A review by abookishtype
Still Life with Bones by Alexa Hagerty

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

 Alexa Hagerty pours out elegiac thoughts in the pages of Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains, thoughts inspired by her fieldwork in rural Guatemala and various locations in Argentina. Hagerty spent long months assisting organizations like the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to recover the remains of people who were forcibly disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s in those countries. Unlike so many other books I’ve read about forensic anthropology, which focus on objective science, Still Life with Bones is a deeply thoughtful exploration of what bones represent. Hagerty’s mosaic essay-style allows her to jump from memories of being in the field; to interviewing survivors and relatives of the disappeared; to meditating on grief, memory, and justice. This book is a marvel...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.