Creating Memory and Cultural Identity in African American Trauma Fiction
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CREATING MEMORY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN TRAUMA FICTION Patricia San José Rico A quienes me dieron la vida y me enseñaron a vivirla L1. TABLE OF CONTENTS L1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................... i L1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 L1. CULTURAL, COLLECTIVE, AND LITERARY TRAUMA: FOUNDATIONS FOR ANALYSIS 13 L2. Trauma: What it Is, How it Feels, What it Does ....................................................... 16 L2. Collective Trauma ...................................................................................................... 26 L2. A “Story to Pass on”? Trauma and its Transmission ................................................ 32 L2. Trauma, Memory and Space: Sites of Memory / Sites of Trauma .......................... 39 L2. Trauma Writing / Writing Trauma ........................................................................... 46 L2. Trauma Fiction .......................................................................................................... 67 L1. HISTORY, ROOTS AND MYTH: TONI MORRISON’S PARADISE AND GLORIA NAYLOR’S MAMA DAY .......................................................................................................................... 77 L2. History and Traumatic Memory ............................................................................... 77 L2. Paradise: The Perils of Sublimated History ............................................................. 86 L3. History Revisited .................................................................................................. 87 L3. This, you Must Learn: The Elders’ Exaltation of History .................................... 88 L3. Not the Truth, after all: Archival Work and the Unearthing of the Secret ....... 97 L3. “An Endless Cycle of Repetition”: Inverted Racism and Violence .................... 103 L3. Wind of Change: When the Out There Reaches Paradise ............................... 116 L3. Breaking the Cycle of Repetition: Sharing Trauma .......................................... 118 L2. Know thy Roots: Mama Day and the Significance of the Past ............................... 123 L3. Dynamic Memory vs. Stagnant History ............................................................ 123 L3. The Day Family: A Trauma within the Folds of Memory ................................. 132 L3. The Need for Roots: George and Cocoa ............................................................ 137 L1. THE DANGERS OF REPRESSION/SUPPRESSION: TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED ... 145 L2. Trauma and Hidden Memory .................................................................................. 145 L2. Beloved: The F/Hateful Power of Repressed Trauma ........................................... 156 L3. “The Unspeakable”: Repressive Signs in Beloved’s Characters ...................... 157 L3. A Ghost (Hi)story: Beloved as the Return of the Repressed ........................... 172 L3. Voicing it out: The Attempt and Failure of the Talking Cure ........................... 182 L3. The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Denver and Recovery from Trauma ...... 188 L1. THE RECOVERY OF HISTORY: TONI MORRISON’S SONG OF SOLOMON AND DAVID BRADLEY’S THE CHANEYSVILLE INCIDENT .................................................................. 193 L2. A Quest for One’s Past: Individuals, Collectivities, and Recovered Memory ......... 196 L2. The Truth Shall Make you Fly: Unearthing the Past in Song of Solomon ............. 202 L3. Trauma in Song of Solomon .............................................................................. 202 L3. That’s not my Thing: Milkman’s Initial Disinterest in the Past ...................... 207 L3. Of Roots and Ancestors: The Recovery of History as a Treasure Hunt .......... 209 L3. It is all in There: Myth, Tales and Folk Culture as a Repository of Memory... 213 L3. Lieux de Mémoire: Places of History and the History in Places ...................... 218 L3. Hallowed be thy Name: Naming and the Power of Designation ..................... 221 L3. Learning (in order) to Fly: The Acquisition of Historical Knowledge as a Liberating Process ................................................................................................... 234 L3. Turning the Tables: Reversal of Stigmas and our Debt to the Future ............. 238 L2. Digging up History: The Chaneysville Incident and the Ethnic Historian ............ 242 L3. Historians vs. Archeologists: Study or Action? ................................................. 243 L3. Scholarly Knowledge vs. Ancestral Wisdom ..................................................... 248 L3. The Contesting and Therapeutic Value of Recovering the Past ...................... 257 L3. The Coalescence of Fact and Fiction: Bridging Genres and Cultures .............. 263 L1. EPILOGUE: IS CLOSURE POSSIBLE? THE USE OF TRAUMA IN ART AS A VEHICLE FOR POLITICAL STRUGGLE .............................................................................................. 269 L2. “National Amnesia”: Searching for its Cure ............................................................ 270 L2. Fighting our own Battles: The Use of Trauma in Political Struggle ....................... 272 L2. Trauma as Art or the Art of Trauma? ..................................................................... 274 L2. Is Closure Possible? ................................................................................................. 277 L1. WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 281 Acknowledgments L1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I embarked on my academic journey in the summer of 2009, still a master’s student in search of a research field, I would never have thought that, almost ten years later, it would blossom into the publication of this volume. Many are the people that have contributed to this result and, although a few will be acknowledged here, many others will not. Rest assured that is not the case in my heart. First and foremost, my gratitude goes to Dr. Jesús Benito and Dr. Ana Manzanas for their unrelenting support before, during and beyond my doctoral years. Without their assistance, advice—both personal and professional—and countless hours of work and revision, neither this volume nor my own growth as a researcher would have been possible. It is through their expertise and guidance that this and other professional successes have been achieved. During these years I have spent time and shared ideas with many colleagues, some of whom I am honored to now call friends. Thank you Enrique Cámara, Laura Filardo, Marta Gutiérrez, Rosalía Martínez, Sara Medina, Toñy Mezquita, Sonja Mujcinovic and Tamara Pérez for all the coffee breaks, help and the occasional shoulder to lean on. Part of this book is also yours. I am also indebted to the rest of the people at the English Department at the University of Valladolid. I never thought that those that I admired as teachers would become such great colleagues and excellent friends. Thank you as well to Susana Gómez, Ana Muñoz, Mª Carmen Alario and Ana Díez for their encouragement and aid in the course of the many chal le nges that recent years have thrown my way. You showed me great warmth and welcome when our paths crossed, without you I would have found adjusting to these, at times, adverse i Acknowledgments circumstances markedly more difficult. I must also express my gratitude to those scholars and reputed professionals that have devoted part of their precious time and insight to help me further this project: Dr. Isabel Caldeira and Dr. Maria Jose Canelo from the University of Coimbra, Teresa Cid from the University of Lisboa, Dr. Stephen Thomson from the University of Reading, Dr. Cristina Alsina from the University of Barcelona and Dr. Viorica Patea from the University of Salamanca. Their help at various stages of this venture and their continued generosity has manifested in other interesting projects across countries and universities that have no doubt benefitted this one as well. Heartfelt thanks to my family and friends for putting up with me during the worst moments of the last few years. Many a crisis would not have been solved without your encouragement and affection. If our past influences our present, I have been extremely lucky for your presence in my mine, and your help in my becoming who I am today. I look forward to continuing to evolve in the future with the best group of people anyone could wish for. As for my love and the most recent addition to this circle, may we continue to form a myriad of happy memories together! I would like to acknowledge the assistance (and patience!) of Masja Horn, from Brill, and of Sharon Rhodes during the editing process of this book, as well as the bibliographical sources and travelling expenses financed by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) for the research projects “Critical History of Ethnic American Literature” (references FFI2009-07450, FFI2012-31250 and FFI2015-64137-P), and the Junta de Castilla y León through the projects “Borders and Identities in American and Spanish Cultural Studies” (reference SA007A10-1) and “The Frontiers of ii Acknowledgments Hospitality in the Cultural Studies of The United States and Europe” (reference SA342U14). iii iv Introduction L1. INTRODUCTION If every age has its symptoms, ours appears to be the age of trauma. Miller and Tougaw,