Black American Women’s Voices and Transgenerational Trauma

This book concentrates on six neo-slave narratives written by late 20th and early 21st century black American women: Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata and A Sunday in June, Gayl Jones’ Corregidora, Joan California Cooper’s Family, and Athena Lark’s Avenue of Palms. It explores the process of re(-)membering of the black female characters in these novels, and shows how these authors manage to both write the transgenerational trauma of slavery and write through it, enabling black American women’s voices to be heard. This analysis of famous classics, as well as less-known books, demonstrates how black American women’s traumatic memory of slavery is inscribed in a transgenerational black female body. Conjuring up questions of narratology and intertextuality, it highlights how working-through takes the form of a narrativization of this traumatic memory by diverse means. This book also reflects upon the links between the collective and personal psyches by laying emphasis on the ineluctable intertwining of national history and individual destiny.