
4
Society then becomes the place of his experience because that is where the hero needs to
assert his identity in opposition to the values and ideas of a given period. The contemporary
Bildungsroman thus evolves with society and with the concerns and claims of the various ethnic
groups and minorities. In post-colonial literature for example, certain themes (race, oppression)
appear clearly whereas they were not visible in the earlier European Bildungsroman tradition.
5
By exterior elements, I mean anything that modifies the protagonist’s character. They can
be structural phenomenon (as a result, for example, of the influence of society on the protagonist)
or human phenomenon (resulting from the influence of one particular person on the protagonist).
6
Gloria Anzaldúa bases her theory on the experiences of Chicanas (Mexican-American
women who had to cross the border between Mexico and the United States and cannot identify
anymore with one country or the other). She explains that understanding the border in female
terms enables the Chicana woman to define herself vis-à-vis other women from the community
(77). I would like to add vis-à-vis the mothers, and also the mother of the origins.
WORKS CITED
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern. Trans. James Maraniss.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
Cixous, Hélène, et Catherine Clément. La Jeune Née. Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1975.
Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1994.
________. The Farming of Bones. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Esturoy, Annie O. Daughters of Self-Creation: The Contemporary Chicana Novel. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Glissant, Edouard. 1981. Le Discours antillais. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
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Lionnet, Françoise. Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University
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Saïd, Edward. “Reflections on Exile.” Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Ed.
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