Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • An anthropologist working with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America explores what science can tell us about the lives of the dead in this haunting account of grief, the power of ritual, and a quest for justice.
“Absorbing . . . multifaceted and elegiac . . . Still Life with Bones captures the ethos that drives the search—often tireless and against the odds—for truth.”—The New York Times
WINNER OF THE JUAN E. MÉNDEZ BOOK AWARD • A NEW YORKER AND BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“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 memory, loss, and mourning.”
Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights.
In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog. In the tenderness of understanding these bones, forensics not only offers proof of mass atrocity but also tells the story of each life lost.
Working with forensic teams at mass grave sites and in labs, Hagerty discovers how bones bear witness to crimes against humanity and how exhumation can bring families meaning after unimaginable loss. She also comes to see how cutting-edge science can act as ritual—a way of caring for the dead with symbolic force that can repair societies torn apart by violence.
Weaving together powerful stories about investigative breakthroughs, histories of violence and resistance, and her own forensic coming-of-age, Hagerty crafts a moving portrait of the living and the dead.
“Absorbing . . . multifaceted and elegiac . . . Still Life with Bones captures the ethos that drives the search—often tireless and against the odds—for truth.”—The New York Times
WINNER OF THE JUAN E. MÉNDEZ BOOK AWARD • A NEW YORKER AND BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“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 memory, loss, and mourning.”
Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights.
In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog. In the tenderness of understanding these bones, forensics not only offers proof of mass atrocity but also tells the story of each life lost.
Working with forensic teams at mass grave sites and in labs, Hagerty discovers how bones bear witness to crimes against humanity and how exhumation can bring families meaning after unimaginable loss. She also comes to see how cutting-edge science can act as ritual—a way of caring for the dead with symbolic force that can repair societies torn apart by violence.
Weaving together powerful stories about investigative breakthroughs, histories of violence and resistance, and her own forensic coming-of-age, Hagerty crafts a moving portrait of the living and the dead.
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Community Reviews
A relevant and haunting account of the darkest side of human cruelty balanced with the best of human kindness and compassion.
“Every bone tells a life. Every person lost was a world.”
Still Life With Bones takes you through the history of Guatemala’s thirty-six year armed conflict that led to the deaths of over 200,000 people and Argentina’s military dictatorship disappearing up to 30,000 people. In the aftermath, teams of anthropologists have worked around the clock to exhume the mass graves in these two countries and reunite people with their missing loved ones, and hopefully see justice done.
“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.”
This was a very informative look at these two genocides and the exhumation process that is happening in these countries. While this is informative, this is also a very somber and sad book because of the horror these countries dealt with. Hagerty does a fantastic job at presenting the importance of this work but also the emotional toll this kind of job has on its workers. As the book progresses we learn about the changes that happened for her, from fear of being too emotional to disconnecting, and to eventually panic attacks.
“A mass grave can attest to atrocity without each body being identified. Such an exhumation would be useful in a human rights trial but of little help for a family searching for a loved one. A body can be returned to a family, but if there is no trial, it will be of little use for proving crimes against humanity.”
As someone who knew of these genocides, but not the extent of them, this book was both fascinating and horrifying. It was heartbreaking to hear about the atrocities that happened in Guatemala and disappearances in Argentina. But, I am glad there are teams fighting to find and identify the dead, even if the identification rate is very low, and bring the culprits to justice, even if it is taking years for it to happen. Overall, this was a fascinating, sad, and informative book about exhumation, mass graves, and genocide.
TW: discussions of genocide, death and murder, child death, torture, rape, gun violence, gang violence, death of coworker; panic attacks;
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