Antipodas: Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies
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.University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanitie