An Analysis of Phyllis Alesia Perry's Stigmata and a Sunday in June

Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee e Americane Classe LM-37 Tesi di Laurea Trauma, Memory, Healing and the Haunting Ancestor: An Analysis of Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata and A Sunday in June Relatrice Laureanda Prof. Anna Scacchi Elena Giovannini n° matr.1210418 / LMLLA Anno Accademico 2019 / 2020 Introduction 3 1. The trauma of the past and the ghost 11 1.1 The memory of the slave past and trauma as collective memory 11 1.2 The neo-slave narrative and its evolution 22 1.3 Ghosts and scars 28 2. Stigmata 35 2.1 The author and the novel 35 2.2 The representation of slavery in Stigmata 41 2.3 The ancestral ghost: Ayo 51 2.4 The healing of the haunting experience 58 3. Haunting and Trauma in Stigmata 65 3.1 The mediums of haunting 65 3.2. The symbols of connection with the ancestors and with the past 70 3.3 Literary strategies conveying trauma and healing 75 3.4 The quilting trope 79 3.5 The denial and the acceptance of the past 84 4. A Sunday in June 91 4.1 The novel 91 4.2 The mediums and the symbols of the haunting 97 4.3 Denial and acceptance of the past and of the traumatic memory 100 4.4 Willow, the medicine-woman 109 Conclusion 115 Bibliography 123 Riassunto 127 1 2 Introduction The aim of this work is to analyze Phyllis Alesia Perry’s neo-slave narratives, entitled respectively Stigmata1 and A Sunday in June2. Some of the main themes in the novel are the representation of the slavery system and the ongoing consequences of the bondage experience, the figure of the haunting ancestor and the reincarnation process, the representation of trauma, its consequences and the process of healing and, finally, the contraposition of the denial or the acceptance of the past and the distinction between African and Western values. Consequently, in order to allow a better understanding of Perry’s novels, their themes and their characters, the first chapter is devoted to the explanation and the analysis of some theoretical works concerning the history of the discourse on slavery, trauma, and transgenerational transmission of trauma and memory. It is also focused on the definition of several literary genres that can facilitate the description and categorization of the two novels. It also introduces the tropes of the ghost and the scars that are main features of Perry’s narratives. To begin, the first chapter underlines that for a long time the history of slavery has been the matter that America wanted to avoid. It became a “secret,”3 in the words of Ashraf Rushdy, because it ran counter to the democratic premises of the country. Moreover, also in contemporary times the American mainstream still avoids looking back at the past of bondage and oppression that does not fit the narrative of freedom and democracy that the United States has crafted for itself. The public discourse concerning slavery was rarely explored until the last decades of the 20th century. In fact, the growing literature and research on the trauma and the consequences of the Holocaust propelled the investigation of trauma and the consequences of other big scale events such as slavery. In that period, the field of trauma studies thus knew a considerable growth. Cathy Caruth’s works were useful in order to provide the definition of the concept of trauma4, as well as the concepts 1 Phyllis Alesia Perry, Stigmata, New York: Hyperion, 1998. 2 Phyllis Alesia Perry, A Sunday in June, New York: Hyperion, 2004. 3 Ashraf A. Rushdy, Remembering Generations: Race and Family in Contemporary African American Fiction, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001, p. 2. 4 Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 11. 3 of latency or belatedness5 and repetition.6 Some distinctions on the various types of traumas are drawn in the first chapter, such as the division between direct, indirect and insidious trauma introduced by Maria Root.7 Furthermore, the phenomenon of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is explained basing on Bessel van der Volk’s and Ono van der Hart’s researches on the matter.8 A section is also devoted to the explanation of the phenomenon of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome theorized by Joy DeGruy.9 All these works and theories help to understand not only the condition of the African American individual who endured slavery and life in bondage, but also the psychological and social condition of the subsequent generations that still carry the burden of the traumatic memory of slavery. In fact, the introduction of Marianne Hirsch’s and Alison Landsberg’s concepts, respectively called postmemory10 and prosthetic memory11 by the two scholars, allows to underline that memories can be trans-generationally transmitted. Moreover, the concept of collective memory, popularized by Maurice Halbwachs and expanded by Jan and Aleida Assmann12, is also analyzed in order to highlight the possibility of a memory to be shared within a community and not only being experienced on an individual level. These concepts and phenomena are useful to examine and understand the condition of the protagonists of Perry’s novels since they undergo a process of transgenerational transmission of the traumatic memory of slavery caused by their foremother who has experienced life in bondage. Consequently, they have to cope with the transmission of the trauma of oppression as well, as they try to find a way for healing from it. Secondly, I have dealt with the definition of different literary genres, since they can contribute to a better investigation of Perry’s novels. In fact, the two books can fall under the categories of neo-slave narratives, trauma narratives, speculative fictions and magic realism. As a consequence, it is useful to define neo-slave narratives relying on Bernard 5 Ivi, p. 4. 6 Ivi, p. 2. 7 Quoted in Hicks, A critical analysis of post traumatic slave syndrome, p. 30-32. 8 Bessel A. van der Volk, Ono van der Hart, “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, 173, 177-178. 9 Joy L. DeGruy, Post traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Portland: Joy DeGruy Publications, 2005, eBook, Chapter 4. 10 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, p. 5. 11 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 2. 12 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, p. 31-32. 4 Bell’s13 and Ashraf Rushdy’s14 works, the first to offer a definition of contemporary novels about the slave past. Moreover, some main distinctions between slave narratives and neo-slave narratives are also pinpointed, in addition to a description of the genre of the trauma narrative and its purposes and of speculative fiction. Lastly, I introduce the tropes of the ghost and the scars, which are two of the main features appearing in Perry’s narratives, describing the general meanings and purposes of these two elements with the help of works of scholars such as Joanne Chassot15 and Carol Henderson16. Furthermore, the figure of the “living-dead”17 belonging to the African tradition is introduced. The second chapter introduces Perry’s first published novel, Stigmata, offering a summary of the plot and an analysis of the genre structure of the text applying the concepts of neo-slave narrative, trauma narrative and speculative fiction that have been introduced in the previous chapter. Moreover, some of the main themes and features of the novel are examined, such as the representation of slavery provided through the excerpts of the diary that the haunting ancestor Ayo has dictated to her daughter Joy, in order to be able to pass on her story and the memory of her experience during the Middle Passage and slavery. The second topic that is tackled in the chapter is the representation of the character of the haunting ancestor, Ayo. Her purpose is the remembrance of her past and of her trauma of bondage and oppression. This is emphasized in the novel through the process of reincarnation that she initiates. In fact, Ayo reincarnates in one of her descendants, Grace, and both women reincarnate in Lizzie. A parallel is drawn between the character of Ayo and the description of the ancestor provided by Oyeniyi Okunoye.18 Ayo is also compared to the figure of the “living-dead” explained by John Samuel Mbiti. The ambivalence of Ayo’s character is also highlighted due to the 13 Bernard Bell, The Contemporary African-American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Modern Literary Branches, Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004, 199. 14 Ashraf A. Rushdy, Neo Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 3. 15 Joanne Chassot, Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory and Identity, Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2018. 16 Carol E. Henderson, Scarring the Black Body: Race and Representation in African American Literature, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002. 17 John Samuel Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, Oxford: Heinemann, 1990, p. 81-82-83. 18 Oyeniyi Okunoye, “The Trope of the Ancestor in Contemporary Black Poetry,” Obsidian, 8(2), (2007), 140. 5 introduction of the concept of the “rape of history” that has been formulated by Lisa Long, who affirms that Ayo metaphorically rapes her descendants by forcing a bodily and mental penetration because of the reincarnation process.19 Other two interesting readings of the character of the haunting ancestor are provided by Camille Passalacqua and Éva Tettenborn.

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