Still Life with Bones: A forensic quest for justice among Latin America’s mass graves
CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2023 BY FT READERS AND THE NEW YORKER
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR
CHOSEN BY FINANCIAL TIMES' READERS' FOR BEST BOOKS OF 2023
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOKS EDITOR' S CHOICE
"Has the makings of a classic." -The TLS
"Chilling and vital. . . sensitive and thought-provoking." - The Times
"Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration-of building something new with the pile of broken mirrors that is loss and mourning."
In this haunting and poetic account, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty joins forensic teams and families of the missing as they search for the hundreds of thousands victims of genocidal violence unleashed by authoritarian governments in Latin America.
In Guatemala and Argentina, she learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for evidence of torture and cause of death - hands bound by rope, cuts from machetes - but also for signs of a life lived: a weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by years of kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog.
Hagerty shows us how exhumation can bring meaning to families dealing with unimaginable loss and justice to societies in the aftermath of state terror and genocide. Weaving together powerful stories about investigative breakthroughs, grieving families, histories of violence, and her own forensic coming of age, Hagerty crafts a moving portrait of the living and the dead.
"Touching, but achingly honest - a most amazing account of training as a forensic anthropologist. When Hagerty talks about "lives being violently made into bones," I defy you not to be moved. The text is unflinching, but then the crimes and the victims deserve nothing less. I guarantee this will make you think long and hard about cruelty and human rights and the dedication and humanity of the forensic scientist." - Sue Black, author of All That remains
'Essential reading as a human.' - Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of Fact of a Body
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Bones are always joined to grief, memory, and ritual," contends anthropologist Hagerty in this searing report on the grueling labor and psychological stress of her time in Guatemala and Argentina excavating the mass graves of victims of political violence. Digging into the history of the two countries, the author discusses the Guatemalan government's massacre of tens of thousands of Maya people from the 1960s to 1996 and the Argentine military dictatorship's murder of dissidents from 1976 to 1983. She describes using DNA, oral histories, and fragments of clothing to identify victims and return the remains to families, noting that community members can sometimes recognize a body by the unique pattern on a handwoven huipil, a kind of traditional blouse. "To recognize a missing person in a bone is a difficult act of imagination," she muses, telling the story of a woman who struggled to make sense of her brother's death after a fragment of his pelvic bone was found in a mass grave. Hagerty never loses sight of the humanity of the dead and the pain felt by the survivors, nimbly weaving together political history and personal narratives to illuminate the difficult process of accounting for atrocities. Intense and emotional, this is a vital rumination on political violence.
Customer Reviews
Fantastic read
Hegarty has a phenomenal writing style which is engaging to the reader, she treats her work so carefully which helps to generate empathy and understanding amongst her audience, who would likely be unaware of Argentinian and Guatemalan history in the mid to late 20th century.