Welcome to Litsy!

This is one of the heaviest books I‘ve read. Bones have a story to tell, if you know what to look for, and if you are willing to spend time with them. The author did just that in Argentina. They were searching for bones: trying to identify who they were, trying to properly lay them to rest, find justice for them and their families, give some peace to their families. It was the deepest of emotional labors. This book covers some history ⬇️

…the dead whisper to me that it does not have to be this way. The massacres, secret prisons, and hidden graves, all the terror and loss. Another world is possible. On a burning planet, pockmarked by mass graves, it is hard to have much faith. But my work among the dead has taught me that even in the face of violence and terror and breakdown, even at the bottom of the well, there is something—a movement of life, an impulse for justice, a kind⬇️

How much grief can one mass grave hold?

If you can‘t understand the bones as people who are missed and loved, with a mother and father standing by the edge of the grave waiting, you can‘t do this work. If you can‘t understand the bones as evidence to be analyzed and examined, you can‘t do this work. You must touch bones and be touched by them. You must be able to drink your tea with the dead.

Anthropology is fascinating. however, when utilizing their skills to identify victims of genocide and mass political violence, surely the knowledge of the perpetrators‘ proximity gives them a few bad nights. The cases in this book are set mainly in Guatemala and Argentina although other places are mentioned. Very interesting and nerve wracking and often quite heartbreaking.

My #doublespin was an education in so many ways. The forensics of genocide? Yes. Humanity‘s inhumanity to one another? Yes. The deep care and refusal to abandon the lost by some? Also yes. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

During her training, social anthropologist Hagerty went to #Guatemala and Argentina to work with the group trying to identify bones of the disappeared from each country‘s period of violence. Part memoir of her time with the bones, part history of each country, and part recounting of survivors‘ stories, this is an excellent, sobering read.

#ReadingAmericas2023