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4 results on '"transhistorical trauma"'

1. A ‘Present-Tense People’: (Re-) Writing the Native in Tommy Orange's There There

Author

Cornelia Vlaicu

Subjects
indian, native american renaissance, storytelling, transhistorical trauma, presence, “survivance”, Fine Arts, Language and Literature
Abstract

There There, Cheyenne and Arapaho writer Tommy Orange’s first novel, has been praised as "an astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood), a "tense, prismatic book" (New York Times), a "breathtaking, haunting and gripping story" (Publishers Weekly), and has received multiple literary awards since its publication in 2018. This article explores Tommy Orange’s way of writing the Indian (back) into presence, in response to a “metaphorical,” as well as very “material” (Arif Dirlik) deletion of the “inconvenient Indian” (Thomas King) along centuries of American history. The discussion focuses on Tommy Orange’s understanding of storytelling as a way of continuing “Indian Wars” (E. Cook-Lynn) with the pen. Storytelling is a revisionist act in that it implicitly denies the stereotype of the vanishing race and re-places the Indigenous American not in a(n impossible) pre-colonial past, but in the land with which the Native has never ceased to remain connected. The characters’ stories, some in an autobiographical tone, others in the third person, narrate the Natives as “a present-tense people” (TT 141), grappling with a traumatic, far-from-romanticized past and present, but all the more alive for that.

Published
2021

2. A "Present-Tense People": (Re-) Writing the Native in Tommy Orange's There There.

Author

Vlaicu, Cornelia

Subjects
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, STEREOTYPES, INDIGENOUS peoples, PUBLICATIONS
Abstract

There There, Cheyenne and Arapaho writer Tommy Orange's first novel, has been praised as "an astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood), a "tense, prismatic book" (New York Times), a "breathtaking, haunting and gripping story" (Publishers Weekly), and has received multiple literary awards since its publication in 2018. This article explores Tommy Orange's way of writing the Indian (back) into presence, in response to a "metaphorical," as well as very "material" (Arif Dirlik) deletion of the "inconvenient Indian" (Thomas King) along centuries of American history. The discussion focuses on Tommy Orange's understanding of storytelling as a way of continuing "Indian Wars" (E. Cook-Lynn) with the pen. Storytelling is a revisionist act in that it implicitly denies the stereotype of the vanishing race and re-places the Indigenous American not in a(n impossible) pre-colonial past, but in the land with which the Native has never ceased to remain connected. The characters' stories, some in an autobiographical tone, others in the third person, narrate the Natives as "a present-tense people" (TT 141), grappling with a traumatic, far-from-romanticized past and present, but all the more alive for that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2020

3. In a Space of their Own: Literary Representations of Feminine Trauma through the Arthuriad

Author

Bezbradica, Viktorija

Subjects
Literary studies, Transhistorical trauma, Mythic women, Empowerment, Feminism, Trauma narratives
Abstract

This thesis examines the literary tapestry of trauma wound within representations of femininity throughout the Arthuriad. In many of the legendary Arthurian narratives, women are marginalized, cast as pawns and scapegoats, or erased from the mythology entirely. Although scholarship has done much to uncover and improve the legacy, values, and standing of these characters, particularly through the lens of feminist analyses, the troubling reputation they maintain within past and modern primary texts has yet to be explored. I argue that the adaptations and transformations of a specific feminine voice from across periods and forms within the tradition creates a long-standing traumatic space which echoes, extends, and re-orients the myth. By focusing on Morgan le Fay, I demonstrate how her various representations and manifestations form a collection of traumas which persist through the character’s narrative progression, ultimately hindering her struggle to attain autonomy, and thereby illuminating the myth’s problematic continuities.

Published
2019

4. Intergenerational Storytelling and Transhistorical Trauma: Old Women in Contemporary Canadian Fiction

Author

Salter, Jodie and Cairnie, Julie

Subjects
Old Women, Memory, Age Perspective, Caribbean Canadian, Intergenerational relationships, Transhistorical Trauma, Reciprocal Storytelling, Japanese Canadian, Contemporary Canadian Fiction
Abstract

Intergenerational Storytelling and Transhistorical Trauma: Old Women in Contemporary Canadian Fiction examines fictional representations of intergenerational storytelling exchanges between old diasporic women and younger characters. Focusing on three Japanese Canadian novels and two Trinidadian Canadian novels, written post-1970s, I examine the intergenerational tensions between telling personal and collective traumas of the past and maintaining silences within the family. Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, Darcy Tamayose’s Odori, Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night, and David Chariandy’s Soucouyant provide multiple generational and cultural optics through which to address how the past continues to reside within and inform the present moment, and thus impact one’s subjectivity and sense of belonging or dislocation. These novels characterize old racialized women in Canada as complex figures who disrupt assumptions about memory and madness, and their storytelling engagements highlight the impact of difference, of temporality, and of intergenerational transmissions. This study analyzes different narrative structures and strategies that emulate the symptoms of traumatic “belatedness” and provide readers with an understanding of “reciprocal storytelling” as a means of “bearing witness” to personal and transhistorical trauma. Drawing together work in literary trauma studies with narrative theory, I investigate the challenges and implications of articulating different types of trauma within the literary genre of the novel, and I argue these old women’s stories contribute important age and cultural perspectives to theories in social and critical aging and trauma studies.

Published
2012

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