Strengths and limits of negritudeNegritude is a term that is perhaps not used very often but is significant; by definition, it is a cultural word that represents “black” culture. The term is studied in depth in Edwidge Danticat's novel, The Farming of Bones. This novel delves into the strengths and weaknesses of the concept of negritude through the culture and lives of the Haitian and Dominican people. The novel revolves around a few major themes, namely birth, death, identity, place and movement. An inanimate object represents each aspect. Water, birth, death and masks make up these symbols. Haitians are known to speak more French Spanish than Dominican, which at the time seemed to cause great hardship to Generalissimo Trujillo. The novel The Culture of Bones presents the language of the Haitians against that of the Dominicans, it shows the limits of negritude through the numerous workers in the sugar cane fields and the major constraints they had. Negritude also has strengths and limits and Edwidge Danticat's novel helps to clarify the advantages and disadvantages. Through the novel, Danticat shows how negritude is not a negative word and the strengths that come with negritude. Negritude, although it may seem like a racial slur, is a word to represent Caribbean culture. Edwidge Danticat's novel, The Farm of Bones, is a depiction of relations between Haitians and Dominicans during the reign of Generalissimo Trujillo before the 1937 massacre. The symbolism, which is predominant throughout the novel, can change depending on interpretation . Bone Farm focuses on negritude from the beginning and continues to show the progressive side of negritude. The view of the negative progress...... middle of paper ......spoke a Spanish Creole. This established a clear distinction between the two and made it easy for the government to identify the difference. The reader sees how the themes of birth and death appear so clearly through the characters that one must focus on how birth and death affect the individual's concept of one's own blackness. It's about culture, not skin tones, but rather beliefs and values ​​that each country, whether it's Haiti or the Dominican Republic, relates to. Danticat's novel helps us understand the strengths and limits that René Depestre underlines in The Birth of Caribbean Civilization: "there exists a progressive "negritude" which exposes the need to rise above all the alienations of the 'man. . . and there exists “an irrational, reactionary and mystical version of “negritude” which serves…. . . as a cultural basis for neocolonialist penetration in our countries” (244).