Black Feminism and Traumatic Legacies in Contemporary African American Literature [1 ed.] 9781666921380, 9781666921397

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Black Feminism and Traumatic Legacies in Contemporary African American Literature

READING TRAUMA AND MEMORY Series Editors: Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University, and Nicholas Ealy, University of Hartford Reading Trauma and Memory offers global perspectives on representations of trauma and memory while examining the tensions, limitations, and responsibilities that accompany the status of the witness. This series attempts to bridge the gap between trauma studies and new directions in the fields of memory studies, popular culture, and race theory and seeks submissions that closely read literature and culture for representations of traumatic wounding, the limits of memory, and the ethical duty to depict historical trauma and its effects. Given its breadth, this series will appeal to scholars in a number of interdisciplinary fields; given the specific angle of trauma and memory, it will capture those who see ethics and responsibility as key factors in their scholarship. Such areas include Holocaust studies, war trauma and PTSD, illness and disability, the trauma of migration and immigration, memory studies, race studies, gender and sexuality studies (which have recently had a resurgence with the #MeToo movement), studies in popular culture that take up television and films about witnessing, and the study of social and historical movements. We are seeking projects that question how to honor the past through close readings of literature focused on trauma and memory—which would necessarily take on international perspectives. Examples include a consideration of literature, justice, and Rwanda through a postcolonial and trauma lens, recent thinking on the phenomenon of American Crime Story and the resurgence of interest in the OJ Simpson trial that parallel the narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement, and readings of the attempts of popular culture to address issues of historical injustice as exemplified by 12 Years a Slave and HBO’s Westworld. Recent Titles in This Series Black Feminism and Traumatic Legacies in Contemporary African American Literature By Apryl Lewis Violence, Trauma, and Memory: Responses to War in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World

Edited by Nicholas Ealy and Alexandra Onuf 9/11 Gothic: Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City’s Terrorism Novels By Danel Olson Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives By Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski Trauma in 20th Century Multicultural American Poetry: Unmuted Verse By Jamie D. Barker Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives: Responding to the Pain of Others By Kimberly A. Nance

Black Feminism and Traumatic Legacies in Contemporary African American Literature Apryl Lewis

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lewis, Apryl, 1991- author.   Title: Black feminism and traumatic legacies in contemporary African     American literature / Apryl Lewis.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2023] | Series: Reading trauma and     memory | Includes bibliographical references and index.  Identifiers: LCCN 2022046756 (print) | LCCN 2022046757 (ebook) | ISBN     9781666921380 (cloth alk. paper) | ISBN 9781666921397 (ebook)   Subjects: LCSH: Gyasi, Yaa. Homegoing. | Jones, Tayari. American marriage.     | Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, unburied, sing. | Whitehead, Colson, 1969-     Underground railroad. | Feminism in literature. | Psychic trauma in     literature. | Collective memory in literature. | LCGFT: Literary     criticism.  Classification: LCC PS3607.Y37 H66354 2023  (print) | LCC PS3607.Y37      (ebook) | DDC 813/.6093522--dc23/eng/20221110  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046756 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046757 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgements ix Introduction

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Chapter 1: “Not the Being Lost, but the Being Found”: Traumatic Legacy and the Search for Home in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing

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Chapter 2: What Becomes of Injustice? Shame and the Obligation of Remembrance and Love in Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage

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Chapter 3: Reclaiming the Ghosts of Trauma’s Past: Witnessing and 73 Testimony as Healing in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing Chapter 4: Cora’s Resilience: The Magnitude of Trauma and Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

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Conclusion

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References

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Index

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About the Author



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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my family, friends, and mentors for their unwavering support and encouragement. I am indebted to former colleagues at Texas Tech University who saw the potential of this work and provided constructive feedback on early drafts, especially Professor Michael Borshuk, Professor Elissa Zellinger, and Professor Marta Kvande.

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During my first semester of the doctoral program in English, I took a postcolonial literature seminar that changed the trajectory of my personal and academic self. Aside from reading literature out of my comfort zone, I was excited for the course because it was taught by a professor of color. I wanted to like the seminar. However, by the midterm, I could tell I was out of my element. I struggled with time management, understanding the course content, and writing more compelling arguments in my essays. I visited the professor during his office hours to discuss my concerns. With an open door and a seemingly empty hallway, the professor told me I needed remedial help and that I should defer to other students in the class. The students he had in mind were two white women who were in their second year of the doctoral program. In a class about cosmopolitanism and highlighting nonwhite authors, his suggestion left me discouraged and less certain about my place in a graduate program where I was the only Black student in my cohort. I left his office only to run into another graduate student who overheard our conversation. She asked me if I was okay, and I could only hang my head in shame. Although I gradually improved my time management skills, I still found myself struggling to understand the course materials and why my writing style was praised in other spaces outside of this professor’s classroom. Not wanting to deal with another humiliating visit to office hours, I took his advice and worked with the two classmates he mentioned. Instead of revealing the inadequacies of my writing, they were incredulous that the professor suggested I needed remedial help of any kind. After reviewing my and their work side by side, I could not see any significant difference in our writing styles. That is not to suggest that I thought I was better than my peers. Rather, I became insulted by the professor’s comments about my writing. The shame I felt after the office visit was replaced with resentment towards him and the course. Apparently, I was not the only one displeased with the direction of the seminar. This became evident three weeks before the semester ended when two students complained about the lack of women writers represented. In a reading list of eight books, only two books were written by women. As 1

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the reading list was criticized by predominately white students, the professor calmly addressed their concerns and opened the discussion to everyone. When he asked if there were any other questions, I asked a question regarding the relationship between cosmopolitanism and gender. However, his demeanor visibly changed. He changed the subject and did not answer my question. I said, “But you took the time to answer everyone else’s questions. Why not mine?” The professor turned to me and said, “Apryl, you’re being defiant. I’m not taking any more questions.” No one spoke as I could feel everyone’s gaze fall on me. Without thinking, I stormed out of the room. The professor called for a ten-minute break and went to his office. Meanwhile, two of my classmates found me pacing in the hallway near the classroom and tried to console me. I said, “So everyone else can ask a question, but when I ask something, then it’s a problem?” My voice was rising despite my efforts to stay calm. Although my classmates took my side and assured me that the professor was in the wrong, the word “defiant” kept replaying in my head. After the break, I returned to the classroom with my peers and made a point of not making eye contact with the professor. I did not speak for the rest of class time. The day after class, the professor emailed me and apologized for “shutting me down.” I chose not to respond to the email. Hours later, the professor sent an email to the entire class apologizing for his conduct that silenced students’ voices. Still, I did not respond. On the last day of class, he apologized to us once again and gave the class an opportunity to speak on cosmopolitanism and gender. While I do believe that he would have been receptive to my thoughts on the subject, I not only kept quiet but also did not make eye contact with the professor. As a first-year PhD student, the last thing I wanted was to gain a reputation for being “difficult,” “angry,” or “defiant.” In other words, I did not want my colleagues to dismiss me as the “angry Black woman.”1 However, the next thought should have been “why did I, a Black woman, have to think about minimizing myself in an effort to be accepted in academic spaces?” In Sister Citizen (2011), Melissa Harris-Perry provides two concepts that I use to reflect on my experiences as an academic and Black woman in America: shame and the “crooked room.” THE PLIGHT OF BLACK WOMEN: SHAME AND THE CROOKED ROOM In chapter 3 of Sister Citizen, Harris-Perry identifies three elements associated with shame. The first is social, which is where individuals experience shame in relation to violating social boundaries or community expectations (104). The second element of shame is global, in which shame causes

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individuals to render judgments about the whole self instead of the isolated incident that triggers feeling ashamed (104). Lastly, according to HarrisPerry, shame “brings a psychological and physical urge to withdraw, submit, or appease others” (104). To return to my anecdote, I withdrew from class discussions verbally and mentally even though I was present in the room. At the time, I internalized my feelings of shame, which led me to believe that I needed to change aspects about myself or my personality to be accepted by my colleagues. Such internalized shame also caused me to reconsider continuing in the doctoral program. While these elements of shame are applicable on an individual level, Harris-Perry discusses shame on a collective level for many Black women in America. Furthermore, Sister Citizen discusses Black women’s politics and asks the question “what does it mean to be a Black woman and an American citizen?” Harris-Perry defines Black women’s politics as the constellation of ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that contribute to how Black women see their relationship to society and the state. Also, Harris-Perry makes the claim that the “internal, psychological, emotional, and personal experiences of black women are inherently political” (5). Those experiences are political because Black women have always dealt with derogatory assumptions about their character and identity. The assumptions about Black women’s identity not only shape Black women’s worldviews, but also must be navigated to “secure recognition as citizens” in a country that does not readily accept or recognize them.2 Black women’s experiences and external assumptions made about them all feed into the concept of the “crooked room.” Harris-Perry’s thesis of the crooked room comes from a psychological case study where subjects were “placed in a crooked chair in a crooked room and then asked to align themselves vertically” (29). Much like the subjects, Black women are “standing in a crooked room, and they have to figure out which way is up” (29). Although some individuals can get themselves upright, this is no easy task. Harris-Perry explains, “Bombarded with warped images of their humanity, some black women tilt and bend themselves to fit the distortion” (29). Their efforts result in upholding many degrading stereotypes directed at Black women, including Mammy and Jezebel, that date back to slavery. To return to the anecdote about my graduate school experience, the “crooked room” was multifaceted: the seminar course, the subsequent word choices my professor used to describe me and my writing, and the psychological strain that came from wanting to distance myself from any possible stereotype that could be directed at me. Initially, I contorted myself into what I thought was a more palatable version of myself (someone who did not voice disagreement with any aspect of a course or my peers’ responses, keeping my facial expressions as neutral as possible, and overextending myself so I was seen as a “team player” in my department). However, being what I thought

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others wanted me to be damaged my self-esteem and exacerbated my peoplepleasing tendencies. With the help of my mentors, friends, family, and counseling, I eventually managed to right myself and regain my confidence as a writer and academic. But I know there are many others like me who are not as fortunate. Moreover, the idea of Black women navigating crooked rooms in life goes beyond academia and time and can have adverse ramifications on their personhood. Another area that shows how Black women navigate various crooked rooms, whether the outcome is positive or negative, is in literary spaces, namely African American literature. One “crooked room” that is present in some literary works by African American writers is slavery. I argue that the traumatic legacy of slavery is the crooked room that Black people, especially Black women, are forced to navigate to facilitate healing. The collective trauma of slavery has affected generations of African Americans long after the traumatic event took place. For the Black community, the scars from slavery persist today, though in modified forms. Examples include wrongful imprisonment, thereby separating families; predominately white people policing Black bodies by deeming certain looks or behaviors deviant or disruptive; and marginalization of Black women by oversexualizing girls and women and downplaying Black women’s experiences in a society that puts little to no value in Black women. This act of diminishing and marginalizing Black women is a source of trauma that occurs at individual and collective levels.3 How do we navigate feelings of shame and traumas sustained throughout our lives? For some, the path to healing or addressing trauma leads people to seek counseling, therapy, or other confidantes. There are also avenues such as sports, art, music, and religion that can provide the impetus for healing. In these activities, someone can see or witness traumatized individuals visually and verbally transform their instances of trauma into creative or physical forms of healing. For example, a musician composes a song with lyrics that allude to trauma they experienced for an audience that may be able to relate to those experiences; therefore, the audience reinforces the idea of witnessing one’s trauma. Literature works similarly to help readers navigate traumatic experiences they encounter in written texts. In other words, literary works provide fictional and nonfictional representations of traumatic experiences. Literature is not meant to be a cure for one’s traumas or a how-to for overcoming trauma. Rather, literature is meant to help us make sense of traumatic legacies that we have inadvertently acquired, whether intergenerational or societal. Put another way, I argue that efforts to represent traumatic experiences in written form, even with fictional characters, can redirect one’s negative feelings associated with traumatic experiences towards healing and reclaiming one’s sense of self. As Geoffrey Hartman explains, literature makes the wounds trauma or traumatic experiences cause perceivable

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(2003, 259). In other words, Hartman regards literature as not only a platform for articulating traumatic experience, but also an outlet for “working through” trauma. Although the idea of “working through” trauma is adapted from therapeutic settings, it is still plausible in literature and trauma studies because readers can glean understanding of traumas presented in literary texts and use that understanding to work through personal and collective traumas.4 Recognizing one’s testimony can facilitate healing by conveying support instead of furthering negative or unproductive feelings.5 Literature can also provide support and healing that extends beyond the story’s characters to readers who can relate to trauma or traumatic circumstances. Additionally, literature promotes a space for being able to consider various aspects of traumatic experiences, collective and individual, and reflect on how we can make sense of traumas in our own lives. In most circumstances, trauma cannot be assimilated into our psyche. This is primarily because of memory gaps and inconsistencies when attempting to recall traumatic experiences. However, I contend that literature provides a gateway that comes close to adequately articulating collective traumatic experiences, especially slavery. In the twenty-first century, slavery is pushed out of public awareness because of white people who are uncomfortable with confronting slavery’s traumatic magnitude on the Black community. Just because society becomes spatially and temporally distant from traumatic circumstances does not make those traumas less important to analyze or discuss in the context of literature. Furthermore, African American literature is not removed from discussions on current events and traumatic circumstances that impact the Black community. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION OF REPRESENTING TRAUMA Most African American literature not only dramatizes white imperialist formulations of opinions about Blackness over time, but also coincides with a larger African American literary tradition of representing trauma. Slave narratives, such as those by Frederick Douglass (narrative published in 1845) and Harriet Jacobs (narrative published in 1861), come to mind when considering the immediate, personal impact of slavery’s legacy in the United States. I consider slave narratives tradition setters in the African American literary landscape because of the way they articulate slavery as a collective trauma. Slave narratives also provide contemporary Black authors with a potential blueprint of how to advance discussions of traumas that impact the Black community.6 This book aims to expand on an already lengthy tradition with other African American writers who articulate traumatic experiences and/or slavery’s legacy both past and present. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. argues that because

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“black authors read and revise one another, address similar themes and repeat the cultural and linguistic codes of a common symbolic geography,” we can think of Black authors as “forming literary traditions” (Gates 1990, 20). One canonical literary text that engages with slavery’s legacy and subsequent collective traumatic experience is Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). A commonly cited text in trauma studies, Beloved is not only an imaginative retelling of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who committed infanticide to avoid returning her daughter to a life of slavery, but a novel that also brings the experience of slavery into contemporary literature and introduces us to a family that is haunted by the past despite their freedom in a post–Civil War atmosphere. The novel’s protagonists include Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, and her daughter, Denver. They live in a home haunted by the malevolent spirit of Sethe’s murdered daughter, Beloved. Ultimately, Beloved is the ghostly and eventually physical manifestation of the psychological effects of slavery. I consider Beloved to be a major component of a larger African American literary tradition and a work that calls for analysis concerning the importance of depicting trauma and traumatic experience in African American literature. In a 1988 interview, Toni Morrison states that “there is a necessity for remembering [slavery’s] horror” in a “[way] it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not destructive” (qtd. in Darling 1988, 5). For Morrison, “writing the book” provides “a way of confronting [the past] and making it possible to remember” (qtd. in Darling 1988, 5). Morrison’s statements reaffirm my stance that literature, especially African American literature, provides one approach for understanding historical traumas that is digestible for contemporary readership. Moreover, literature plays an important role in advancing discussions about issues that impact various social groups, though I emphasize African American women and men. Such issues include navigating white supremacy, racism, classism, and sexism. The African American literary tradition has always discussed these issues and articulated their impact on Black women and men as a crucial mode of redress. This is evident by surveying a canon that includes Morrison’s Beloved, Ann Petry’s The Street (1946),7 Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940),8 and Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place (1982),9 to name a few. Of course, these earlier novels are not the only ones to engage with present-day issues that impact the Black community. Despite a rich history with plenty of notable Black authors, African American literature has dealt with its fair share of scrutiny and criticism from those outside and inside the African American literary tradition. Toni Morrison highlights these criticisms in her lecture “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature” (1988). Morrison discusses what constitutes a literary canon to define where Afro-American literature fits

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in with American literature. Also, Morrison highlights why Afro-American literature had (at least at the time this lecture was published) no chance of being canonized if critics continue to only preserve the literary preferences of white men. The four charges against Afro-American literature are (1) there is no Afro-American (or third-world) art; (2) it exists but is inferior; (3) it exists and is superior when it measures up to the “universal” criteria of Western art; (4) it is not so much “art” as ore—rich ore—that requires a Western or Eurocentric smith to refine it from its “natural” state into an aesthetically complex form. (Morrison 1988, 130)

Morrison identifies three focuses that can aid the study of Afro-American literature and further iterate its helpfulness. One is the “development of a theory of literature,” two is examining and reinterpreting the American canon and how Afro-Americans have “shaped the choices, the language, the structure,” and meaning of much American literature, and three is “the examination of contemporary and/or noncanonical literature” (Morrison 1988, 135–36). For me, these approaches Morrison outlines provide the justification for why contemporary African American literature that depicts trauma from centuries ago is still impactful today. Traumatic experiences, whether individual or collective, are not limited to when the experience occurs. I examine contemporary African American novels to consider not only ties to earlier literary representations but also historical problems, like racism, sexism, wrongful imprisonment, and marginalization of Black bodies, and to show how these experiences connect to collective historical traumas such as slavery or the various forms of violence that defined Jim Crow America. Specifically, I examine four novels by contemporary African American authors: Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016), Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage (2018), Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). My rationale for this chapter arrangement is inspired by my past reading of Toni Morrison’s Sula, particularly the novel’s final line, “It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow” (Morrison 1973, 174). The “circles and circles of sorrow” symbolize the traumatic experience of slavery, which every novel in some way addresses. Chapter 1 explores traumatic experiences dating from the eighteenth century to the present day, which shows how traumatic experiences transcend time. Chapters 2 and 3 highlight mass incarceration, an extension of slavery for African Americans, and microaggressions associated with racism in present-day settings, while chapter 4 is rooted in the slavery era. In other words, these traumatic experiences and subsequent traumas depicted in the novels are neither confined by setting nor time.

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Chapter 1 addresses Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, an episodic novel with alternating family tree lines that convey various descendants’ stories. Gyasi’s novel depicts traumatic experience across historical and global boundaries, as well as gives readers various descendants of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her daughters, Effia and Esi, who are half-sisters that have never met. The novel begins with Effia, who ends up marrying the white British governor of Cape Coast Castle, and Esi, who is imprisoned in the castle and later sent to America and, by extension, into slavery. The chapters then switch between descendants in Ghana and America. Homegoing spans across hundreds of years of American and Ghanaian history. A common thread that connects the family tree is recurring instances of trauma, which later culminate in a cathartic moment for the youngest descendants (Marjorie and Marcus) who visit Ghana and Cape Coast Castle, where Effia and Esi lived. What Gyasi does with these geographically shifting narratives is demonstrate the long-lasting impact of the slave trade and eventual legacy that slavery has on even one family’s descendants. No matter how far on the family tree the reader goes, trauma remains persistent. Trauma is embedded in the circuits of our lives and in the power structures of our society. Chapter 2 discusses An American Marriage, which centers on newlyweds Celestial, an artist who specializes in custom-made baby dolls, and Roy, a sales representative for a textbook company. After a visit to Louisiana, Roy is arrested and incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. During Roy’s absence, Celestial falls in love with her childhood best friend Andre, which causes internal conflict for Celestial as she considers loyalty versus independence, desire versus social and familial expectations, and what these conflicts mean for her marriage to Roy after his conviction is overturned and he is released. In the novel, Roy is a Black man who finds success and appears to be on the fast track to his idea of the American dream. That is, until he is wrongfully accused of rape and given a twelve-year sentence in prison. In other words, Roy did “everything right” and still lost the life he tried so hard to develop: his job, his wife, and the years he could have spent with his loved ones. Moreover, Jones’s novel provides readers with a glimpse of how even Black middle-class citizens can fall apart because of the weight of an expansive traumatic history. While An American Marriage follows a middle-class couple and the traumatic circumstances surrounding wrongful incarceration, chapter 3 addresses Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing and how the past continues to haunt a poor Black family for generations. The novel’s protagonist is thirteen-year-old Jojo, who lives with his grandparents, Pop and Mam, and his younger sister, Kayla. One day, Jojo and Kayla’s mother, Leonie, learns that Michael (Leonie’s boyfriend and the children’s father) is getting released

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from Parchman Prison, the same place Pop was imprisoned when he was fifteen. Leonie, her coworker, and the children drive to Parchman Prison to get Michael. Jojo and Kayla are aware of a ghost named Richie, a twelve-year-old boy who was imprisoned at Parchman, who has followed them on the trip. Eventually, Pop reveals the secret of what happened to Richie, which is a moment of testimony for Pop because he can unburden himself of his traumatic memory. The novel concludes with various acts of healing as Mam dies, Richie learns of his fate and departs, and Kayla sings to the other ghosts she and Jojo see in the yard. Ward’s depictions of trauma, which are filtered through a mother, her child, and a ghost from the past, provide a reader with different angles to gradually discern and understand the traumatic experiences conveyed in the novel. Ward’s novel also engages with the idea of witnessing. Jojo serves as a witness to his grandfather’s traumatic past in Parchman Prison, despite the fractures in Pop’s relaying his experiences to Jojo. However, when Pop reveals that he killed Richie before he could be brutalized by a white lynch mob, not only is Jojo a witness to the testimony, but so is Richie’s ghost. Although Ward’s novel does not focus on traumatic experiences of African American women, her novel does bring another marginalized group’s traumatic experiences to the forefront, namely former prisoners at Parchman. Additionally, Ward highlights the pervasive trauma that is present with Pop because of his time at Parchman, as well as Leonie using drugs as an escape from the traumatic memory of her brother Given’s death. Jojo and Kayla are sources of witnessing for their grandfather’s and mother’s testimonies. The notion of witnessing that plays a prevalent role in Ward’s novel also appears in chapter 4 with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, an alternate history novel that tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two enslaved people who make a bid for freedom from the plantations in Georgia by following the Underground Railroad. In the novel, the Underground Railroad is an actual rail transport system operated by engineers and conductors. As Cora and Caesar escape, a slave catcher named Ridgeway pursues them. While on the run, Cora and Caesar take shelter at various towns, each of which has its problems ranging from risks of sterilization and experimentation to indentured servitude. Despite Ridgeway recapturing Cora multiple times, she manages to escape on a caravan traveling West. Ultimately, this novel encapsulates the plight of a Black woman who is enslaved, along with striving for freedom despite the magnitude of what can happen when a runaway slave is captured. Whitehead depicts traumatic testimony and witnessing through Cora, Caesar, and other slaves’ stories, while also highlighting slavery’s legacy and how, no matter how far the Underground Railroad took them, they still could not free themselves from their pasts. Overall, Whitehead’s novel conveys the psychological impact of

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slavery on Cora, but I contend that this impact can still be felt by African Americans today. The idea that African Americans should “get over” slavery because it happened years ago is laughable and implies that the traumatic experience of slavery ceased after it was abolished in the United States. From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, the traumatic experiences inflicted on African Americans evolve, along with the subsequent traumas associated with those experiences. Overall, I employ an analysis of select African American novels and apply the theoretical frameworks of trauma studies10 and Black Feminist studies11 (also known as Black Feminisms). Together, literary analysis, aspects of trauma studies, and Black Feminist studies provide an intersectional examination of trauma as they pertain to African Americans and their experiences. Although I find trauma studies to be effective in executing literary analysis of African American literature, the main concern I have with trauma studies is that the approach does not consistently reflect intersectional discourse beyond discussing slavery as a collective trauma.12 Hence, I utilize Black Feminist studies to interject intersectionality into the discussion of trauma or traumatic experience within the Black community.13 I contend that this intersectional approach with these theoretical frameworks is pivotal for uplifting the traumatic experiences of Black people, especially Black women, and for offering a lens on Black women and men’s experiences that does justice to their specific histories. NOTES 1. My concerns about being perceived as an “angry Black woman” were not unfounded because, in past work experiences, some colleagues implied that I was not a “team player” or that I was “difficult” to work with because I was “too vocal.” Although these work experiences were during my undergraduate college years before I became an educator, I went through years of therapy and introspection about how my actions contributed to repeated instances of criticism. Still, the weight of racial and gendered stereotypes was impactful even as I transitioned from my undergraduate years to my graduate school education (and into my career). 2. Throughout history, whether from a racial or gender perspective, Black women have been considered an afterthought. For example, the second-wave feminist movement advocated primarily for women’s right to work outside the home and for expanded reproductive rights. However, for most Black women, these prevailing planks of the second-wave feminist movement were not a priority because Black women already worked inside and outside the home for generations. Black women were not often given a platform to advocate for themselves, even in the fight for women’s rights. Thus, Black Feminism stemmed from the second-wave feminist movement from the 1960s and 1970s. The Combahee River Collective (CRC) is a Black

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Feminist lesbian organization that was active in Boston from 1974–1980. According to the CRC Statement, “our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity . . . because of our need as human persons for autonomy.” We can see the writers engaging with ideas that correlate with intersectionality, specifically when they say, “We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex opposition because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously.” These writers also voiced concerns about feminist and race movements not giving more consideration to oppression experienced by Black women. 3. I define trauma as the aftermath of traumatic experience, which consists of an individual’s or group’s persistent efforts at coping and understanding the experience. Also, I define traumatic experience as an event or events, regardless of duration, that negatively impact individuals or collective groups and provide the catalyst for trauma. My definitions account for traumatic experiences that are often marginalized because of Eurocentric views and focus on trauma that is relevant to the African American community. 4. Trauma studies emerged as a recognizable academic field in the 1990s with scholarship by Cathy Caruth, Geoffrey Hartman, Shoshana Felman, and Dori Laub. Trauma studies’ premise is to analyze the psychological, rhetorical, and cultural significance of trauma. Most trauma studies scholarship examines the Holocaust, the impact wars have on soldiers and other survivors, genocides, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and natural disasters to name a few. However, most of the content surrounding trauma studies is told from and focuses on European, white perspectives even though such perspectives do not encompass other identities and groups who experience trauma. Even discussions about the traumatic legacy of slavery, in relation to trauma studies, are mediated through primarily white gazes. However, there are scholars in trauma studies that “call for a transformation of trauma studies from a Eurocentric discipline” (Andermahr 2015, 500). My work fuses the productive interventions of trauma studies with the necessary complications that postcolonial theory and Black Feminist studies provide. Reorienting trauma studies’ focus towards African American literature with the inclusion of a Black Feminist critical perspective is a way to push against the Eurocentric roots, or emphasis, present in trauma studies. 5. Felman and Laub’s Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992) considers the intersections of trauma and testimony in literature. Specifically, I use the following question to shape my discussion of and use of trauma studies: “What is the relation between literature and testimony, between the writer and the witness?” (Felman and Laub 1992, xiii). To the first question, literature is a form of testimony for conveying the stories of those who have been marginalized for centuries. Sometimes years pass before an individual can discuss trauma they have suffered; however, that gap between the trauma and the testimony does not make the event less of a reality. Moreover, the relationship between the writer and the witness takes place within literature. This does not mean that the writer must write about their own traumatic experiences. Instead, a writer has the capacity to provide characters that experience traumas and seek to convey that experience to a witness, both inside and outside of the text. In other words, writers can utilize imagination as an act of

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testimony. To reiterate, literature invites responses from readers and is a space that facilitates bearing witness to one’s trauma. 6. For instance, Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) captures the psychological and physical damage sustained in the aftermath of slavery. The story begins with two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, who are separated by circumstance. Effia marries a British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while Esi is held captive in the dungeons of the castle, raped, and eventually sent to America through the slave trade. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016) follows a similar vein to Gyasi’s novel in that the story takes place historically, in this case amid nineteenth-century slavery, and centers on Cora, a young, enslaved girl who escapes the plantation, but not necessarily the traumatic circumstances from her time on the plantation. Both Gyasi’s and Whitehead’s novels convey the magnitude of slavery’s legacy on Black people, just as Toni Morrison does in A Mercy (2008). A Mercy centers on four women living on Jacob Vaark’s farm in America during the 1690s, though Florens’s story is directly influenced by slavery’s effects. Florens is sold to Jacob Vaark after her mother begs for him to take Florens instead of her as she realizes that Florens will be subjected to sexual abuse at the plantation master’s hands if she does not leave. Overall, these novels correspond with African American literary traditions that convey earlier representations of trauma caused by slavery. 7. The protagonist of The Street is Lutie Johnson, a Black single mother whose primary goal is taking care of her eight-year-old son. Throughout the novel, she is sexualized and unwillingly pursued by different men: Jones, the building super, Boots Smith, the bandleader who enlists Lutie to be the band’s singer, and Junto, a white, local bar proprietor. What these instances of sexualization towards Lutie signify is the crooked room she tries to navigate. In her efforts to tilt or contort herself to comply with the crooked room, Lutie ends up murdering Boots, leaves her son in the clutches of the Children’s Shelter, and departs Harlem. 8. The main character of Native Son, Bigger Thomas, lives in complete poverty with his younger brother, sister, and mother. Although a victim of systemic oppression, Bigger kills two women (his white boss’s daughter, Mary Dalton, and his girlfriend, Bessie Mears) and is later sentenced to death. Bigger experiences his own traumatic nightmare of reliving the murders, as well as being hated by white and Black people alike because of his crimes. However, despite Bigger’s crimes, I consider the magnitude of systemic oppression, poverty, and not having the means to make upward moves to leave desolate conditions to be the underlying forces for Black people to act in ways they perhaps otherwise would not. 9. The Women of Brewster Place is a novel told in seven stories, each devoted to a Black woman living in the Brewster Place tenement. Each woman has gone through her share of adversity and trauma, such as physical violence, a loved one’s death, and sexual discrimination. The story ends with Brewster Place getting condemned and all the residents are forced out. 10. In addition to my definition of trauma, I refer to the pluralistic model of trauma. The pluralistic model of trauma “challenges the unspeakable trope in seeking to understand not only the structural dimensions of trauma that often develop in terms of trauma’s dissociative effects on consciousness and memory, but also the cultural

Introduction

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dimensions of trauma and the diversity of narrative expression” (Mambrol 2018). In other words, rather than focusing solely on the individualistic fragmentation and suffering trauma causes, the pluralistic model places more emphasis on new relationships between experience, language, and knowledge in relation to the social and cultural significance of trauma. Furthermore, the pluralistic model devotes attention to the variations of traumatic representations. Within the pluralistic model, “trauma is conceptualized as an event that alters perception and identity yet in the wake of such disturbance new knowledge is formed about the self and external world” (Mambrol 2018). Put another way, external cultural factors can potentially influence the meaning of traumatic events and that traumatic memory can still be recovered despite the disruptive nature of the trauma. 11. Although trauma studies scholars reference slavery as a collective trauma that affects the Black community, trauma studies do not discuss trauma in relation to contemporary African American women’s experiences. Therefore, I incorporate Black Feminist studies (Black Feminism) to consider the intersections of race and gender as they pertain to traumatic experiences. Because I want to place more priority on the traumatic plights of Black women, I find Black Feminist studies important for understanding the four primary texts. However, I acknowledge that Black Feminist studies do not have a clearly established definition. Patricia Hill Collins (1990) explains how responses to defining Black Feminist thought seek to establish who can be a Black Feminist. For instance, some critics say that all African American women are Black Feminists. However, this approach conflates “the terms women and feminist and identifies being of African descent . . . as being the sole determinant of a Black feminist consciousness” (Collins 1990). The main problem Collins has with the varying definitions of Black Feminist thought is that all the definitions imply that the “biological category of Blackness” is a requirement for engaging with Black Feminist thought or being considered a Black Feminist. While any definition of Black Feminism or Black Feminist studies will have limitations, Alice Walker’s term “Womanist” adds to Black Feminist mainstream discussions. Walker says that a womanist is a “woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility . . . and women’s strength. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female” (Walker 1983, xi). 12. Éva Tettenborn (2006), Elise Miller (2016), and Badia Sahar Ahad (2010) apply connected concepts from trauma studies, such as melancholia and psychoanalysis, to literature by African American writers across various genres. Additionally, I acknowledge that some scholars have used trauma studies to engage with issues of race and gender, such as J. Brooks Bouson, Michael Rothberg, Laurie Vickroy, and Naomi Mandel. Bouson and Mandel have engaged with Toni Morrison’s novels and how Morrison articulates traumatic experiences for characters, especially in relation to slavery. 13. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) coined the term “intersectionality” and provided an in-depth interpretation of the political and societal landscape that women of color face in America. Crenshaw argues that racism and sexism for women of color cannot be fully captured by examining those issues separately. Moreover, women of color tend to be marginalized in conversations about both race and gender. Crenshaw notes

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that men of color tend to “determine the parameters of antiracist strategies,” while white women ground the women’s movement and do not consider women of color’s circumstances (1252). In other words, men of color and white women have their own political agendas that advance women of color’s marginalization. The Combahee River Collective implied the lack of intersectionality in second-wave feminism back in the 1970s.

Chapter 1

“Not the Being Lost, but the Being Found” Traumatic Legacy and the Search for Home in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing

In her 1989 essay “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition,” Mae G. Henderson proposes a theory of interpretation called the “simultaneity of discourse,” which she considers as “meant to signify a mode of reading which examines the ways in which the perspectives of race and gender, and their interrelationships, structure the discourse of black women writers” (qtd. in Napier 2000, 349).1 Henderson’s “simultaneity of discourse” approach works to account for the intersections of race and gender that coincide with reading works by Black women writers. According to Henderson, Black women writers speak out of “the specificity of their racial and gendered experiences” (qtd. in Napier 2000, 362). In other words, Black women writers must navigate various discourses to reach different audiences, something that is not required of writers from the prevailing group of power, namely white men (qtd. in Napier 2000, 351). Black women do not have the advantage of being part of any dominant group. Also, on a societal level, Black women are marginalized based on their perspectives and experiences. Overall, many Black writers articulate intersectional gaps through the female characters in their works, which becomes a form of testifying. Henderson quotes sociolinguist Geneva Smitherman’s definition of testifying. According to Smitherman, testifying is “‘a ritualized form of . . . communication in which [the group has] shared’” (qtd. in Napier 2000, 352). Testifying acts as a means of providing witness to a large-scale experience, especially slavery as collective trauma. While testifying and traumatic circumstances can be contained either to immediate families/characters or to a very tight chronology, Yaa Gyasi’s novel 15

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Homegoing (2016) spans hundreds of years and different descendants of an Asante woman named Maame. Specifically, Homegoing covers about three hundred years of history that dates to the Atlantic slave trade. The chapters switch between descendants in Ghana and the United States. With these geographically shifting narratives, Gyasi demonstrates the long-lasting impact of the slave trade and eventual legacy that slavery has on even one family’s descendants. No matter how far on the family tree the reader goes, trauma persists. Furthermore, the historical events Gyasi incorporates throughout the novel (e.g., the Anglo-Asante wars, slavery, and the Reconstruction era in America) either result in trauma for the characters or lead to characters making negative decisions that reverberate across generations. Trauma is pervasive in the Black community over time on account of the traumatic legacy that begins with Maame, Effia, and Esi. Homegoing depicts many generations of mothers who either have strained relationships with their children or die before having a chance at a relationship with her children. Maame gives birth to two daughters, Effia and Esi, neither of whom ever meet. Maame, who was enslaved, sets a fire to Cobbe Otcher’s village and escapes, leaving newborn Effia to be raised by Cobbe and his family. Baaba, one of Cobbe’s wives, is forced to raise Effia and resents the task. Baaba’s resentment imprints itself on Effia as she does her best to gain Baaba’s love. Eventually, Effia learns that Baaba is not her biological mother and Baaba gives Effia the stone necklace Maame left behind. Unlike Effia, Maame raises Esi, and they have a relatively positive relationship. However, the time Esi spends with her mother is cut short after their village is raided and her parents die. Before Esi escapes, Maame gives her a stone necklace, which is identical to the one Effia received. Overall, Effia gets to keep a necklace as an heirloom and a reminder of where she came from, whereas Esi is unable to retrieve her necklace before she is forcibly shipped to America. Esi’s descendants do not get the opportunity to have a tangible piece of where they come from. I argue that maternal absence, whether due to slavery or consequences from personal choices, not only is a “crooked room” that both Effia’s and Esi’s family lines must overcome, but also works as a primary catalyst for trauma. Esi’s family line suffers from the institution of slavery in America. Even her descendants who are not enslaved feel the negative ramifications of a mother’s absence in their lives. Moreover, the fire Maame sets at the beginning of this story acts as a bad omen for Effia’s descendants. None of them can escape the fire and its consequences, which is especially prominent in Akua’s story, and these inescapable circumstances become psychological, and sometimes physical, manifestations of trauma. Although Maame’s descendants in Ghana were not enslaved like the ones in America, they are

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not without traumatic experiences. I also argue that the ancestors that stay in Ghana (like Effia, Quey, James, and Akua) are not completely free because they are bound by familial obligations, haunting memories, shame, and unspoken patriarchal cultural norms that limit their personal mobility, instead of the physical bondage that comes with slavery in America. While these experiences are not equal to slavery, their experiences still prevent them from living the lives they want. Another factor that impacts Maame’s descendants is the precarious relationship they have to the historical circumstances they endure, such as wars, slavery, racism, and systemic oppression. In an interview with Stanford Magazine, Gyasi acknowledges her occasional struggles with the amount of research that went into her novel. Her research struggles stem from the impossibility to “isolate one era without delving into everything that comes as a consequence—from the Great Migration north to escape Jim Crow to the racially targeted War on Drugs” (Scott 2017). Also, in another interview with Time, Gyasi says, “Every moment has a precedent and comes from this other moment, that comes from this other moment, that comes from this other moment” (Begley 2016). To understand one historical moment, we must put that moment in conversation with other preceding moments and even the ones that come after, as well as discuss key groups who have a role in the Atlantic slave trade and, by extension, the widespread traumatic circumstances the characters face. The Asante (also spelled Ashanti) engaged in wars with various groups including the Fante and the British from 1806–1896 to expand their domain by exploiting other African tribes and forces. By 1814, the Asante Kingdom was established. The first of many Anglo-Asante wars occurred in 1823 with the Asante facing off against the British Empire. Despite a thirty-year peace treaty after the first war, the Asante and the British continued to wage wars with each other. The fourth war ended with a British victory and the Asante Kingdom signed a treaty in which the Asante territory became a British protectorate. However, this treaty did little to circumvent another war. The War of the Golden Stool (also called the Ashanti War) of 1900 started with a British representative committing a political error by insisting on sitting on the Golden Stool, the sacred royal throne of the Asante people. The Asante were outraged and subsequently attacked British forces. However, as B. Wasserman (1961) states, both sides found themselves in a war “neither wanted, but which appeared rational enough to each in terms of his particular conceptualization of the situation” (175). Wasserman says, “The Golden Stool is the keystone of the Ashanti political and religious system,” and the Ashanti believed their fight for the Golden Stool was “not for a king’s throne but for the physical survival of their race” (176). In the end, the Asante claimed victory since they

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did not lose the Golden Stool and the Asante territories became part of the Gold Coast colony in 1902. Although these wars highlight the contentious relationship between the Asante and the British, the Asante and Fante tribes also provided Black bodies to the British and other European colonies within the Atlantic slave trade. I regard these tribes as complicit not only in the Atlantic slave trade, but also slavery in America. In Quey’s narrative, Quey is assigned to help strengthen the ties between his familial village, who sells slaves, and the British. Quey’s uncle Fiifi explains how he waits for the right price from a European group, whether that is the British, Dutch, Portuguese, and so on. Slaves were a matter of exchange between the tribes and European forces. Additionally, when various African tribes like the Asantes and Fantes engaged in conflict, individuals from one group enslaved captives from another group as a means of exerting and gaining power. Race did not exist at this point and did not factor into the tribes’ decision making. In fact, as Ibram X. Kendi articulates in Stamped from the Beginning (2016), racist ideas to rationalize African slavery came from Europe. French physician and travel writer François Bernier “became the first popular classifier of all humans into races, which he differentiated fundamentally by their phenotypic characteristics” (Kendi 2016, 56). Bernier believed that there existed “four or five Species or Races of men so notably differing from each other that this may serve as the just foundation of a new division of the world” (Kendi 2016, 56). Overall, Bernier’s work gave way to later work that involved scientific racism that marginalized Black bodies because of race. Another example where race is a nonfactor in earlier centuries leading up to the slave trade appears in Homegoing. After Effia’s husband, James, discovers a fertility root, he admonishes her and tells her he does not want to see any voodoo or black magic in his home (Gyasi 2016, 23). To Effia, referring to people and things by basic binaries such as “good” and “bad” and “black” and “white” was something she did not understand (23). In other words, Effia does not understand white men’s need to use labels or categories towards things like fertility roots or with people from African villages. However, I do not regard Gyasi’s choice to incorporate the eighteenth-century slave trade to take away from white Europeans’ complicity in the slave trade. Rather, Gyasi incorporates the slave trade’s presence in Ghana to articulate the traumas experienced by African women who were held in the Castle’s dungeon, as well as those women who were affected by the decades of Anglo-Asante wars and village raids. These stories are not frequently told, though such traumatic experiences did happen. Again, telling these stories in literary form, Gyasi is engaging in a resistance to whitewashed and ethically simplistic narratives about African American history.

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Effia’s descendant Yaw, a teacher in Ghana, is one character whose story challenges readers to reconsider narratives we are taught. After hearing his students’ speculations about his facial burn scars, Yaw redirects the conversation to history and storytelling. He explains how when it comes to history, we must rely on the stories and words of others (Gyasi 2016, 226). Relying on the words of others is essential for stories about traumatic experience even if such experiences cannot be told fully. However, Yaw discusses a fundamental problem with studying history in that many people are inclined to believe the story of those who have power or those who are victorious, so much so that the stories of others are minimized or forgotten. He encourages his students to ask, “Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?” (Gyasi 2016, 226–27). What Yaw is implying is that those who have the power are white (or perhaps from a Ghanaian perspective, European) and that white people suppress marginalized voices and minimize marginalized groups’ stories. Ultimately, literary depictions of trauma and traumatic experience push against whitewashed, seemingly noncontroversial stories either of historical events or individualized experiences. IN SEARCH OF A MOTHER: PARENTAL TRAUMA RECOGNITION To make sense of Effia’s, Esi’s, and their respective descendants’ stories, we need to return to Yaw’s question “Whose story am I missing?” Although Maame appears on the family tree at the beginning of the novel, she is the only character without her own chapter. While she figures in Esi’s story, we do not know where Maame comes from or where her story ends. Maame is an Asante woman taken to a Fante tribe in a slave raid. While captured, she becomes pregnant with Effia. Shortly after Effia is born, Maame sets a fire that enables her to escape from her captor. This fire becomes a catalyst for some of the traumatic experiences with Effia’s descendants. Furthermore, Effia never has an opportunity to meet or pursue a relationship with Maame partly due to Maame’s decision to escape. Sarah Heinz (2020) explains that Maame’s captivity and lost opportunity to be a motherly presence for Effia causes Maame to lose her belief in home (127). Once she returns to her tribe, she marries and has another daughter, named Esi. While Esi has Maame in her life, “Maame’s traumatic past has made her unable to simply return home and be home” (Heinz 2020, 127). Put another way, Maame experiences shame at a global level. Her feelings of shame go beyond the rape and captivity and into her sense of self. Esi learns about her mother’s past from Abronoma, an enslaved house girl who works for Esi’s parents, specifically Maame’s enslavement, rape, and the half-sister she has never met. This revelation

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compels Esi not only to recognize Maame’s physical state of nervousness or anxiety in the “way her eyes were always shifting” (Gyasi 2016, 39), but also to empathize with the plight of captives, including Abronoma. Maame’s physical manifestations of fear also correspond with psychological responses to shame. Although Maame is physically present in Esi’s life, she remains in a fight-or-flight state reminiscent of her time in captivity. This fight-or-flight response influences what becomes Maame’s final act of reclaiming control. Maame’s husband tells Esi and Maame to escape the village to avoid capture. However, Maame does not move, nor does she want to run again into burning woods (Gyasi 2016, 42). The trauma from setting the fire and abandoning Effia as a newborn still resonates with Maame, thereby rendering her unable to run away again. The narrator provides a glimpse into Maame and Esi’s understandings of one another. Esi recognizes that her mother does not feel whole, though she is uncertain as to why her mother’s wholeness is compromised (42). Esi also acknowledges that Maame would rather die instead of trying to escape into the woods despite causing Esi to “inherit that unspeakable sense of loss” and have to “learn what it mean[s] to be un-whole” (42). Although these realizations are unspoken between mother and daughter, the reader understands that Maame left a significant part of herself behind in her effort to escape from captivity. However, we also know that Maame’s decision to tell Esi to go without her implies that Maame will kill herself with the knife Esi puts in her hand (42). As the narrator highlights, Maame’s effort at taking control of her fate with the impending village attack leaves Esi without her mother, which perpetuates trauma for Esi and her descendants. The notion of incompleteness and unspeakable loss involves not only family but also physical and emotional understandings of home. Maame’s loss of home foreshadows what will happen to her daughters. In other words, “the mother literally and metaphorically is the origin and first home of [Effia and Esi], yet their experiences of home and their life trajectories are vastly different” (Heinz 2020, 127). This yearning for home and for Maame as a consistent maternal figure plagues Esi and Effia. For Effia, the mother-daughter dynamics that she shares with Baaba and Maame respectively are a form of trauma. Specifically, Effia goes most of her life believing that Baaba is her biological mother and we do not learn about Maame being Effia’s mother until the end of Effia’s story. However, Baaba experiences trauma because she is forced to raise another woman’s daughter, and the trauma is projected as resentment and hatred towards Effia. Although Cobbe commands Baaba to love and take care of Effia, Baaba is resentful of the task and even dreams about the prospect of abandoning Effia in a forest to fend for herself (Gyasi 2016, 4). Baaba’s resentment and hatred towards Effia is unspoken, but rather reveals itself through her actions. For example, when Effia is three years old, Baaba beats her with a hot stirring stick because

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Effia accidentally dropped Baaba’s baby boy, Fiifi. When Cobbe learns about what Baaba did to Effia, he beats Baaba. This is the beginning of a vicious cycle of abuse in which Baaba beats Effia and Cobbe beats Baaba. The narrator explains how Effia and Baaba would receive similar scars after a violent interaction from Baaba on Effia (5). These scars and the hierarchy established between Cobbe, Baaba, and their children “outline the trauma and disjunction within the space of the home” (Heinz 2020, 128). Over time, Effia learns how to acquiesce to Baaba. Although she can be outspoken with her father and brother, Fiifi, she must either make herself small or quiet so that she does not incur Baaba’s physical or verbal hostility (Gyasi 2016, 8). Effia navigates physical and emotional abuse from Baaba into adolescence as her beauty becomes noticeable to many prospective suitors in the village and to Baaba. When Baaba learns of Cobbe’s plan to marry Effia off to newly crowned Fante chief Abeeku, she resolves to undermine her husband’s wishes. One night, Baaba insists that Effia must hide her menstruation from everyone except her (Gyasi 2016, 8). Although Effia is initially reluctant, she does as she is told because she believes she can see “something like desperation in her mother’s eyes” (8). After Effia begins menstruating, Baaba stops beating her in exchange for Effia’s silence (11). Although there are days when Effia thinks that Baaba’s antagonism is making way for a healthier mother-daughter dynamic, there are also days when Effia “would see that her mother’s new quiet was only temporary” and that she was keeping her anger contained (11). Baaba merely bides her time until she can thoroughly implement her plans to sabotage Effia’s marriage prospect. When James Collins, the newly appointed governor of the Cape Coast Castle, visits the village and Abeeku’s compound, Baaba takes Effia to meet him. Not long after meeting Effia, James approaches Cobbe and Baaba to ask for Effia’s hand in marriage. Baaba manipulates Cobbe by telling him that Effia is cursed, which seals Effia’s fate to marry James. Before Effia leaves the village, Baaba gives Effia a black stone pendant, declaring the jewelry as a “piece of [her] mother” (16). While this gesture initially appears benign, Heinz contends that Baaba’s act is a “final purge of Maame’s presence in the Fante community and in Cobbe’s family” (129). To take this assessment further, this gesture becomes Baaba’s final act of freeing herself from caring for Effia. In the end, everyone agrees to let James marry Effia, thereby severing access to the only home and life she has ever known. Baaba’s acts of manipulation and deception are made possible on account of the perceived shame Cobbe and the family feel towards Effia. Since the village believes Effia has not menstruated and, by extension, cannot marry Abeeku, this becomes a violation of communal expectation and a source of shame. Furthermore, Baaba makes a point of convincing the family that Effia is a bad omen, and no one contacts Effia after she leaves with James. In

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fact, Effia does not return home to the village until she receives word from Fiifi that their father has fallen ill and that his death is imminent. When Effia arrives and sees her father before he dies, Fiifi tells Effia that Baaba is not her mother and that the stone necklace she wears belonged to her birth mother. After Effia learns about her origins, she feels she owes Baaba an apology because Baaba was compelled to care for her unwillingly, therefore creating a burden in Baaba’s life (Gyasi 2016, 27). In a way, Baaba and Effia are in their own crooked rooms, and they contort themselves as they find their way out. Baaba’s crooked room stems from raising Effia as her own child because her husband ordered her to do so. Effia’s crooked room is an abusive household with Baaba. Yet despite Baaba’s abuse and interference resulting in Effia’s marriage to James, Effia can still empathize with Baaba. Still, Effia’s empathy is met with scorn from Baaba as she declares that Effia is “nothing from nowhere” because she no longer has her mother or father (27). Baaba’s spiteful words act as a premonition for the maternal descendants on Effia’s side of the family tree because their children also grow up with a nonexistent or strained relationship to their mothers. Furthermore, the narrator says, “[Cobbe’s] unrest had kept him alive, and now that unrest belonged to Effia” (27). The unrest that the narrator refers to can be expanded to not only Effia and her descendants, but also Esi and her descendants. While Effia’s relationship with Maame is nonexistent, Esi’s relationship with Maame is loving and abundant leading up to the village raid. As mentioned before, Esi learns about Maame’s traumatic experiences in captivity from Abronoma and quietly observes the manifestations of Maame’s trauma through her body language. Once their village is raided, Maame’s decision to not run away with Esi becomes a traumatic act that Esi bears witness to because she leaves Maame a knife, never to know what becomes of her. Although Maame’s act can be regarded as self-preservation, she inadvertently leaves Esi with an unspeakable sense of loss and a sense of being “un-whole.” The stone Esi receives from Maame is the only tangible thread she has of her mother and the life she had before she is captured and kept in the Castle dungeon. While imprisoned in the Castle dungeon, Esi is raped by a white soldier, and, in her effort to distance herself from what is happening to her, she mentally places herself in the past in her mother’s hut. In this memory, Esi recalls how her father came into her mother’s hut so they could have sexual intercourse and how she wanted to “give them privacy, to separate herself” (Gyasi 2016, 48). This is one of the last memories of Maame that is articulated in Esi’s chapter and, for Esi, a memory that helps Esi decipher the rape and loss of innocence. This loss of innocence is reiterated in the aftermath of her trauma when the narrator notes that Esi “could do nothing but replay her time in the light” (48). Not only had she “not stopped bleeding since that

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night,” but she also isolates herself from her friend Tansi and has no desire to listen to stories that are meant to alleviate the children’s anxiety while on the boat (48). In other words, the sexual violence is a source of shame for Esi and becomes another unspeakable loss that is like leaving Maame in the burning village with a knife and adds to the un-wholeness Esi feels. The loss and un-wholeness follow Esi to the slave plantation in America and into motherhood. Esi’s daughter, Ness, conveys to the reader that Esi became the kind of woman who is solid and solemn, but not capable of expressing happiness (Gyasi 2016, 70). Instead, Esi tells Ness stories about “the Big Boat” and how those on the boat were stacked upon each other and that, even in death, the pile of bodies would persist (70). Esi is describing what we know as the Middle Passage. Moreover, Esi tells Ness the story of how she was cursed long ago by Little Dove as she is left without a sister and “without her mother’s stone” (70). The stories Esi tells are significant because they demonstrate how deep the trauma resides in her mind and spirit. Her efforts to make peace with Abronoma (“Little Dove”) many years ago likely resulted in the raid that destroyed her village and led to her parents’ deaths. Also, because Esi was unable to retrieve the stone before she was taken from the Castle, she loses the tangible connection she has to her mother. Esi not only loses time with her mother, but also loses time with her daughter, Ness. Ness is sold and physically ripped from Esi. Ness remembers reaching out for her mother and struggling aimlessly, while Esi does not return the gesture (Gyasi 2016, 71). Instead, Ness sees her mother’s unchanging strength in the face of adversity and trauma. This rupture in the mother-daughter dynamic is different because Maame chose not to run away again, but the outcome remains the same: enslaved Black mothers were frequently denied the chance to be present in their children’s lives, thereby disrupting families for generations. FANNING THE FLAMES: FIRE AS TRAUMA SYMBOL To reiterate, in part 1 of Homegoing, we bear witness to a fire that engulfs much of a Fante village. Fire as a symbol is most apparent with Effia’s descendants’ stories, especially Akua’s story, and is a catalyst for much of the traumatic experiences her descendants face. In part 2 of Homegoing, Akua’s story begins with dreams about fire, a story that has overlaps with Maame starting a fire the night she gives birth to Effia. The same way fire exacerbates Maame’s grief and trauma, so does fire exacerbate Akua’s fragile mental state and dreams. The narrator explains how in Akua’s dreams, a firewoman holds two baby girls to her heart as she walks to the woods (Gyasi 2016, 177). Furthermore, as the babies vanished, the firewoman’s sadness consumed the

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landscape in flames (177). Although the firewoman in the dream carried two little girls in her arms, one can surmise that Maame, Effia, and Esi are the people in question. The trajectory of the fire coincides with the beginning of Effia’s story and how when she was born, a fire began in the Fanteland woods, moved quickly “until it reached an Asante village” (Gyasi 2016, 3). Even though the reader can glean these details, this information is not available to Akua, who started having the dreams fifteen years after her mother Abena died. The narrator notes that after Abena died, Akua mourns her mother’s death in the streets for others to witness (Gyasi 2016, 180). Abena and Akua are both mothers whose traumatic circumstances cause them to be absent from their children’s lives. Before Abena died, she made the journey to Kumasi and white missionaries took her in, and Akua thereafter. Akua’s time with the missionaries is a source of trauma for her, especially when one of the missionaries takes a special interest in her after Abena’s death. The Missionary tells Akua that she and her mother are sinners and heathens and that he helped Abena out of religious obligation (Gyasi 2016, 183). Additionally, when she is about six years old, the Missionary declares that Akua is to take lessons from him only. After the Missionary calls her a sinner and a heathen, she receives five lashes and is commanded to repent (184). Akua cannot help but think that the Missionary “looked hungry, like if he could, he would devour her” (184). The physical violence exerted by the Missionary correlates with the “hunger” Akua senses from him. Although not explicitly stated, Akua is isolated from anyone who could potentially save her from the Missionary’s private lessons, which likely have sexually violent implications in addition to physical ones. Ultimately, the Missionary believes that Akua is a heathen that needs a white savior. Given the power dynamic between her and the Missionary, I contend that until she met her eventual husband, Asamoah, Akua believed she would remain a captive with the Missionary for the foreseeable future “playing his strange game of student/teacher, heathen/savior” (185). Once the Missionary realizes that Akua is getting married and leaving the orphanage, he decides to tell Akua about her mother. Abena’s death is a source of grief and mystery for Akua for many years. The Missionary reiterates that Abena refused to repent and that, though Abena was abandoned by her child’s father, he believes that Abena did not regret Akua or her father (Gyasi 2016, 189). He goes on to tell Akua that, after she was born, he forced Abena into the forest to the river so he could baptize her. However, his efforts at baptizing Abena caused her to drown (189). Although the Missionary is adamant that he “only wanted her to repent” (189), he is responsible for killing Abena by drowning her. When Akua asks what happened to Abena’s body, the Missionary says that he burned Abena’s body along with her belongings (189). His revelation about burning Abena’s

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body alludes to the repetition of trauma, especially trauma that is associated with fire. Fire remains a constant with many of Effia’s descendants, and the traumatic circumstances these descendants face is indicative of trauma’s persistence. Also, the Missionary’s admission further establishes the dangerous relationship Akua has with fire and how fire is manifesting itself in her dreams. Another instance of fire’s traumatic impact on Akua occurs when she witnesses a white man burned alive in the Edweso village. The man was a nameless, wandering man who enters the town seemingly unperceived (Gyasi 2016, 179). However, when a little boy named Kofi Poku calls attention to the man by shouting “Obroni,” this incurs the rage of the crowd (180). To Akua, the word “obroni” originally meant “white man.” Once she spoke to the local fetish man, he explained to Akua that the origins of the word “obroni” come from the term Abro ni (180), which translates to “wicked man.” The ambiguity of “obroni” and its meaning works to reiterate the contentious dynamic between the British and the Asante and Fante people. Moreover, the fetish man’s words to Akua foreshadow not only the impending War of the Golden Stool, but also her inaction leading up to the man’s death: “You can only decide a wicked man by what he does, Akua” (181). In other words, Akua is a bystander who watches the crowd tie the white man to a tree and burn him alive, even though she can speak English and understand his pleas. Although she tries to explain to Asamoah that he and the other leaders should not have burned the white man, Asamoah disregards her sentiments and reminds her that the British are responsible for King Prempeh I’s arrest and exile, which fuels the anger of the Asante people. The exile of King Prempeh I and the British governor’s request for the Golden Stool not only lead to the War of the Golden Stool, but also provide yet another layer of trauma that impacts Akua and her family. Asamoah leaves to fight in the war, along with many men from the village. The men’s absence is highlighted by a lack of food and women who mourn the men’s absence (Gyasi 2016, 186). For Akua, not only does she realize she is pregnant, but also her dreams worsen to the point that the firewoman in the dreams begins noticing Akua and, at one point, tells Akua, “You must always know where your children are” (187). Nana Serwah, Akua’s mother-in-law, becomes frustrated by Akua’s idleness. Thinking that Akua is sick, Nana Serwah exiles Akua to the hut for a week without access to her children. The exile acts more like a personal prison for Akua because the Fat Man stands watch at the locked door. Gradually, Akua’s strength fails, and she is left on the ground to constantly pray so that she does not fall asleep or succumb to the dreams. At the end of Akua’s week in the hut, Asamoah returns from the war missing his leg and distraught at the condition his wife is in. She reunites with her children and husband. For Akua and Asamoah, the war becomes the crooked

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room they seek to escape from. They are both traumatized by the war, though for different reasons. Asamoah is physically altered and struggles to reconnect with Akua on an emotional level. She recalls nights where “he would reach for the ghost of his leg” at night and subsequently cry at the loss (Gyasi 2016, 196). Also, because of her time in isolation, Akua is reluctant to speak or let her family be out of her sight. She also struggles to be comfortable with Asamoah, partly due to his missing leg and due to her own restlessness and inability to sleep through the night. Akua’s traumatized state does not go unnoticed by other villagers as the nickname “Crazy Woman” permeates among the villagers. Gradually, Asamoah and Akua navigate their own traumatic circumstances and develop a new normal in time for the birth of their son, Yaw. Although Akua begins to speak again, she continues to be haunted by the dreams and begins to sleepwalk. Ultimately, the dream Akua has while in exile becomes a premonition of what happens to her own children. The firewoman again urges Akua to “always know where your children are” (Gyasi 2016, 187), much like Nana Serwah told her. In Akua’s last dream, she begins at the beach close to the ocean before the water catches fire. The firewoman appears again with her children in tow, but this time Akua reaches for the fire children and holds them, burning herself in the process. The dream ends with the children disappearing as the firewoman’s tears “began to put out the fire in Akua’s hands” (Gyasi 2016, 197). While sleepwalking during a trance, Akua murders her two daughters by setting them on fire. The villagers carry Akua to the burning tree declaring that not only is she crazy, but she is also wicked and evil and deserves a death befitting a white man (198). In addition to witnessing a white man’s death by fire, Akua’s life with white missionaries calls into question her sanity and the significance these traumatic circumstances had on her. Although her actions lead to the death of her daughters, this does not make her trauma and traumatic experiences any less valid. Before Akua suffers a similar fate as the nameless white man, Asamoah pleads for her life and says that he was able to save their son, Yaw, though their son sustained severe burn wounds. Although the villagers release Akua, they exile her, Asamoah, and their son to the outskirts of town. Ultimately, her absence as a mother plagues Yaw for most of his life and she inadvertently becomes a source of trauma for him. Akua’s actions that night become the catalyst for the physical and emotional trauma Yaw experiences as he gets older. Despite his parents’ exile, the village sends him away to school not only so he can learn, but also so the village “would not have to be reminded of their shame” (Gyasi 2016, 227). Yaw is no longer in contact with his parents, nor has he visited Edweso in his fifty years of living. Although Akua repeatedly sends him letters, Yaw ignores them. As a teacher, Yaw has momentary reprieve from the permanent

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reminder of the scars on his face, but ultimately, his self-esteem is damaged, and he becomes an angry, lonely man (229). While he dealt with the collective social shame of his village, the physical and psychological scars Yaw sustained create global shame and an urge to withdraw from others and live alone. Eventually, Yaw falls in love with his house girl, Esther. He wants to win her heart despite the differences in their age and education and the limitations he feels due to his scars. Despite his own reluctance, he asks Esther to accompany him to Edweso to see his mother. Yaw and Esther are greeted by Kofi Poku and are taken to his home before they set off to visit Akua. While they stay at Kofi Poku’s home, his children refer to Yaw as “Crazy Woman’s son,” which not only embarrasses Yaw but also makes him realize that “his story had become legend in his hometown” (Gyasi 2016, 236). Nevertheless, Yaw and Esther make the trip to Akua’s home, the same home that Asamoah built for them on the outskirts of town. This reunion between mother and son becomes an opportunity for Akua to bridge the motherly gap her absence created for Yaw. Akua greets her son by taking her burned hands into his hands and touching his face (239). These gestures cause Yaw to cry and later ask his mother how he got his scar. Akua can now testify to her traumatic experiences, especially the ones that result in physical and emotional scars for Yaw. First, she talks about the dreams that haunt her then and now, her mother’s death, and how she was unwell and that she was a perpetually sad person (240). Then, she describes how her dreams began to worsen, up until she set the hut on fire with him and his sisters inside. With this, Yaw learns how he got his scar; however, Akua has more to tell him. By testifying about Yaw’s scar, Akua can address the traumatic legacy of their family line. In her attempt to get answers about the dreams, she returns to the missionary school and retrieves Effia’s necklace that she now wears. When Akua takes the necklace to the fetish man’s son as an offering, he explains how there is evil in Akua’s lineage. The firewoman in Akua’s dreams is her ancestor and that Akua was chosen to listen to the firewoman’s story and get to know her. In other words, Akua bears witness to Maame’s traumatic history through the dreams and is now able to articulate some portion of the firewoman’s story to Yaw. However, Yaw’s response is quiet anger as he wonders at the significance of being chosen if that comes at the expense of himself and Akua (Gyasi 2016, 241). Initially, Yaw does not understand how Akua can feel a sense of healing despite knowing their family’s history. To him, knowing about the family’s traumatic past provides little solace to him because he still bears the scars caused by his mother’s trauma. Undeterred, Akua reiterates, “There is evil in our lineage. There are people who have done wrong because they could not see the result of the wrong” (242). The “wrong” that she refers to is permitting fellow African men, women, and children to be

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sold into slavery, which facilitated a traumatic legacy that they could not have foreseen taking place in America. She continues to explain how evil “transmutes in a way that is unrecognizable from its early origins” (242). Akua calls the traumas she and her family faced “evil.” However, Effia’s descendants still experience trauma despite the roots of that trauma emerging because of the family’s involvement in the slave trade. Even though Akua does not use the same language that we use today to discuss generational trauma, she does recognize that the circumstances her family faced and continues to face are something that “grows” and “transmutes.” Nevertheless, the evil Akua refers to started with Effia’s father enslaving Maame, which causes her to set fire to the village and abandon her newborn child. Then the evil shifts to Effia being married off to James Collins, the man who is responsible for Esi and other enslaved people being sent to America and into slavery. Lastly, the evil can still be observed directly when Quey makes the choice to keep the business of slavery thriving for his people. In the end, Akua tells Yaw that he must let himself be free even in the face of this evil in their lineage. By articulating their family history and her role in the trauma he has suffered, Yaw is able to heal in an emotional way that enables him to marry Esther and eventually become a father. NAVIGATING THE CROOKED ROOMS OF OPPRESSION: EFFIA’S DESCENDANTS Although the exchange between Yaw and Akua is an example of how one can cope in the face of seemingly insurmountable traumatic experiences and still have a fulfilling life, this closure is not afforded to all the descendants on Effia or Esi’s side. Furthermore, the individuals who are responsible for one’s traumatic circumstances, whether directly or indirectly, do not know the long-term ramifications of their actions. Akua’s analogy of a fisherman catching fish best conveys the role of oppressor and survivor. The fisherman is the oppressor while the fish are the survivors and victims of oppression. The fisherman thinks that, even if he captures a fish and puts it back in the water, their life will “go back to normal” (Gyasi 2016, 242). The moral of the story is that “no one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free” (242). Overall, the oppressor believes that they are looking out for themselves, but they do not realize their actions or inactions can adversely impact others. For example, although Effia is a protagonist in this story, I argue that she is also an indirect oppressor. One reason is because she is married to James Collins, the governor of the Cape Coast Castle who ultimately sends Esi and other captive women to America courtesy of the Atlantic slave trade. When

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she learns about the people held captive underneath the Castle in the dungeons, she is upset and demands to return home. However, James reminds Effia that she would fare worse at home and Effia realizes that she has little choice but to stay at the Castle and with James. Despite knowing about the women in the dungeons, she “had never thought of where they went” once they leave the dungeons (Gyasi 2016, 25). In other words, she is naively oblivious to the fate of the captives as she chats with other Castle wives. When one of the wives says, “‘There are women down there who look like us’” (25), the narrator acknowledges that Effia had never considered the prospect of James going to the dungeons and seeing women that look like her, and subsequently feels haunted by the experience (25). This gap in Effia’s thinking further reiterates Effia’s status as an indirect oppressor. To return to Akua’s analogy, Effia and James are like the fisherman who discern which fish can be kept and which ones are returned to the ocean. They cannot see the result of the evils of the slave trade as they continue to live their life of luxury and comfort in the Castle. Also, rather than consider the plight of the women held in the dungeon, there is a level of humanization given towards James and how he may feel about seeing the captives. The reader is almost meant to empathize with James instead of acknowledging the dehumanization that occurs by rendering the women captives as “cargo” and no different than the “beasts” that James ascribes financial worth to. Overall, Effia’s story becomes complicated because she is both a victim and an oppressor mainly due to her inactions towards Baaba and acquiescence to her new life in the Castle as James’s wife. Effia’s son, Quey, is like Effia because he can be regarded as both victim and oppressor. As mentioned before, Quey becomes an oppressor by choosing to follow in his father James Collins’s footsteps by upholding the slave trade with the British. However, the trajectory of his decision is not linear; he is a victim of his own circumstances. Growing up in the Cape Coast Castle, Quey is a half-caste, lonely child with little to occupy himself. As a half-caste child, Quey feels he cannot fully claim whiteness or Blackness despite being biracial (Gyasi 2016, 56). Although Quey is a well-mannered child, Effia worries that he does not have friends and this propels James to introduce Quey to Cudjo, the son of a prominent Fante chief. Quey and Cudjo become close, so much so that Quey develops romantic feelings for him. One day, Quey challenges Cudjo to a match that ends with hints of romantic tension. When James walks in on the boys, he orders Cudjo to leave, but Quey notices a change in his father’s voice that is both fearful and indicative of the way he speaks to servants and slaves (Gyasi 2016, 61). His father’s response becomes a source of shame for Quey from a global perspective. Quey is forced to evaluate himself and concludes that his internal desires are not compatible with his father’s expectations. James’s fear

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about his son’s sexuality forces him to send Quey to a school in England, thereby ending any possibility of a relationship between Quey and Cudjo. Collectively, his identity, sexual preference, and James’s effort to extinguish Quey’s friendship with Cudjo are reasons I consider Quey to be a victim of his own circumstances, and his suppressed desires to be his own man is a source of trauma for him. He remains in England until the Castle’s new governor summons him to his mother’s village. Although Quey accepts his new position, he is internally resistant to the prospect of returning to the village and the life that he was forced to leave behind because of his father. In fact, he feels that his new job is a punishment (Gyasi 2016, 51). He longs to work in the Castle office as a writer and distance himself from the “workings of slavery” and not think about who is bought and sold (50). Quey’s lamentations reiterate that he wants to be far removed from the life his father led as a governor, as well as from the “workings of slavery.” He begrudgingly accepts the job due to a lack of viable options and to distance himself from his feelings of shame by indirectly appeasing his father. According to the governor, the purpose of Quey’s job is to work in a village outpost and serve as a subtle reminder to the Fantes that their trading allegiance is to the British (51). When Effia learns of Quey’s new position, she urges him to refuse his obligation on the grounds that there is evil in the village. Nevertheless, Quey does not heed his mother’s pleas and instead works alongside Fiifi and Abeeku Badu in their slave acquisition efforts, as well as avoid Cudjo. Quey’s decision ultimately solidifies his status as an oppressor and source of trauma for many Africans because he is aware of what becomes of the enslaved people who are bought, sold, and shipped away. The constant capturing of enslaved people from the Asantes and other tribes takes a treacherous turn when Fiifi is injured during a mission and Quey realizes Fiifi and other soldiers captured Nana Yaa. She is the eldest daughter of the highest power in the Asante Kingdom, and that is great for political bargaining purposes (Gyasi 2016, 67). After Quey starts to question Fiifi’s intentions with Nana Yaa, Fiifi instead talks to Quey about their family and Quey’s role in his family’s legacy. Once Fiifi realizes his hatred of Effia is misplaced, he seeks to make amends by leaving Quey with the village. Fiifi goes on to tell Quey that he will become a “powerful man” that will persevere long after the white colonizing presence leaves the Gold Coast (69). Moreover, Quey will marry Nana Yaa, thereby making him untouchable to the Asante king and any of his people. To reiterate, Quey ultimately accepts the familial legacy bestowed upon him by Fiifi. At the end of Quey’s story, the narrator conveys the realities Quey deals with. For starters, Quey does not want to be regarded as weak on account of “his mutinous desire” to be with Cudjo (Gyasi 2016, 69). He

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also knows about his mother’s struggles due to Baaba and understands why Fiifi wants to make amends. On the one hand, the “sacrifices” that must be made are due in part to Quey’s effort at self-preservation. On the other hand, Quey’s self-preservation is a traumatic act against himself because he does not choose the path that leads to his romantic fulfillment or desire to be away from the institution of slavery. Ultimately, Quey bends and contorts himself to fit a crooked room rooted in patriarchy, hegemony, and suppressed homosexuality. Overall, like Effia, Quey knows that anyone who is captured by the Asantes and Fantes is regarded as a commodity for trade, and yet Quey’s and Effia’s (in)actions exacerbate the family’s role in the slave trade. While Effia and Quey, at times, passively accepted their circumstances and made choices for their own preservation, Quey’s son, James Richard Collins, overcomes internal and external conflicts to become the man he wants to be. By the time James is born, the slave trade is abolished, and slaves cannot be sold to America anymore. Although the British were no longer selling slaves to America, slavery still took place illegally, and, as Quey explains to his son, physical bonds or shackles are replaced with “invisible ones that wrapped around the mind” (Gyasi 2016, 93). What this explanation means is that the traumatic experiences African Americans face evolved after slavery was abolished. Racism, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration take over where slavery leaves off. These harsh realities reaffirm James’s choice to choose a different path than his father. James does not approve of his father’s line of work, especially knowing that his mother was stolen and married to Quey for political purposes. Additionally, James notices how acerbic his parents’ marriage is, especially with Nana Yaa accusing Quey of being weak. The background of his parents’ dysfunctional marriage, tribal wars, the British’s presence looming over everyone, and James’s impending arranged marriage to a woman he does not love, all provide the impetus for James’s circumstances. After his maternal grandfather’s funeral, James meets a village girl named Akosua Mensah, and, despite his eventual marriage to Amma, James resolves to marry Akosua and leave his current life behind. James would rather live life as a simple farmer than a life like Quey’s. To facilitate any chance of achieving his dream, James avoids any chances of consummating his marriage to Amma, so much so that his wife demands he visit the local apothecary. The apothecary, Mampanyin, does not mince words with James because of his family’s dealings in the slave trade. Although James tries to distance himself from his family’s history, he realizes that such efforts are impossible. However, James tells Mampanyin that he does not want to be a Big Man like his father and do things that project to others that his family is important (Gyasi 2016, 104), but rather he wants to be his own

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man and marry the woman he loves. Additionally, James does not want to be complicit in the slave trade like his father and grandmother Effia. Although he leaves the apothecary with a sense of hope, that hope is dashed the longer he stays in Fanteland. However, his talk with Effia changes the trajectory of his life. Although she does not know the full extent of James’s desires, she does support James’s desire to reject the identity crafted for him by others and create a new path for himself (Gyasi 2016, 107). So James tells his family that he is going to Cape Coast and instead goes to Efutu and finds work with a doctor Effia knew from her time in the castle. A month later, the Asantes wage an attack on the Fantes and the British, and James is caught in the crosshairs and left for dead. However, an Asante warrior recognizes him and pulls him from the dead pile to safety. After James persuades the warrior to tell anyone who asks that he died in the war, he makes his way to Asanteland and to Akosua. Although James successfully leaves the life he had under his father, he and other descendants cannot escape the legacy of slavery and seemingly cursed fate. Nevertheless, choosing a life of simplicity away from the institution of slavery does not absolve Effia’s descendants from their role in the slave trade and, by extension, the traumatic experiences Esi and her descendants navigate in America. However, the choices Effia’s descendants make stem from trauma sustained from decades of war between the tribes and the British. Much like Quey’s decision-making stems from self-preservation, so does that of other Africans who want to avoid becoming enslaved or killed. With James’s choice to become a farmer, he exercises a sense of agency over his life. NAVIGATING THE CROOKED ROOMS OF OPPRESSION: ESI’S DESCENDANTS Still, as the fisherman anecdote suggests, not all people in this story have agency in how their own lives unfold. While Quey’s son, James, takes his life trajectory into his own hands and becomes an obscure farmer, Esi and most of her descendants have no agency because of slavery and Jim Crow. Even with descendants who are far removed from the direct violence caused by slavery, normalcy still cannot be achieved. Esi’s descendants are the individuals who suffer in America and battle racism, sexism, and systemic oppression. James’s story alludes to the magnitude of slavery in America, specifically when James recalls a conversation between Quey and his friend David when David laments how poorly Africans are treated in America (Gyasi 2016, 103). However, they have merely read “about the atrocities of the American South” in abolitionist British papers (103) and those publications cannot fully encapsulate the traumatic experience of slavery. Traumatic

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experiences must be rendered accessible to broad audiences who are not directly impacted by trauma such as slavery. Like the relationship neo-slave narratives have to their nineteenth-century literary counterparts, abolitionist papers provide an adequate form of retelling traumatic experiences, but likely do not address the domino effect of traumatic experiences that many Black families contended with. One of the most painful realities is that Black families were forcefully ripped apart, and we can see this present itself with Esi’s descendants. Ness is taken from Esi, and Ness gives her son, Kojo, to Ma Aku so he can live and someday be free. Kojo never has a chance to meet his son, H, because his wife, Anna, was abducted and sold while she was pregnant. H is ripped from Anna’s body after her death, and he does not know his parents. Willie’s marriage to her husband, Robert, falls apart and their son, Sonny, resents his mother for not telling him who his father is. Willie and Sonny’s stories almost mirror that of Akua and Yaw in that the mother-son relationships are filled with resentment from their sons and how that resentment is resolved because the mothers bear witness to their own pain and suffering. After her parents’ deaths, Willie along with Robert decides to move to Harlem in the hopes of finding fulfilling work. Willie wants to be a singer, while Robert wants to learn a new trade and find work that makes him feel a sense of honor. In Pratt City, Alabama, where they lived, there were very few opportunities aside from working in the coal mines. Their decision to move North is one instance of a larger movement known as the Great Migration. Considering the economic and racial turmoil in the South, especially with Jim Crow laws and the agricultural decline of the cotton industry, African Americans were desperate for relief and the prospect of a better life. Approximately 1.6 million African Americans left the South to pursue opportunities in the northern and midwestern states in the years preceding World War I to 1930. In addition to job opportunities, the Great Migration spurred the Harlem Renaissance and other cultural advancements in entertainment. Ultimately, Willie’s aspirations of being a singer echo the hopes of many African Americans who migrated to the northern cities. However, as Willie and Robert soon realize, there are limitations to the kinds of opportunities available for them. They learn this while they are job hunting. After the store clerk of an ice cream parlor sees them enter, he immediately asks Robert if he is married to Willie and immediately tells Robert there is no job for him. When they return to the apartment, Robert leaves to continue his job search alone. Willie knows that the store clerk mistook Robert for a white man, and, by extension, her Blackness becomes a liability for him. He eventually finds a job in Manhattan, while Willie finds work as a housekeeper for a wealthy Black family in Harlem. She also continues to seek auditions. However, Willie experiences colorism on the night of her

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audition at the Jazzing. A man holds a paper bag up to her cheek and deems her too dark to perform at the bar. Although Willie sees a man with a darker complexion gain access, he counters by saying if she were a man, her skin color may be passable (Gyasi 2016, 209). Instead, she is offered, and subsequently accepts, a cleaning job. During this exchange between Willie and the Jazzing employee, Willie laments that Robert can get any job he wants because of his skin color. Ultimately, Willie can only make lateral moves as a cleaning lady and is unable to pursue her dreams of being a singer. This becomes another trauma that Willie mentally carries in addition to colorism and racism with prospective employers. Additionally, colorism and racism compose the crooked room Willie seeks to escape from. Instead of escaping this room, Willie’s resentment towards Robert’s ability to pass as a white man demonstrates how she contorts herself to the room by accepting demeaning jobs and regarding her Blackness as a detriment to upward mobility. Willie and Robert ultimately keep their jobs a secret from one another, which proves detrimental to their marriage. Moreover, they confront the harsh reality of where they could live. Robert is initially optimistic that his money alone would be enough, but Willie wants Robert to consider the reality of the world they live in when she asks, “What world do you think we live in, Robert?” (Gyasi 2016, 211). This question addresses the unspoken racism in the housing market and that Robert’s racial passing will not spare them, but rather mirror the experience they had when they searched for jobs together in the city. The tension-filled exchange between the couple becomes the catalyst for the deterioration of trust in their marriage. Robert does not come home for most nights, and when he does, they quietly and mutually agree not to pry and ask questions about the state of their relationship (Gyasi 2016, 213). They continue this way until Robert and Willie encounter each other at the Jazzing. Willie enters the men’s restroom to clean and does not recognize Robert. However, Robert recognizes her just as two of his coworkers enter the men’s room. When one of the men approaches Willie in a sexual way, Willie spits in his face and Robert yells her name. His utterance compels the men to piece together the discrepancy in his skin tone and confront Robert about knowing Willie, asking if she is his “woman” (Gyasi 2016, 215). Then, one of the men forces Robert and Willie to touch each other while he sexually pleasures himself. Willie and Robert experience collective sexual trauma, which is reminiscent of the slavery era when white owners exercised their power and control over any Black person they wanted to make an example of. In this case, Robert’s racial deception is what encourages his white coworkers to remind Robert of his status as a Black man, while also getting sexual gratification from Robert and Willie. After the incident, Robert is fired and leaves Willie and Sonny.

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After her marriage ends, Willie raises Sonny as a single mother and leaves him alone in their apartment while she is at work. With more failed auditions, Willie turns to the church and meets fellow churchgoer Eli. Initially, his presence yields adventure and a baby girl named Josephine. However, Eli constantly leaves Willie with the children and no money. This results in three evictions and Willie losing jobs because she has no one to watch the baby. She turns to the church again and, this time, joins their choir. Willie’s relationship to the church is a means of coping with the multitude of circumstances looming over her whether Eli is present or not. Additionally, while walking through the city with Sonny, Willie notices Robert with a white woman and a little boy. They make eye contact with each other across an intersection and exchange brief smiles before they go their separate ways. With this encounter, Willie allows herself to be alleviated of the painful emotions she carried with the dissolution of their marriage and realize that she forgives him (Gyasi 2016, 220). After this meeting, Willie regains her voice and begins to sing again, something she was not able to do at any auditions after her and Robert separated. Overall, Willie achieves a semblance of healing from an emotional standpoint because of this chance encounter with Robert, and the church provides an outlet for her to sing in the aftermath of her healing. Seeing Robert is a turning point for Willie because, for the longest time, she silently deals with Sonny looking more like Robert and him demanding to be called Sonny (Robert’s nickname for him) instead of Carson. Moreover, Sonny does little to hide the contempt he has towards his mother, especially as he gets older. Willie’s refusal to tell Sonny anything about his father fuels much of his anger later in life. She is also very critical of Sonny concerning his life as an absent father to three children by three different women. Sonny lacks a consistent father figure, which translates to his own shortcomings as a father for his children. Although Willie has accepted Robert’s departure from her life, Sonny does not have the same understandings Willie has about Robert’s absence. Rather, Sonny feels abandoned by his father and this abandonment becomes a trauma that manifests in the way Sonny is absent in his own children’s lives. Ultimately, Sonny repeats the same trauma he has experienced, and this will become a trauma his children and the children’s mothers will carry with them. Sonny also comes of age during the civil rights movement, which reaffirms Gyasi’s effort to cover a sufficient swath of historical content even in the confines of a novel. The civil rights movement is a pivotal time in American history, though like many historical events in America, it is whitewashed and rendered in a positive light. Gyasi uses Sonny’s story to challenge our view of the civil rights movement and, like Yaw urges his students, to consider the stories that are untold or overlooked. The story of a depressed, drug-addicted

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Black man who becomes disillusioned by his work for civil rights is just one example. At the beginning of his story, Sonny is in jail waiting for Willie to bail him out because he was arrested for marching. Like many people who seek social change and equality, but are also subjected to mistreatment and segregation, Sonny wonders how much he can continue fighting for racial equality when he is consistently degraded by the police and the government (Gyasi 2016, 244). In addition to the trauma Sonny carries from his father’s absence, Sonny’s activism becomes a source of trauma because of the repeated physical violence, racism, and microaggressions caused by unanswered pleas for justice and equality. For every step made towards equity for the African American community, there are more efforts made to maintain America’s racial status quo. Ultimately, these questions do not lead to direct or clear answers as Sonny gradually realizes. He works on the housing team at the NAACP and tries to help his community through this work. However, after he encounters a young Black boy who asks, “You can’t do a single thing, can you?” (Gyasi 2016, 246), Sonny is haunted by the boy’s words and subsequently becomes demoralized. Sonny continues to get arrested at marches, is assaulted by a police officer after his third arrest, and learns about the shooting deaths of Reverend George Lee, a man killed while trying to register to vote, and Rosa Jordan, a pregnant woman killed while riding a newly desegregated bus in Alabama (246). The repeated assaults on his personhood, along with the deaths of other Black people who are exercising their human rights, exacerbate the trauma and depression Sonny experiences, which lead to him quitting his job with the NAACP. Two weeks later, Sonny gets a job at a new jazz club in East Harlem where he meets Amani Zulema, the eventual mother of his fourth child and the woman who introduces Sonny to heroin. Sonny is drawn to Amani because her singing reminds him of his mother’s singing from his childhood. Also, Sonny initially regards Amani as an escape from the depression and trauma stemming from childhood and adulthood. For Sonny, Amani reminds him of better times with his mother, Willie, and he feels comfortable and comforted by her singing and presence (Gyasi 2016, 254). Instead of a source for healing or coping, Amani becomes a pathway for Sonny to develop a drug addiction. By forty-five, Sonny is a dope fiend in a cycle of addiction and repeated attempts to get clean (257). His addiction is so severe that Willie no longer gives him money and he relies on his, Amani’s, or their friends’ efforts to purchase more drugs. At Amani’s insistence, Sonny decides to visit his mother and try to get money for drugs. This visit to Willie’s apartment becomes a turning point for Sonny because he finally gets answers about who his father is. Once the two are alone, Willie tells Sonny that his father is white (Gyasi 2016, 261). She goes on to say that

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after they saw Robert with his new, white family, she contemplated telling Sonny who his father is but decided against it (261). Sonny is surprised and angry at these revelations about his father. He says, “You [should have] told me, and you [should have] stopped him” (261). He goes on to list examples of people who have walked over Willie, including Robert, Eli, and the church and how these efforts culminate into her not fighting for anything (261). Sonny believes his mother is a doormat for the men in her life and that her passivity is the reason his father left them. However, this sentiment is far from the truth and Willie reminds him that she fought for him by marching with Robert from Alabama to Harlem because she wanted Sonny to have a better life and “see a better world” than she and her parents (262). Furthermore, Willie and Robert’s dreams for other employment possibilities also fueled their march to the North. Yet their march from Alabama to Harlem came at a price, specifically the end of Willie and Robert’s marriage, the dissolution of Willie’s dream of becoming a professional singer, and persistent poverty. Willie believes that, on some level, Sonny was aware that Robert could “choose his life” but that privilege would never be afforded to him (Gyasi 2016, 262). Sonny inadvertently shares the same sentiment about Robert’s ability to racially pass and experience few limitations. In other words, they recognize Robert’s racial passing as a source of shared trauma. Unlike Robert, Willie and Sonny cannot escape the harsh reality of being Black in America. Unfortunately, they must contort their bodies to the crooked room of racism and other racial violence they have experienced, and they both acquiesce to different stereotypes. For most of Sonny’s story, he regards Willie as a pushover and Mammy-like figure that does white people’s bidding. For Sonny, he is addicted to drugs and is a deadbeat father with multiple children by different women. None of this is to say that Willie and Sonny embrace these stereotypes willingly. Rather, they are victims of circumstances beyond their control because they are not afforded the same agency as white men. Willie’s conversation moves from white men as a collective to how Sonny’s actions correspond with white men’s, specifically his absence in his children’s lives. Willie explains how white men have flexibility in choosing jobs, homes, and even procreation prospects, so much so that they can make Black babies, evade responsibility, and leave Black women with the remnants of consensual and nonconsensual sex acts (Gyasi 2016, 262). This part of Willie’s statement not only corresponds with what Robert did to her, but also with what happened to Esi when she was raped by the white soldier in the Cape Coast Castle and, more broadly, what happened to many enslaved Black women who were at the mercy of their white owners. In other words, white men (and sometimes Black men) are a source of trauma for Black women, especially when they impregnate women, and willingly refuse to be fathers to

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the children they played a role in creating. Although Sonny and Robert do not rape any of the women they are with, their absence in their children’s lives is a trauma for both the women and the children. These remarks about white men’s role in the disruption of Black households correlate with the “Moynihan Report” (1965) where author Daniel Moynihan argues that the family structure of African American families exacerbates the cycle of poverty and disadvantage and that, to alleviate these problems, the federal government must instill measures that will provide “the establishment of a stable Negro family structure” (Moynihan 1965). Although the “Moynihan Report” explains that “the racist virus in the American blood stream” and “three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment have taken their toll” on Black people, this document still insinuates that Black people are primarily responsible for their own poverty and precarious family structures that render single Black mothers as the matriarch of their households (Moynihan 1965). Hortense Spillers (1987) criticizes the “Moynihan Report” and contends that we cannot utilize terminology that reflects white families on Black families because such terminology does not capture the broad impact of slavery on the African American family. As Gyasi’s novel suggests, this whitewashed narrative of Black families omits acts of systemic oppression, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregation, that still impact African Americans today. To return to Willie’s conversation with Sonny, she articulates the ways white men directly and indirectly keep Black men under their proverbial thumbs. She explains how white men can send Black men to prison and away from their families, much like what happened to Willie’s father (Gyasi 2016, 262). Before he died, Willie’s father, H, was a convict who worked in the coal mines in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1880 (Gyasi 2016, 159). Although H had the opportunity to be a present father in Willie’s and his other children’s lives, H was sent to jail and later sold by the state because of the police’s false charges against him. Many African Americans (especially men) are victims of inequality in America’s justice system. Even Sonny’s repeated arrests due to marching are an extension of the way white men exercise their power on Black people to reaffirm the racial status quo. However, Sonny’s arrests are not an excuse for his lackluster presence in his children’s lives. After bailing Sonny out of jail yet again, Willie tells him to spend less time in jail and more time with his children (Gyasi 2016, 245). This sentiment is not to suggest that Willie is not empathetic to Sonny’s repeated participation in the civil rights movement. Rather, she wants him to step into the role of father so that he is not continuing to perpetuate the narrative of absent father and trauma for the children and their mothers. Not only does she lament that his children walk the Harlem streets with barely any conception of Sonny as their father, but she also insinuates that Sonny embraced

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a notion from his father, who in turn “picked [it] up from white men” (262), that he can leave when family responsibilities become inconvenient. Although she tells Sonny about his father and the ways Black men are still victimized by white society in the aftermath of slavery, there is still the issue of Sonny’s drug addiction. Willie warns her son that if he lives the remainder of his life addicted to heroin, society will merely watch his downfall and blame him for his addiction, and he will be nothing more to society than another junkie (Gyasi 2016, 262–63). In the end, Sonny does not take his mother’s money and leave. Later, the reader learns that Sonny starts going to a methadone clinic and works as a hospital custodian. Overall, the resolution of Sonny’s resentment towards his mother, Willie, is nearly a mirror image of Yaw’s resolved resentment towards his mother, Akua, and the overlaps continue with Yaw’s and Sonny’s respective children, Marjorie and Marcus. MARCUS AND MARJORIE’S HOMECOMING: WATER MEETS FIRE For a majority of the novel, Effia’s descendants do not interact or know Esi’s descendants, which reiterates the implications forced separation can have on Black families. Although Marcus does not know all his family descendants, his and Marjorie’s meeting becomes the catalyst for them coming together in the place where the story began: at the Cape Coast Castle. Furthermore, the symbolism—fire, water, and the stone necklace—that is present throughout the novel collides in Marcus’s story while he and Marjorie visit Ghana. Marcus is a graduate student pursuing his PhD in sociology at Stanford University and yearns to learn more about his family’s history. At first, Marcus wants to focus his research on the convict leasing system that was imposed on his great-grandfather H. However, Marcus’s research propels him to other circumstances that negatively impact African American’s collective experiences, such as the Great Migration, the appearance of heroin in 1960s Harlem, the crack epidemic and subsequent “War on Drugs,” and how many of the Black men he grew up with found themselves in or out of the “harshest prison system in the world” (Gyasi 2016, 289). This trajectory of the Black experience in America coincides with the “alternative history lessons” (284) Marcus receives from his father, Sonny, which articulate centuries of historical trauma. For example, Sonny tells Marcus about how America arrests Black men for their labor and “how redlining kept banks from investing in black neighborhoods, preventing mortgages or business loans” (285). Moreover, Sonny “forever [talked] about slavery, the prison industrial complex, the System, segregation, the Man” (284). Not only do these conversations with his father get Marcus more interested in studying America and his family’s

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experiences, but these conversations also highlight how whitewashed and problematic America’s history is with the Black community. Marcus recalls another conversation with his father that correlates with not only the novel’s symbolism of water, but also Marcus’s fear of water, especially larger bodies of water. When Marcus was younger, Sonny told him that Black people’s relationship with water stems from the trauma of being transported on slave ships (Gyasi 2016, 284). In Sonny’s mind, “What did a black man want to swim for?,” especially given the watery deaths their ancestors and many others faced (284). The sentiments Sonny and Marcus share about water are certainly justified on account of the traumatic experiences leading up to enslaved Africans’ arrival to America. What Sonny is describing is the Middle Passage, one leg of the Atlantic slave trade route. Enslaved Africans were chained together and packed below the slave ship decks. The conditions below deck are like the dungeons Esi and other enslaved Africans face in the Castle dungeons. They faced rampant disease, extreme temperatures, and low oxygen levels. The voyages would last months and, undoubtedly, some of the captives would not survive. Once dead bodies were discovered below deck, they were tossed into the ocean. Some enslaved Africans rebelled and attempted to change their fate by jumping overboard, hence why Sonny says that the ocean is littered with Black men (284). Moreover, Esi would tell Ness stories about the “Big Boat,” which is a euphemism for the Middle Passage and Esi’s experience on the slave ship that brought her to America. Furthermore, Ness’s son, Kojo, built and worked on boats in Maryland despite Ma Aku explaining the irony of Black men working on the same devices, the boats, that brought their ancestors to America (Gyasi 2016, 111). In all, the aversion to water that many of Esi’s descendants experience echoes the historical trauma of slavery and the slave trade. Much like fire for Effia’s descendants, water reminds Esi’s descendants of the traumatic experiences that their ancestors faced. For Marcus, the smell of ocean water was nauseating and “made him feel as though he were already drowning” (Gyasi 2016, 284). The reader also learns that Marcus does not know how to swim. Although the narrator’s observation about Marcus’s inability to swim seems to be an afterthought, I want to call attention to another instance of problematic history that impacts African Americans both past and present: racism within American recreation. Specifically, white people’s nostalgic recollection of swimming pools undermines the magnitude of widespread segregation and violence against African Americans who attempted to take advantage of this leisure activity. Recreational segregation has “had a lasting significance on modern race relations,” and “swimming pools and beaches were among the most segregated and fought over public spaces in the North and the South” (Wolcott 2019). Much of this segregation is on account of

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widely held stereotypes by white people that African Americans are “diseased and sexually threatening” (Wolcott 2019). Also, some white people believed that if white and Black people mingled in such intimate spaces, young white women’s safety would be compromised, which fuels fears of interracial sex. With these stereotypes and unfounded fears towards African Americans, city leaders upheld segregation efforts to maintain racial peace, especially when white teenagers attacked Black swimmers after pools became open to Black people. Some other examples of violence include “[throwing] nails at the bottom of pools in Cincinnati, [pouring] bleach and acid in pools with black bathers in St. Augustine, Florida, and [beating Black bathers] up in Philadelphia” (Wolcott 2019). Riots and protests across the country ensued, though with little improvement regarding African American’s access to leisure sites. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act desegregated public accommodations, white city officials and municipalities enacted other segregation strategies such as filling in pools, defunding recreational facilities, and implementing membership clubs and fees, which acted as deterrents for Black pool guests, while gated communities and homeowners’ associations “contribut[ed] to the decline of public recreation areas” by promoting privatized recreation (Wolcott 2019). As a result, many public pools were closed, which diminished access to pools for urban residents. Although the “racial stereotypes that justified swimming segregation are not often openly expressed today,” we can still observe fallouts from white society’s collective efforts to keep African Americans out of public pools (Wolcott 2019). For example, in the United States, “swimming ability is starkly divided along racial lines. White Americans are twice as likely to know how to swim as black Americans” (Hackman 2015). Furthermore, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “black children aged five to 14 are three times more likely to die from unintentional drowning than their white counterparts” (Hackman 2015). Although Marcus’s inability to swim is a singular circumstance, these statistics overlap with America’s history of segregation with recreational activities. For example, a 2015 pool party incident in McKinney, Texas, made headlines when a white police officer was recorded on video violently restraining a fifteen-year-old African American girl. While restraining her, the officer pointed his gun at anyone who tried to intervene. The officer resigned days after the incident and the victim’s family filed and settled a civil suit against the officer, police department, and city. Overall, the McKinney, Texas, pool party incident serves as a modern reminder that segregation is a form of collective trauma for African Americans and the aftermath of segregation can still be felt today. Between the segregation in American leisure sites, the statistical implication of African American’s swimming capabilities, and the Middle Passage, Gyasi provides significant historical nuance that corresponds

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with the novel’s symbolism of water. Moreover, water has the same function as fire with Effia’s descendants as both highlight recurring historical trauma, whether that trauma stems from the fire Maame set centuries earlier or the trauma stems from American racism postslavery. The symbolism of water persists in Marcus’s chapter as he meets Marjorie and, with her help, confronts his fear of water. When Marjorie shows him a map of Ghana and points out that her grandmother lives near the beach, Marcus says, “‘I hate the beach’” (Gyasi 2016, 293). However, Marjorie counters with, “Are you scared of it?” (293) in reference to the beach and, by extension, water. She goes on to say that her grandmother could hear their deceased ancestors “who were stuck on the ocean floor” (294). Marjorie’s recollection of her grandmother Akua coincide with historical accounts of the Middle Passage, specifically those individuals who did not survive the voyage to the New World for a multitude of reasons. Although Marjorie suggests that Akua was crazy, Marcus is convinced that this perception is unfounded simply because she can see, hear, or feel what others cannot (294). This sentiment encourages Marjorie to disclose her fear of fire and that she has not visited Ghana since her grandmother’s death because of the emotional pain associated with her loss. After they visit Pratt City for Marcus’s research, Marcus explains to Marjorie that he fears the ocean not only because of a fear of drowning, but also because of how vast the ocean is. In other words, staying close to land is reassuring for him (296). Ultimately, his admission becomes the catalyst for an impromptu trip he and Marjorie take to Ghana. This trip to Ghana is overdue for Marjorie, but for Marcus, this trip has implications that will impact his research and his sense of self. Marjorie’s presence reminds Marcus of the relief he felt as a child when Sonny and Willie rescued him from his mother, Amani (Gyasi 2016, 293). Marcus believes that, like his father and grandmother, Marjorie somehow found him. Taking this sentiment further, Marjorie’s connection to Ghana and her family’s history is something Marcus yearns for himself. He wants his project to capture the “feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back” (296). Ultimately, Marcus wants to learn more about the family that came before his great-grandfather H, and he wants to make sense of his own lived experiences in the context of that unknown history. For Marcus, even being born and not “in a jail cell somewhere” is by “mere chance” (296). Marcus is aware that he is “an accumulation of these times” (296) that his family spent in Alabama. Therefore, his and Marjorie’s trip to Ghana is a homecoming for Marcus despite not knowing the full extent of his family’s history. When Marcus asks Marjorie about the Castle, she begrudgingly offers to take him, despite not having been to the Castle herself. They sign up for a Castle tour and, at first, they are shown the upper level. The upper level

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consists of the church, where children attended school, and where many British soldiers lived with their wives and children. These residents on the upper level lived a privileged lifestyle that did not involve viewing or regarding what lay beneath the Castle (Gyasi 2016, 298). However, Marcus and Marjorie are not oblivious to the contrasting reality between those who lived on the upper level and those who lived in the underbelly of the Castle (298). The tour guide later takes the group to one of the dungeons that held captive women, sometimes as many as “two hundred and fifty at a time” according to the tour guide (299). He goes on to direct the group’s attention to the dungeon door with a sign that reads “Door of No Return” and tells the group how the door leads to the beach and slave ships (299). Referring to these women as “them” is not lost on Marcus. The women are nameless, and their traumatic experiences cannot be thoroughly encapsulated even in a tour to the lowest depths of the Castle. Nevertheless, Marcus is physically stricken by the dungeon on account of the poor air circulation and the unspoken magnitude of what took place in the dungeon. During a panic attack, Marcus starts pushing at the dungeon door until it gives way and opens to the beach. While running on the beach, Marcus stumbles across two men “who were building a dazzling fire with flames that licked out and up, crawling toward the water” (299). Marjorie follows Marcus but stops when she sees the fire. After some coaxing and assurance, Marcus gets Marjorie to join him at beachside “where the fire met the water” (300). As they hold hands and take in the landscape, this marks the beginning of them overcoming their respective fears of fire and water. Like Marcus coaxing Marjorie towards the fire, Marjorie does the same for Marcus when she enters the water. Gradually, Marcus goes into the water and feels a sense of peace that was not present at the beginning of his story. The collision of fire and water represents a healing of not only Marcus and Marjorie’s individual traumas, but also collective traumas that their families and ancestors carried. To reiterate, Gyasi’s novel calls attention to at least three symbols: fire, water, and the stone Maame leaves for her two daughters. We can see the ways fire impacted Effia’s descendants, and the ways water served as a backdrop for Esi’s descendants. Maame’s stone is a symbol that only one side of the family tree maintains as an heirloom. Like the way Effia and Esi received Maame’s stone, Marjorie bestows the stone necklace on Marcus. While they swam in the water, Marjorie takes her stone necklace and places it around Marcus’s neck and says, “Welcome home” (Gyasi 2016, 300). This final moment between Marcus and Marjorie is significant for two reasons. One reason is because when Yaw gave Marjorie the necklace, he explained how the necklace was part of their family history and she was not allowed to take the necklace off or give it away (Gyasi 2016, 267). For years, she takes heed of her father’s words and never takes off the necklace, that is, until after .

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she and Marcus visit Ghana. Another reason for this moment’s significance is because the reader knows this is the closest Esi’s descendants will get to being united with Effia’s descendants as a collective family. Marcus used to imagine a larger family spanning from a hut in Africa to a forest, a struggling farm, an apartment, and even to a classroom (Gyasi 2016, 290). Although he does not believe Willie when she tells him that he may have the gift of visions, his imagination of a large family references people such as Esi’s father, Abronoma, and James (Quey’s son). Overall, Marcus always believed that there was a larger family he never had a chance to know, and, although he does not know the magnitude of his family’s ancestry, the reader understands how connected both Effia’s and Esi’s descendants are. Despite the traumas many descendants faced when their mothers were forcibly removed from their lives, family is still a source of healing trauma. Even for Effia’s descendants who are at times complicit in the traumatic experiences associated with the slave trade, they still achieve a sense of healing in the aftermath of trauma. CONCLUSION Marcus and Marjorie’s physical and emotional journey in Ghana becomes the bookend to a century-spanning saga of generational trauma that began in the Cape Coast Castle. The Castle “looms like a curse over Gyasi’s sprawling epic of African families exploited by—and at times exploiting—the traffic in human chattel, tracing the 300-year-long repercussions of an original sin” (Zimmerman 2016). Gyasi has spoken of Ghanaians’ complicity with the British slave trade, not to give a country like the United States ammo to dilute its role in slavery, but to “consider the tangled chains of moral responsibility that hang on our history” (Charles 2016). In other words, Gyasi’s novel uses various instances in history, both in the United States and Africa, as a frame for discussing trauma. There are allusions and direct references to tribal wars among the Asante and Fante, the institution of slavery and violence enacted on enslaved men and women, the fallout from the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) and Jim Crow laws, and more. Furthermore, as the “generations unfold, each is powerless in the face of their history” (Evans 2017). This sentiment reiterates how some of Effia’s descendants face restricting cultural norms that impact the choices they make because of this powerlessness against history. Additionally, most of Esi’s descendants are rendered powerless due to various historical iterations of violence and disenfranchisement of African Americans. As this chapter argues, the mothers who start this novel—Maame, Effia, and Esi—are the primary catalyst for traumas across family lines in addition to the circumstances Effia’s descendants confronted in Ghana and

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Esi’s descendants navigated in America. The fire Maame sets in her escape becomes a bad omen that follows Effia’s family line. Effia’s contentious relationship with Baaba results in her being sold to a British governor who works at the Cape Coast Castle. Furthermore, her marriage to James Collins makes her privy to the horrors that lie in the Castle’s dungeons and how the Castle serves as a transition space for enslaved Africans as part of the slave trade. Lastly, Esi is trapped in the dungeon among other slaves who will be transported to the New World. Slavery ultimately disrupts motherhood for Esi and later her daughter, Ness. Gyasi contends that the “dominoes loosed by slavery, colonialism and two centuries of institutionalized racism” continue to fall and she wants readers to see “these things came from those things which came from those things” (Scott 2017). By using history as a frame for discussing trauma, Gyasi demonstrates how historical events should not be viewed in a vacuum but rather as a continuum that shows how the present is a part of history. NOTES 1. In this instance, “signify” means to indicate, which is different from the way Henry Louis Gates, Jr. uses the term in his book, The Signifying Monkey (1988). According to Gates, “Signifying” (also “Signifyin”) is a literary theory that refers to intertextual expression and wordplay in African American literature. Gates also considers Signifying as a “trope in which are subsumed several other rhetorical tropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony (the master tropes), and also hyperbole, litotes, and metalepsis” (52). Among the many rhetorical tropes mentioned, Gates also considers testifying as a Black rhetorical trope “subsumed under Signifyin(g)” (52), which is what I prioritize in discussing contemporary African American literature.

Chapter 2

What Becomes of Injustice? Shame and the Obligation of Remembrance and Love in Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage

A common thread within African American literature is the depiction of traumatic circumstances that are impactful on both the individual and collective levels. In addition to slave narratives written by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, authors such as Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and Octavia Butler address the collective trauma of slavery in their respective novels. Additionally, authors such as Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Ann Petry articulate not only traumas experienced on the individual level, but also the discouragement Black women feel as they navigate being wives, mothers, poor, or American to name a few. Traditionally, narratives about trauma unfold in a similar pattern: after much torment or self-destructive behavior, a protagonist finds relief by telling their story in a moment of emotional catharsis. This moment of telling provides a turning point not only for the protagonists, but also for the novel itself. To reiterate, although sharing one’s story or traumatic experience can provide the impetus for healing, we must remember that healing is an ongoing process and practice. Ultimately, trauma’s aftermath persists, even in literary works that provide a semblance of closure for the novel’s characters. Moreover, after a traumatic event, most people attempt to integrate their traumatic experience rather than try to forget what happened to them. Literature is one way of demonstrating how even fictional characters try to integrate traumatic experience into their present lives rather than forget the event. Tayari Jones’s novel An American Marriage (2018) addresses the plights of a Black married couple as they experience individual and collective trauma. Specifically, those traumas include mass incarceration, shame, and misogynoir (misogyny directed towards Black women primarily by Black 47

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men). Jones’s novel follows newlyweds Roy and Celestial, whose lives are in shambles after Roy is wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. While in prison, Roy not only watches life pass him by, but also learns that he is sharing a cell with his biological father, a man he never knew. Meanwhile, Celestial and her childhood friend Andre develop a romantic relationship during Roy’s incarceration. Celestial tries to balance loyalty with independence, as well as desire for another man versus societal and familial expectations for standing by her incarcerated husband. Although Roy is released after serving five years, he slowly realizes he can never have the life he once had. I argue that, for Celestial and Roy, shame is a direct result of traumatic experiences associated with mass incarceration and misogynoir, as well as being a tactic used by individuals who are outside of the traumatic experience to exacerbate trauma. Mass incarceration is intertwined with shame and can be observed specifically when analyzing Roy’s life before, during, and after incarceration. Additionally, misogynoir is linked to shame and will become apparent by discussing the effects misogynoir has on Celestial, along with the overlap misogynoir has with stereotypes towards Black women. Lastly, Roy and Celestial’s traumatic experience with police and the justice system demonstrates how shame occurred on a collective level and became the catalyst for the marriage’s pitfalls. Ultimately, Melissa Harris-Perry’s discussions about shame in the book Sister Citizen (2011) serve as a framework for discussing Jones’s novel. In Sister Citizen, Harris-Perry addresses shame in relation to Black women’s collective experiences throughout history in the United States. Although Harris-Perry’s text emphasizes Black women, I utilize her conception of shame to address Celestial and Roy’s traumatic circumstances, especially since both of their experiences are prevalent in Jones’s novel. When considering shame, Harris-Perry argues for three important elements: (1) social (experiences of shame that violate societal boundaries/expectations), (2) global (experiences of shame that causes an evaluation of the entire self), and (3) a psychological and physical urge to withdraw, submit, or appease others (104). Harris-Perry’s third element of shame is useful for establishing my own term, misplaced responsibility, which explains the effects of misogynoir on Celestial. Misplaced responsibility, which I will expand upon later in this chapter, is an individual’s perceived sense of responsibility and duty to someone else that emanates from guilt and/or shame. All three elements of shame are present across Roy and Celestial’s respective traumatic circumstances, whether that circumstance is mass incarceration or misogynoir.

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RAMIFICATIONS OF MASS INCARCERATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS One of the major sources of shame for Roy and Celestial is the Louisiana prison Roy is sentenced to and his gradual integration into life after prison. In Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Angela Davis describes the rampant increase in prisons built from 1852 to 1955 and, by extension, the magnitude of mass incarceration, and she uses the state of California as an example. California’s number of prisons rose from nine (between 1852 and 1955) to now thirty-three prisons, many of which emerged in the eighties and nineties (Davis 2003, 13). Davis poses the following question: “Why do prisons tend to make people think that their own rights and liberties are more secure than they would be if prisons did not exist” (14)? Davis explains why many California citizens consented to build so many prisons. One explanation is that “people wanted to believe that prisons would not only reduce crime, [but] they would also provide jobs and stimulate economic development in out-ofthe-way places” (15). In other words, the general public’s desire to alleviate their economic plights advanced the production of a system of mass incarceration as a potential means for improving their material conditions. In addition to improved financial prospects, the nation’s willingness to embrace “tough on crime” policies facilitated the increase in prisons and, by extension, led to the increase of Black and brown men and women behind bars. Another reason mass incarceration developed with society’s implicit consent is because many people take prisons for granted, despite prisons’ looming presence in our lives. We are “often afraid to face the realities [prisons] produce” (Davis 2003, 15). Of course, we acknowledge prisons exist and there are thousands of men and women in those prisons, but the realities inside the prisons are not tangible to the average person who has not experienced incarceration or even visited a prison. No one wants to go to prison and “it would be too agonizing to cope with the possibility that anyone, including ourselves, could become a prisoner” (Davis 2003, 15). Such mental distance from prison and imprisonment reaffirms how prisons function “ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers” (Davis 2003, 16). These “undesirables” are not merely criminals, but society’s collective imagination regards these undesirables as people of color (Davis 2003, 16). Ultimately, prisons remind us of our vulnerability in that incarceration can happen to anyone, especially to African Americans, which is a notion that recurs in Michelle Alexander’s notable work, The New Jim Crow.

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Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (2012) compels readers to reconsider the trajectory of controlling African American men dating back to slavery and Jim Crow to present-day mass incarceration. Today, the criminal justice system “ha[s] problems of racial bias, much in the same way that all major institutions in our society are plagued with problems associated with conscious and unconscious bias” (Alexander 2012, 3–4). In other words, racial bias within various institutions in the United States is part of the status quo and is another hurdle for nonwhite individuals to navigate. After leaving the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Alexander “came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow” (4). Moreover, Alexander argues that mass incarceration is the “new racial caste system” in America (11). In the book’s introduction, Alexander outlines how she uses the terms “racial caste” and “mass incarceration.” “Racial caste” is used to “denote a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom” (12), while “mass incarceration” refers to the criminal justice system and the “larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison” (13). Although many other racial groups fall into the category of a racial caste, experiences of African American men are the most crucial. One compelling point about incarcerated individuals is that even when they are released from prison, they are not removed from the penal system’s clutches. Rather, there are other methods the criminal justice system upholds to maintain a watchful eye on who is released. Another observation about what mass incarceration entails involves traumatic experiences, which include “unraveling community and family relationships, decimating networks of mutual support, and intensifying the shame and self-hate experienced by the current pariah caste” (17). All of these coincide with former prisoners’ efforts to reintegrate into society. Mass incarceration is yet another iteration of a racial caste system in America that dates to slavery. The systems of slavery and Jim Crow “appear to die” but are subsequently “reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time” (Alexander 2012, 16). Therefore, mass incarceration emerged “when it became clear that the old caste system was crumbling and a new one would have to take its place” (22). Even as white Americans engage in supposedly more benevolent relationships to Black people, there is still an unconscious effort to maintain a hegemonic relationship. Put another way, white America is intent on maintaining the hierarchy of their morality, but not the ugliness behind Jim Crow. Overall, this historical contextualization of racial caste systems corresponds with an understanding of collective, generational traumas. In other words, trauma is a transcendent historical phenomenon in the same way as mass incarceration.

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TRAUMA AND MASS INCARCERATION IN THREE STAGES One way we can examine the relationship between mass incarceration and trauma is with Alexander’s discussion of stages associated with mass incarceration. Alexander outlines and describes the stages associated with the system of mass incarceration: the roundup, the period of formal control, and the period of invisible punishment. I contend that these stages can aid in understanding not only the shame (internal or from outside forces) associated with incarceration, but also individual experiences with incarceration, as well as expand those stages to individuals who are caught in the crosshairs of their spouse, family member, or friend’s imprisonment. Those who are ensnared in mass incarceration’s extensive web suffer from trauma as a result. The individual can be someone who was once imprisoned or someone who knows an individual who was in prison. Mass incarceration’s reach goes beyond prison walls and affects individuals and families of those who are incarcerated. In dramatizing Roy’s plight in her novel An American Marriage, Jones highlights the decimating effects of mass incarceration on Black America and presents them in a fictional context. Specifically, Jones’s novel highlights what can happen to a relativity average couple who is at the wrong place at the wrong time. Collectively, Roy’s family, his wife, Celestial, and her family, and Celestial’s best friend and lover, Andre, are impacted by Roy’s wrongful imprisonment. Roy navigates what Alexander refers to as the “prison label,” a source of shame and stigma that follows him even after his release from prison. In considering the system of mass incarceration and trauma, I use Alexander’s established stages to frame my discussion of Roy’s trajectory from well-to-do businessman to wrongful incarceration to eventual release from prison. Alexander’s stages associated with mass incarceration adhere to the trajectory of Roy’s downfall, specifically of incarceration as a traumatic experience and the subsequent traumatic aftermath once Roy is released from prison. The first stage, the roundup, is when the police stop, interrogate, and search anyone that fits the police’s racial biases, “effectively guaranteeing that those who are swept into the system are primarily black and brown” (Alexander 2012, 185). The second stage, the period of formal control, starts with the conviction. While a prisoner is under formal control, “virtually every aspect of one’s life is regulated and monitored by the system, and any form of resistance or disobedience is subject to swift sanction” (186). Lastly, the third stage, the period of invisible punishment, takes place after an individual is released from prison. Moreover, this stage describes “the unique set of criminal sanctions that are imposed on individuals after they step outside the prison

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gates, a form of punishment that operates largely outside of public view and takes effect outside the traditional sentencing framework” (186). These punishments include denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits, resulting in various forms of discrimination perceived as legal (186). In all, Alexander’s three stages will demonstrate the basis for trauma on not only the incarcerated individual, but also on those who have a connection to whomever is incarcerated. Alexander’s work provides context regarding mass incarceration at the collective level, while Jones’s novel showcases mass incarceration’s impact on the individual level. Also, both works are useful in developing a discussion about the traumatic nature of mass incarceration on those immediately affected. To return to the stages, in Jones’s novel, Roy and his wife, Celestial, are part of a roundup while they are staying in a Louisiana hotel after visiting Roy’s parents. Celestial recalls how the police barged into the hotel room, pulled them from bed, and forced them into the parking lot (Jones 2018, 40). We learn later that Roy is accused of raping a woman that he helped at the hotel during the fifteen-minute reprieve he had with Celestial. Before Roy is wrongfully convicted, he is deemed a flight risk and is held without bond or bail. Also, Celestial remembers how Roy spent months behind bars before he was brought to trial (Jones 2018, 37). Ultimately, Roy is sentenced to twelve years in prison for a crime he did not commit, which subsequently leads to the second stage. The period of formal control becomes evident, though not always explicitly stated in Roy’s correspondence with Celestial and others. In his second letter to Celestial, Roy talks about his recent cell partner, Walter, whom he later learns is his biological father and how he looks out for Roy (Jones 2018, 43). By taking Roy under his wing, one can surmise that Roy had some protection from inmates that may have harmed him. Despite Roy’s openness in discussing Walter, Jones suggests in Roy’s reticence that there are awful aspects of prison life that he withholds from Celestial. He insists that Celestial not ask questions about what he is going through in prison and to take him at his word that no one should be subjected to spending years in prison (Jones 2018, 44). So, even though Roy is not telling Celestial much about the prison, we can read between the lines and conclude that his experiences are much worse than he is articulating. Roy already feels shame due to his incarceration, which is one of the reasons he spares Celestial from learning more painful details about his time in prison. After Roy is released, we learn more about what he experienced in prison. For instance, after Roy returns to his home in Atlanta, he reveals a scar that he received when an inmate stabbed him. He also tells Celestial that he accidentally killed a man, though he does not tell her the circumstances surrounding the man’s death (Jones 2018, 248). Again, shame is a culprit because Roy feels complicit in the inmate’s suicide.

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Roy exchanges a plastic bag for the man’s fruit, not knowing that the man would use the bag in his suicide. Omitting this detail with Celestial gives Roy a chance to minimize additional shame Celestial could have directed at him. Roy’s encounters in the prison are not only harrowing, but also a means to render him thoroughly controlled while held within the prison’s walls. Ultimately, the period of formal control exposes “the racial dimension of mass incarceration” (Alexander 2012, 6) when we consider that Black men are the most susceptible to the stages of the mass incarceration system that Alexander outlines. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and most of that incarcerated group consists of Black bodies (6). In another prison letter to Celestial, Roy notes the discrepancy between Black and brown bodies within the prison walls and the parallel with the student population at Morehouse College when he attended (Jones 2018, 44). Roy’s musing on the prisoner population is not unfounded. Alexander uses Chicago as an example of the lopsided population of prison inmates to university students. In 1999, “992 black men received a bachelor’s degree from Illinois state universities, while 7,000 black men were released from the state prison system the following year just for drug offenses” (Alexander 2012, 190). Education in America is supposed to guarantee some opportunities, but prison erases those opportunities. Young Black men who go to prison instead of college will encounter a racial caste system that leads to ostracism, discrimination, and trauma (190). Although these statistics are indicative of Chicago in the late 1990s–early 2000s, the system of mass incarceration continues to claim Black bodies. Despite affirmative action and increased opportunities for African Americans to enroll in universities and graduate schools, “in many respects African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and riots swept inner cities across America” (Alexander 2012, 246). This is because the government controls as many men as they “allow” to seek education and betterment at higher education institutions such as Morehouse. The third stage, which is the period of invisible punishment, coincides with Roy’s release and the internal conflict he faces as he tries to reclaim the life he had before with Celestial. Prior to his incarceration, Roy took pride in having a stable job, a large home with a yard, and a beautiful wife who empowers him (Jones 2018, 125). As Roy gradually discovers after his release, he cannot have the life that was taken from him five years earlier because his criminal record poses a significant hurdle that will inevitably limit his economic mobility. Put another way, the personal and materialistic aspects of his life cannot be made whole. Once the novel reaches its epilogue, the reader learns that Roy blossoms in his new barbershop business and relationship with Davina. Nevertheless, Celestial and Roy both experience periods of invisible punishment, specifically shame and the stigma of criminality. Celestial and

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Roy experience shame and the stigma of criminality despite Roy’s innocence because from a societal perspective, Roy’s innocence is irrelevant; he is yet another Black man with a criminal record who is redeemable only if he lives a life of obscurity after his release. SHAME IN THE FACE OF INVISIBLE PUNISHMENTS One instance of invisible punishment that overlaps with Harris-Perry’s conception of social shame is Celestial’s visits to the prison. One invisible punishment involves submitting to repeated cavity searches so she can visit Roy (Jones 2018, 83). Another invisible punishment comes from the judgment she perceives from other visitors and prison personnel. Celestial tells Andre how visiting Roy in prison is different for her as a woman. Because the prison personnel and visitors do not know her or the circumstances that led to Roy’s incarceration, false narratives about Celestial can permeate and subsequently lead to microaggressions where her intelligence and sensibility are challenged. No matter how Celestial conducts herself or presents herself, she is still perceived as a fool who should know better (Jones 2018, 157). She experiences social shame in her visits to the prison, when she is subjected to the same scrutiny as other women who visited the prison, regardless of her education, class, upbringing, and so on. The prison visits become a source of trauma for Celestial because of the social shame and outside perception of being a desperate woman who foolishly visits her imprisoned husband (157). In one letter to Roy, Celestial describes the county jail and how they were surrounded by many “desperate” women and children (Jones 2018, 49–50). What is fascinating in this remark is that Celestial does not regard herself as one of those “desperate” individuals despite how desolate Roy’s situation is. Celestial does not see any solidarity with the other women visitors, which speaks to the way she, as a middle-class woman, has inculcated all the dehumanizing ideas about criminality. In other words, Roy and Celestial believe that people like them who are the epitome of successful, middle-class, married, upstanding Black citizens surely cannot find themselves in a situation as going to prison for a crime they did not commit, and ultimately that systemic racism only happens to other people unlike them. However, after Roy’s mother, Olive, dies, Celestial expresses her frustration to Andre in terms that close the distance between her and other visitors when she says, “You know how I feel when I’m here? Black and desperate. You don’t know what it’s like to be standing in the line to get in to see him” (Jones 2018, 157). Ultimately, Celestial’s visiting Roy in prison reminds her that, due to her identity as a Black woman, she is not removed from the plight of Black women in

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America, regardless of her education and upbringing. Celestial indirectly conveys the inevitable sense of shame prison personnel invoke in her. The period of invisible punishment is further exacerbated when Roy is released from prison. However, before Roy is released, Roy’s biological father and cellmate, Walter, urges Roy to remember that Celestial has maintained her livelihood and place in the world and that his life is the one that was stalled. In other words, lives behind bars are essentially halted while people who are not jailed or imprisoned are still living their lives. Moreover, Walter’s advice runs counter to Roy’s thoughts and pining for the past. Roy cannot help but cling to nostalgic memories of his life before incarceration, which makes his transition from prison to the outside world starker and more painful. For example, Roy resents the fact that he cannot walk out of prison through the proverbial front doors despite spending five years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. Instead of receiving an apology or a gracious exit from prison, he gets his shoes and twenty-three dollars courtesy of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Jones 2018, 126). The unceremonious release from prison becomes yet another trauma wound that the prison system bestows upon him, much like the traumas associated with the stages Alexander describes regarding one’s incarceration. Roy’s invisible punishment persists internally with his memory and externally because of Celestial’s feelings towards him. On the one hand, his internal invisible punishment comes from the unspoken depths of pain he experiences because his nostalgia is clashing with the current reality. On the other hand, his external form of invisible punishment is conveyed through Celestial after she realizes Roy is in their home. Celestial thinks to herself, “I braced myself for what seemed fated from the moment I entered my own home and felt that it was no longer mine” (Jones 2018, 249). In other words, Celestial knows that her and Andre’s efforts to “do the noble thing” and pick up Roy from Louisiana have backfired. Celestial knows that she had convinced herself that “there were laws limiting responsibility” (283) and relegated Roy to an absent afterthought. Ultimately, Celestial no longer has the illusion that she does not have to directly answer for her choice to be with Andre. When confronted with the perceived inevitability of a sexual reunion with Roy, Celestial thinks to herself: Could I deny Roy, my husband, when he returned home from a battle older than his father and his father’s father? The answer is that I could not. Behind Roy in the narrow hallway, I understood that Andre had known this from the start. This is why he raced down the highway, to keep me from doing this thing that we all feared I would have to do. (Jones 2018, 246)

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Celestial does not believe she has the option of refusing sex, but she does put forth a stipulation that Roy cannot and does not want to agree to. Celestial repeats the need for them to use protection, which Roy did not use when he connected with Davina Hardrick, a woman who lives in Eloe and with whom he went to high school. For Roy, this exchange with Celestial forces him to recognize that his one-sided hope for reconciliation is simply that, one-sided. Also, this scene reaffirms Walter’s message for Roy that life has gone on without him, and by extension, so has Celestial. Once Roy realizes that his efforts at reconciliation are futile, he tells Celestial, “I could take it if I wanted to” (249). This utterance indicates a level of malice that Roy would inflict on Celestial if he were the kind of man that his conviction and prison sentence suggested he is, a criminal and a rapist. However, for Roy, the thought of taking advantage of Celestial sexually is indicative of his time in prison. He went from someone who maintained his innocence in the face of a rape conviction to someone who would entertain the thought of taking what he wants from a sexual standpoint. Or more broadly, the prison system wants to render him as an irredeemable criminal and inhuman. Roy momentarily internalizes the lack of humanity that is projected onto him as a former prisoner, which is the basis for the trauma he navigates in the aftermath of his traumatic experience in prison. Although Roy is no longer in prison, he is mentally and emotionally imprisoned. His experiences in prison negatively impact not only how he regards himself after his release, but also how people like Celestial and Andre regard him. Alexander explains, “People who have been convicted of felonies almost never truly re-enter the society they inhabited prior to their conviction” (186). As Roy walks away from the prison, he wonders if he is still recognizable despite his time in prison and thinks to himself, “Innocent or not, prison changes you, makes you into a convict” (Jones 2018, 127–28). Granted, people like Celestial and Andre recognize him as Roy; however, Celestial and Andre at various points remarked on aspects about Roy that have changed and how those changes in moments alter how they see Roy. For example, when Roy approaches Celestial on his first night in their Atlanta home, Celestial takes notice of Roy’s physicality, an aspect of his being that has changed while in prison. Roy is more than just a person who went to prison, as conveyed in his chapters; others read him as a more violent, menacing individual with a capacity for more violence. Roy inadvertently confirms these implications when he hits Celestial’s car repeatedly with a tennis racket and takes an axe to Old Hickey, a tree in their front yard. As Roy hits Celestial’s car, he sees how fearful she looks, and when he walks towards Celestial with the axe, he laughs and asks, “You think I’m dangerous now? Do you know me at all?” (Jones 2018, 269). This verbal exchange and implications of further violence reaffirm the idea that Roy’s

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invisible punishment results not only in his personal traumatization, but also in the traumatization of others who are caught in the crosshairs. When Andre returns from Louisiana and sees the spectacle with Roy and Celestial in their front yard, he defuses the situation long enough for him and Roy to have time alone. However, their conversation ceases when Roy strikes Andre from behind and they begin fighting in the yard. During their fight, Andre conveys the change in Roy from the man he knew in college, from his wedding day, from the earlier months of his prison sentence. Not only is Roy’s physical body significantly stronger than Andre’s, but Roy fights with such a brutality that he could potentially kill Andre by punching and kicking him. In other words, Roy is fighting in a way that makes him appear unfazed by the possibility of winding up in prison again or causing irreparable harm to someone he knows. Andre considers the depravity behind Roy’s actions and how this fight feels like a matter of life and death. At one point, Andre wishes he was a type of man who, like Roy, could hold his own in a fight of this magnitude and have a bit of malice in him (Jones 2018, 277). During the fight, Andre recalls his father’s promise of violence that Roy would inflict, and Andre knows that “someone was going to pay for what happened to Roy, just as Roy paid for what happened to that woman” (278). While the promise of violence acts as a means of foreshadowing the fight between Andre and Roy, the fight is yet another implication of the invisible punishment Roy has and continues to sustain after his release. The effect of Roy’s incarceration turns him into the criminal threat that people in that Louisiana courtroom believed him to be. Returning to Harris-Perry’s discussions of shame, Roy also exhibits global shame, which involves an evaluation of the entire self. For instance, in Roy’s letter to Celestial’s father, Franklin, Roy laments how he was on the trajectory of having the life he wanted before he was wrongly imprisoned. Also, he tells Franklin, “With Celestial, I was punching above my weight” (Jones 2018, 69). These talking points work to showcase the difference between class and social status with Roy and Celestial. Roy comes from a small town in Louisiana and moves to Atlanta for college and to seek a more affluent, successful life. Even Celestial’s mother, Gloria, cautions Celestial before she and Roy married that she “would constantly have to reassure [Roy] that [they] were, in fact, ‘equally yoked’” (Jones 2018, 30). In other words, Roy’s insecurity about his class, social status, and finances fuels his desire for affluence and upward mobility. Ultimately, Roy’s feelings of inadequacy regarding Celestial’s family are one aspect of shame that affects Roy’s sense of self. Roy also feels global shame due to being in prison and losing everything that he had before. For example, when Roy goes to Davina’s house, he feels taken care of because Davina not only cooked dinner for him and let him into her home, but also healed him in a physical way. At one point, Roy wonders, “How can you explain to a woman that you want to fuck her like a human

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being?” (Jones 2018, 171). This desire to be intimate with a woman not as a man out of prison, but as a human being and who he used to be, corresponds with shame he feels now that he is out of prison. The time Roy spent in prison depleted his self-worth, rendered him nearly penniless, and exacerbated the dissolution of his marriage. Although he is happy to have visitors at the prison, he still feels humiliated for all of them to see him in such a desolate state, especially Celestial. Overall, much of Roy’s global shame is rooted in how he thinks others perceive him, which becomes another trauma inflicted by the prison system. The feelings of shame Roy deals with after he is released from prison also impact Celestial, specifically with the third aspect of shame, which is a psychological and physical urge to withdraw, submit, or appease others. After what becomes the last visit Celestial makes to see Roy in prison, Roy insinuates that Celestial seems to feel obligated to visit him and notices that her visits are becoming far less frequent (Jones 2018, 81). When Celestial and Andre are in a bar in Eloe, she talks to Andre about Roy’s accusing her of continuing to visit him out of duty and obligation. Celestial does not deny that her visits to the prison have become not only rooted in obligation to Roy, but also created resentment towards Roy. Visiting Roy takes away from the attention she gives to her business and dollmaking and compels her to spend time with her in-laws, the same people who further iterate the responsibility and duty she has to Roy as his wife. For example, after Olive dies, Big Roy tells Celestial that she is now responsible for taking the initiative to visit Roy in prison because he believes that Roy needs a woman to take care of him (Jones 2018, 151), which was Olive’s role before she died. After Roy is released from prison and returns to his and Celestial’s home in Atlanta, he is under the impression that Celestial will do what Davina did for him: to essentially love him back to life and treat him like a human again. Staying with the shame aspect, Roy’s desire to feel restored by the woman in his life places an immense level of pressure on Celestial, especially because she potentially jeopardizes her relationship with Andre. Although Andre urges Celestial to not fall victim to the guilt Roy heaps upon her, Celestial thinks to herself, “Who could deny that I was the only one who could mend him, if he could be healed at all? Women’s work is never easy, never clean” (Jones 2018, 285). In other words, she believes that to heal Roy, she makes self-sacrificing gestures at the expense of her own happiness. She takes the role upon herself and returns to Roy. Nevertheless, the reunion between Celestial and Roy is marred with emotional pain that manifests in Roy’s rejecting Celestial’s efforts at physical intimacy. For instance, from Roy’s point of view, Celestial is in their wedding bed dressed in a nightie and lying near him, but when she kisses him,

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Roy can sense Celestial’s bodily rejection. For example, Celestial’s muscles tense under his touch, a tell-tale sign of discomfort (Jones 2018, 298). Although Celestial urges Roy to allow her to make amends, her body language and actions run counter to her words. The shame in this scene is twofold: Celestial feels a “miserable willingness” (299) to be intimate with her husband because of everything he has gone through and for what he has lost, and Roy is shamed by the indirect realizations that this last act on Celestial’s part to be intimate with him and “start over” is not going to save their marriage. Ultimately, Celestial experiences this third aspect of shame in the later scenes of the novel because she seeks to appease and submit to Roy, while also withdrawing from Andre, because she wants to uphold her spousal and gendered obligations to restore and take care of Roy. Celestial’s navigation of the elements of shame outlined by Harris-Perry are influenced by misogynoir. THE INFLUENCE OF MISOGYNOIR AND STEREOTYPES Coined in 2010 by Moya Bailey,1 a queer Black Feminist scholar, misogynoir is defined as misogyny directed towards Black women where the influence of race and gender prejudices are inextricable. As with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, misogynoir observes how race and gender are experienced simultaneously and emphasizes how Black men treat Black women (Mwanza 2018). Misogynoir “recognizes the tendency of hip-hop culture to present black women as either hyper-sexualized jezebels or easy to manipulate and abuse, mirroring society’s view of black women in general” (Mwanza 2018) In addition to hip-hop culture, other examples of misogynoir include doctors treating Black women differently because they are “perceived as having a higher pain threshold,” depicting Black women as “twerk machines or sex goddesses with no other value than their bodies,” and portraying limitations in Black women’s displays of emotion, distress, or pain (Mwanza 2018). These societal examples of misogynoir highlight yet another crooked room that Black women find themselves navigating.2 Another way we can see misogynoir and marginalization against Celestial and Black women overall is through pervasive tropes or stereotypes. From “the moment the first black woman set foot on American shores, sexist and racist stereotypes were laid across her back” as a “counterbalance to the identities of middle-class and wealthy white women” (Harris 2015, 3). The stereotypes—Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel—were central to “maintaining the subordination of black women during slavery” (3). Mammy is perceived as an asexual, motherly woman who is merely devoted to caring for white families and charges. Also, the Mammy figure “has no personal desires and is not

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herself desirable” (4). Roy expected Celestial to wait for him to be released from prison and, by extension, put her romantic and sexual desire on hold. Then, there’s the Sapphire stereotype, sometimes referred to as the Angry Black Woman. The Sapphire is seen as not knowing a “woman’s (submissive) place and is therefore emasculating and repellent to men” (5). Celestial’s perseverance in maintaining her dollmaking business without Roy becomes a source of frustration for him. Celestial is no longer beholden to Roy’s support, whether emotional or financial. Moreover, the Sapphire stereotype suggests that a Black woman’s anger is “something that can be ignored” (Boom 2015) or is otherwise unjustified and irrational. Lastly, the Jezebel stereotype during slavery “positioned black women as incapable of chastity in a society that demanded the innocence of women” and was used to justify using Black women to “breed new human property” (Harris 2015, 5). Today, Jezebel is the “embodiment of deviant black female sexuality” (5). Additionally, white womanhood is seen as a signifier of innocence, while African American womanhood is a “signifier of guilt” (Boom 2015). This guilt extends to instances of diminishing responsibility on abusers and rapists towards Black women and girls. Some of the Black men in Celestial’s life regard her as a Jezebel because of her infidelity and willingness to wear another man’s ring while married to Roy. Overall, the Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel stereotypes followed Black women beyond slavery and into modern-day experiences. Another pervasive stereotype against African American women that she refers to is “the Matriarch.” According to Harris, the Matriarch is a “motherly figure who has overstepped her place and become the head of a black family” (6). Moreover, the Matriarch is seen as not “perform[ing] her womanly domestic duty of being subordinate to a man,” which “upsets the stability of the family, her community, and the fabric of America, leading to crime, poverty, confusion of gender roles, and moral decay” (6). Although Celestial is not a mother, she viscerally expresses contempt at the idea of submitting to Roy, which is not lost on Roy or the other men in her life. Also, once Roy is incarcerated, Celestial becomes the head of household by default. The Matriarch has overlaps with both Sapphire and Jezebel because these stereotypes suggest a level of dominance in Black women that makes them less feminine than their white counterparts. Ultimately, the stereotypes mentioned thus far (Mammy, Sapphire, Jezebel, and the Matriarch) are regarded as explicitly negative and become a source of trauma that Black women negotiate on a consistent basis. However, there is one more stereotype: the Strong Black Woman. On the surface, the Strong Black Woman stereotype is a “cultural ideal” seen as a positive (Jerald et al. 2017, 488). The Strong Black Woman “is expected to prioritize others’ needs over her own, resist asking for help, exude strength despite adversities, and

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suppress her emotions” (Jerald et al. 2017, 488). However, a problem that stems from the Strong Black Woman stereotype is that many Black women are unwilling to seek help for mental health issues and are less likely to be believed even if that help is sought, which exacerbates traumas inflicted on Black women. The Strong Black Woman trope stems from the ways Black women absorb the brunt of physical and emotional labor on behalf of others, such as their families. Collectively, all the stereotypes discussed serve the purpose of prescribing roles for Black women that serve other people’s interests (Harris-Perry 2011, 96), namely white men and women, as well as Black men, and advancing misogynoir. Jones’s An American Marriage presents Celestial, who seemingly does not embody any of the stereotypes commonly associated with misogynoir. Rather, she exudes independence and assertiveness. For example, while Roy is in prison, she proceeds to get her dollmaking business off the ground and finds success. Before Roy finds out about the Ebony magazine article about Celestial winning a contest, Celestial writes to Roy, “Things are really looking up for my career. I hate using that word, career. It always feels like the word bitch is hiding out between the letters” (Jones 2018, 60). In this letter, Celestial indirectly highlights not only her independence, but also a common trait of misogynoir when Black men criticize Black women who pursue careers or a life that deviates from submissiveness and serving her husband. When Roy reads the Ebony article, his letter reads like an admonishment of Celestial and her artwork. His letter serves as a feeble attempt at policing his wife while behind bars because she is finding success without his direct influence. When Roy insinuates how Celestial neglects to mention him as her inspiration for the doll, Celestial counters with “Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted to have my moment to be an artist, not the prisoner’s wife” (Jones 2018, 67). Instead of apologizing profusely and minimizing her own accomplishments, she explains her decisions and reestablishes herself as an independent woman capable of garnering her own success, with or without Roy. However, after Roy goes to prison, Celestial begins to receive pushback from her family and in-laws in their attempt to indirectly diminish her independent spirit. Her father and father-in-law are of the mindset that Celestial needs to be responsible for Roy as his wife, to welcome him home and provide the nurturing he needs as a newly free man. In other words, although Celestial and Andre are in love, those feelings should be redirected towards Roy because he is a wrongfully incarcerated Black man. Olive and Big Roy also demand a level of strength from Celestial, especially while Roy is in prison. Roy ultimately expected Celestial to wait for him and be there to restore him to the man he was before he was incarcerated. Ironically, many of the people close to Celestial treat her like the dolls she makes—property that lies in wait until called upon by someone for use. Together, Celestial’s

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father, her in-laws, and Roy force their desire for her to wait for Roy and be a “good wife.” CELESTIAL’S CROOKED ROOM OF MISPLACED RESPONSIBILITY While Jones’s novel captures the impact of incarceration for Roy, Celestial, and their respective families, her novel also highlights the instances Celestial experiences misogynoir from Roy and her father, Franklin Davenport. Moreover, additional representations of misogynoir come through the behaviors and attitudes exhibited by Big Roy and Roy’s mother, Olive. The representations of misogynoir negatively affect Celestial throughout the novel, which results in her experiencing misplaced responsibility. This idea of misplaced responsibility goes back to everyone’s desire for Celestial to be responsible for Roy’s healing and restoration while he is incarcerated and after his release. Everyone from her father to her in-laws is asking Celestial to take care of Roy as though he is not a grown man capable of caring for himself. Celestial should not be seen as inherently or solely responsible for Roy. Misplaced responsibility is the effect of Celestial’s repeatedly navigating misogynoir. However, she will inevitably attempt to take responsibility for Roy after he returns from prison, despite the fact she is engaged to another man and is no longer in love with Roy. Ultimately, misplaced responsibility gets bestowed upon Celestial by Roy, Franklin, Big Roy, and Olive, because of her role as a woman and a wife. One of the earliest pivotal moments between Celestial and Roy occurs in their prison correspondence after Celestial’s abortion. This traumatic revelation highlights social shame that has ramifications for Celestial’s relationship with Roy. While Roy is incarcerated, Celestial writes to him about not only aborting their child, but also an abortion she had when she was a college freshman at Howard University. Both abortions are a source of social shame and trauma for Celestial. When articulating the aftermath of the abortion of their child, Celestial provides a parallel between not knowing what goes through one’s mind when having an abortion and not knowing what it is like to be in prison (Jones 2018, 50). Here, Celestial evokes patriarchal assumptions about middle-class women’s lives, which is that if a woman is married and has the financial means to care for a child, then that woman should proceed with having children. Moreover, Celestial points out what is perhaps a common way society thinks regarding women and procreation: “If you’re a grown woman and you have more than ten dollars in the bank, nobody understands why you can’t have a baby” (Jones 2018, 51), hence Celestial’s inadvertent violation of societal expectations due to having not one, but two

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abortions. The letter that details Celestial’s first abortion acts as a follow-up and closure to any further discussion about her rationale for proceeding with the abortion. When she was eighteen, Celestial had an affair with a married professor at the university. After she goes through with the abortion and the professor ends their affair, Celestial has a breakdown and returns home to Atlanta. Not only does she bear the shame of being involved with a married man and conceiving his child, but she also has trauma from the abortion and the affair ending. Although Celestial heals from the experience through her budding passion for sewing dolls, she navigates aspects of social shame because of her actions. Furthermore, Celestial’s recent abortion is a catalyst for instances of misogynoir she experiences at Roy’s hands. We are introduced to the state of Roy and Celestial’s marriage from Roy’s point of view. Although they were married for over a year, there are signs that their marriage has flaws. For instance, when Roy recalls how, on their anniversary, Celestial discovered a woman’s phone number and hotel room number on Roy’s business card, he talked his way out of trouble with Celestial by explaining that he comes home to her every night (Jones 2018, 10). Roy’s proclivity for collecting women’s phone numbers, especially as a married man, is a form of misogynoir. Roy has no problem provoking Celestial’s anger or frustration with his infidelity because her feelings make him think that he has influence or power over her reactions. Also, Roy reads her as Sapphire, or the Angry Black Woman, when he gets confronted about his behaviors. Ironically, towards the end of the novel when he and Celestial are spending Christmas Day together, Roy commits another act of misogynoir by telling Celestial about his sexual encounter with Davina. Telling Celestial about this makes him remember the way he and Celestial reconciled on their one-year anniversary and the passion that invoked in him. Roy swears that he does not want to hurt Celestial, “but I did need to know if I could” (Jones 2018, 297). In other words, Roy wants to confirm that he still maintains a level of power over Celestial’s emotions, especially when it comes to his sexual indiscretions. The misogynoir in Roy’s thinking stems from a desire to dominate and control Celestial. Even when Roy believes he has won Celestial back, he still engages in misogynoir that is reminiscent of how he treated her before he went to prison. Again, he likes knowing that he can manipulate or control Celestial’s emotions. To go along with Roy’s willingness to provoke Celestial to anger with his philandering ways, Roy’s penchant for collecting other women’s phone numbers adds fuel to Celestial’s insinuations that Roy wants to sabotage their marriage. Moreover, after Roy tells Celestial that Big Roy is not his biological father, her reaction is far from what Roy expected. For Celestial, Roy’s paternity revelation is yet another instance of deception on Roy’s part, which creates tension in their relationship. Celestial notes other deceptive acts Roy

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has committed, such as not consistently wearing his wedding ring and having women’s phone numbers in his wallet (Jones 2018, 24). In other words, they repeatedly move past one indiscretion after another. Celestial insinuates that Roy is sabotaging their marriage and any future of starting a family, which leads them to argue. Throughout the argument, Celestial tells Roy not to twist her words around, yet Roy does so anyway because he seeks reassurance from her. However, when Roy does not get the reassurance he craves, and when Celestial becomes visibly angry with him for not telling her the truth, he proceeds to accuse her of misrepresenting his mother and of wanting a way out of their marriage or starting a family. Just as Roy does when Celestial confronts him about infidelity, Roy reads her as Sapphire because she expresses her anger or frustration with Roy when she finds his behaviors or words untrustworthy. He also represents Celestial as the Sapphire stereotype to alleviate his own insecurity about his family lineage. Or, more broadly, Roy reads every instance Celestial challenges him as a deficiency in her character. Roy’s response to the climactic “Dear John” letter Celestial writes not only spells the end for their marriage, but also further demonstrates misogynoir and disparagement of Celestial’s character. Celestial declares to Roy that she cannot continue in her role of being his wife despite trying her best to do so for three years of his sentence (Jones 2018, 82). Moreover, she considers time as the cause for the marriage’s demise. Roy, of course, does not take her letter well. He dismisses her by labeling her as an “empowered woman” who will “leave a brother when he’s down” (83). However, he does not stop here. He calls attention to the various women that spend decades visiting their partner in prison and that even his mother, Olive, visited every week before her death (83). Lastly, Roy poses a question: “What is it that makes you think that you’re so much better than all of them?” (83). There is much to unpack from Roy’s letter to Celestial and to demonstrate how misogynoir is laced through much of his letter. First, when Roy dismissively calls her an “empowered woman,” he is suggesting that her education and upbringing are deterrents for her to remain loyal to him during his incarceration. Second, when he accuses her of being the kind of person who would leave him at his worst, this works as a means of shaming Celestial. Lastly, by calling attention to countless (presumably) Black women and to the memory of his late mother who came to visit their loved ones in prison, Roy not only compares her to other women, but also implies that Celestial believes she is above doing the same for him. For Roy, Celestial fails to meet a standard of idealized African American womanhood that these other women embodied, specifically standing by a Black man regardless of the circumstances. All these points from Roy’s letter are indicative of misogynoir because he uses Celestial’s gender to undercut her feelings and to shame her for not being who he wants her to be—loyal,

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resilient, strong (in serving him), and perhaps a woman who evokes his own mother’s qualities. In Roy and Celestial’s correspondence after receiving the “Dear John” letter, he writes, “Dear Celestial, I am innocent,” to which Celestial replies, “Dear Roy, I am innocent, too” (84). These brief letters capture a glimpse of the trauma they both carry on account of the Louisiana prison system. While incarcerated, Roy loses Celestial, his job, his home, a chance to say goodbye to Olive, and the idyllic life he envisioned. However, while Roy is in prison, Celestial receives critical acclaim for her art, and she chooses to be with Andre. Her decision to pursue a relationship, and eventual engagement, causes tension with not only Roy, but also her father, Franklin. On the way to Celestial’s parents’ home for Thanksgiving dinner, Andre recalls the day he and Celestial learned that Roy had been released from prison. Andre articulates how Celestial did not belong to him, and not just because she was Roy’s wife. He remarks on Celestial’s independent nature, and how she is not property for any man, including himself (Jones 2018, 96). He conveys the same sentiment about Celestial not being anyone’s property to Roy before their fight when he says, “The bottom line is that she doesn’t belong to you. She never belonged to you” (Jones 2018, 276). Moreover, the fact that she is married to Roy is only a matter of circumstance to Andre. In other words, Andre sees Roy as inconsequential when thinking about Celestial’s status as a married woman. The ring is a symbol of marriage, not of Celestial as Roy’s property or territory as his wife. Andre remarks on how Celestial’s father believes Andre should let Celestial serve as a “living monument to Roy’s struggle” (Jones 2018, 96). Although Andre does not doubt Roy’s innocence, he makes no excuses for his romantic feelings towards Celestial. Furthermore, the explanation about Franklin’s disappointment highlights the notion of Celestial’s belonging to Roy and that Andre has no business in pursuing anything romantic with her. Ultimately, Franklin does not mince words with Celestial, although the dialogue seems directed more at Andre. Franklin’s words bring Celestial’s identity as a wife to an incarcerated Black man to the forefront: “He is going to see a wife who wouldn’t keep her legs closed and a so-called friend who doesn’t know what it is to be a man, let alone a black man” (Jones 2018, 121). Not only is Franklin accusing Andre of not being a man or a good friend to Roy, but he also implies that Celestial’s actions with Andre make her less of a woman and wife. While Franklin does not say the word outright, he depicts Celestial as a Jezebel not only because he sees Celestial and Andre’s relationship as strictly sexual convenience, but also because Celestial is not remaining faithful to her husband. Even after Andre, Gloria, and Uncle Banks come to Celestial’s defense, Franklin doubles down on his judgment towards Andre and Celestial when he says that she should have taken advantage of earlier opportunities to pursue a relationship with Andre instead of subjecting Roy to yet another

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injustice on top of being wrongfully incarcerated (122). Franklin distills Andre and Celestial’s relationship to mere sexual convenience and attempts to guilt Celestial into maintaining her union to Roy, especially now that he is released from prison. Within this exchange, the shame is threefold: for Andre, Franklin, and Celestial. Andre’s manhood and loyalty are questioned. Franklin wants Celestial to be who he and Gloria raised her to be, though this wish goes against how Celestial approaches life and relationships. Celestial is indicted by her father because of her choice to be with Andre, and her father challenges her bodily autonomy by bringing up her sexual relations. Despite Celestial’s emotionally vulnerable conversation with Andre at Olive’s wake about how she had not so much as thought or touched another man while Roy has been incarcerated (Jones 2018, 153), the global shame is still apparent because her desire to be with Andre runs counter to perceived responsibility and duty to Roy as his wife. Franklin is not the only parental figure in Celestial’s life that engages in misogynoir and stereotyping to guilt Celestial into making choices that run counter to her own desires. Big Roy and Olive push the Strong Black Woman stereotype on Celestial in seemingly innocent ways as a reflection of Big Roy and Olive’s adherence to traditional gender or marriage norms. After Olive’s funeral, Big Roy, Celestial, and Andre go to Olive’s burial place. Before Big Roy resolves to bury Olive on his own, he beckons Celestial to him. Andre notices Big Roy direct the following remarks to Celestial regarding her relationship to Roy. Big Roy explains how Olive visited Roy in prison until she succumbed to illness and that Celestial needs to pick up where Olive left off. While he is willing to do whatever he can to help Roy, he still passes the bulk of the healing work onto Celestial (Jones 2018, 151). Although Celestial acknowledges her understanding, Big Roy does not fully believe that she is capable of such actions. Still, Big Roy indirectly places Celestial on the same pedestal as his late wife, Olive. He wants Celestial to take on the responsibility of looking after Roy while he is incarcerated and, by extension, after his release from prison. Olive causes Celestial’s experiences with global shame, particularly in Celestial’s memories. After Olive’s wake, Celestial and Andre are in a bar drinking and Celestial recalls Olive slapping her because of how long it took Celestial to return to Eloe and visit Roy. Celestial recalls when Olive says, “Listen here, little girl, if I don’t get to cry, nobody cries. I have suffered more just this morning than you have in your whole life” (Jones 2018, 156). Moreover, Celestial recalls the physical sting of Olive’s slap even during the funeral (156). Celestial experiences shame at Olive’s hands before and after Olive’s death. Even after Andre and Roy’s physical altercation on Christmas Eve, Celestial remembers the feeling of Olive slapping her face years ago (Jones 2018, 288). For Celestial, she has yet another reminder of

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Olive’s presence, even in death, and how the sensation of fire on her cheek invokes shame. Whenever Celestial remembers this moment between herself and Olive, she proceeds to engage in introspection. For example, after Olive’s funeral, Celestial admits that she is tired of everything that has to do with Eloe, her in-laws, and the prison (Jones 2018, 156). The introspection corresponds with global shame because Celestial considers what keeps her attached to Roy, despite her feelings for Andre and her unwillingness to continue being Roy’s wife. Like Big Roy, Olive indirectly minimizes Celestial’s life experiences due to her youth and perceived lack of suffering. To Olive especially, Celestial is a privileged woman who did not have to subject herself to working as a hotel maid or live in a lower, working-class environment. In other words, in Olive’s eyes, Celestial does not understand what it means to suffer or sacrifice like she once had to. Therefore, Olive takes it upon herself to physically harm Celestial to make her into the Strong Black Woman Olive sees herself as for her own family. However, what makes Olive’s remark to Celestial about her not being able to cry ironic is that Olive herself is a victim of the Strong Black Woman trope. At some point in Olive’s life, she was told not to cry or to absorb any physical or emotional labor. Olive’s statement about not having a moment to cry is as much an indictment of Celestial as it is for herself, especially while Roy is in prison. Although the “Strong Black Woman” trope may be the least incendiary of all the tropes, Big Roy and Olive’s efforts are still problematic because they force Celestial into a box and an identity that is not inherently hers, which is a kind of violent act. Instead of molding Celestial into the Strong Black Woman figure they wanted her to be, they facilitated Celestial’s eventual feelings of misplaced responsibility towards Roy. When Roy goes back to the Atlanta home he shared with Celestial, she is surprised and dismayed to see him because Andre went to Louisiana with the intent of retrieving Roy without her. Although Celestial does not push Roy away or deny his steady, physical advances on her, she appears resigned in the face of what she thinks is inevitable: a sexual encounter between her and Roy. Once she and Roy are alone and he guides them to their bedroom, Celestial thinks, “A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way” (Jones 2018, 246). In other words, her choice as a woman to not be intimate with a man is arbitrary and not her privilege to take away. Andre and Celestial did not want her to wind up in the precarious situation in which she finds herself, which is feeling obligated to welcome Roy home with sex. In other words, Celestial does not want to restore Roy physically as Davina did when Roy was released from prison. However, Celestial knows that she must confront Roy without Andre and, albeit begrudgingly, accept that Roy wants to salvage their marriage.

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After Roy and Andre’s fight, Roy begins to realize that life has moved on without him. In the meantime, Celestial grapples with her role in helping Roy heal. Celestial acknowledges an unspoken fate for many Black women to take on significant emotional labor for the sake of the people they love, especially Black men. Although Celestial knows her and Roy’s marriage is over, she still believes that she is responsible for Roy’s healing both physically and mentally. Celestial attempts to convey her sense of womanly duty towards Roy to Andre, but Andre tells her to leave if that is what she wants to do (Jones 2018, 288). Despite Andre’s words, he seems to understand Celestial’s plight and her misplaced sense of responsibility to Roy. Ultimately, Andre does not stop her from returning to Roy. After Celestial returns to Roy, we get the events from Christmas Day filtered through Roy. When Celestial makes breakfast, Roy notices how hard Celestial is trying to create a façade of holiday cheer, normalcy, and married bliss, which means he can glean Celestial’s efforts at healing him (292). Furthermore, Roy recognizes that Celestial is unhappy though she insists that she wants to love him and make things right (298). Roy knows that Celestial is trying her best to take responsibility for his healing. Therefore, he assures her that he will not allow her to continue this form of healing even if that is what she thinks or feels she should do, thereby preventing Celestial from fulfilling a narrative of misplaced responsibility (300). Despite everyone’s efforts to force Celestial into identities rooted in misogynoir, and subsequent efforts to be responsible for Roy after his release from prison, Celestial continues her relationship with Andre. She asserts her own emotional and sexual independence from others’ expectations. Her relationship with her father is fractured. Her relationship with Roy’s parents is nonexistent. Lastly, Roy and Celestial reach a state of peace between one another and go their separate ways with their significant others. Although Celestial navigates the crooked room that tropes such as Sapphire, Jezebel, and the Strong Black Woman can evoke, the misogynoir coming from Roy, her father, and Roy’s parents yields the misplaced responsibility she later experiences towards Roy. INTERSECTIONS OF COLLECTIVE SHAME AND TRAUMA Celestial’s circumstances as a married woman who loses her husband to wrongful incarceration for five years is a testament to a trauma that many Black women experience today. For example, a wife’s ability to cope (which they define as adaptation to stress) with her husband’s incarceration is a key indicator of “whether or not the relationship can survive the incarceration” (Carlson and Cervera 1991, 279). Much of the husband’s and wife’s

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respective families’ ability to cope with crisis and losing their loved one to incarceration rests on the wife. According to Carlson and Cervera, wives cope with their husband’s incarceration by using a “variety of strategies including internal reorganization and role modification, acquisition and use of social support, and maintenance of family ties to imprisoned loved ones” (280). In Celestial’s case, she acknowledges that coming home to an empty house is overwhelming and, at times, unnerving (Jones 2018, 41). Roy’s loss is initially so palpable that Celestial fills the silence with talking and singing (41), so much so that Celestial tells Roy how she is spending more time with her mother, Gloria, and that their quality time together is like a close friendship (Jones 2018, 62). Celestial receives social support from her mother (and Andre), and she must internally reorient herself in a way that becomes productive towards her career and herself. As for maintaining ties to imprisoned loved ones, Celestial’s visits became infrequent around the third year of Roy’s time in prison. Carlson and Cervera note that “because correctional facilities tend to be located in rural areas, far from the cities where most families of prisoners live, visits tend to be expensive and infrequent” (280). This is the case for Celestial, who must drive from Atlanta to Louisiana to visit Roy. Although Celestial and Roy write letters to one another, along with rare visits to the prison, these communication methods are limited and cannot overcome time and distance both physically and metaphorically for Celestial and Roy. The way an inmate’s family responds to incarceration is “determined largely” by the wife’s ability to cope, which calls attention to the inaccurate view that Black women are called upon to embody the Strong Black Woman stereotype for the sake of their family. Unfortunately, life does not cease for those who are free, even when their loved one is behind bars. Black women are usually tasked with being the backbone to their families in the face of adversity. Ultimately, African American women’s efforts of emotional labor can be a source of trauma like mass incarceration. Black women’s emotional labor and mass incarceration are pervasive forces within the Black community and have negative consequences for individuals like Celestial and Roy who are unwittingly caught in the crosshairs. Not only do Roy and Celestial experience various aspects of shame individually, but there are also moments when those experiences intertwine. In the inciting incident that begins Roy and Celestial’s tragic arc, the police remove them from their hotel room and force them to lay compliantly on the ground like burial plots for others to bear witness (Jones 2018, 40). This pivotal collective traumatic experience yields both social and global shame for them. We learn in Celestial’s chapter after Roy is sentenced to twelve years in prison that not only do the officers force Roy and Celestial from the hotel room into the parking lot, but also Celestial carries a scar under her chin from when an officer pushed her to the ground.

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The global shame stemming from this experience is multifaceted. This young, African American married couple essentially has it all, and their night in a Louisiana hotel alters the course of their budding marriage forever. Despite whom Celestial and Roy are before that night, the police still treat them like common criminals as they are forced from their room and laid out publicly in a parking lot. Even if there is no mention of witnesses, the shame Roy and Celestial experience is evident when they recall the evening during Roy’s trial because, in the end, no one on the jury believes Roy is innocent and Celestial’s shame is rooted in her perceived failing to prove Roy’s innocence. However, the odds are stacked against Roy from the beginning of the trial because he is a Black man accused of rape, appearing before a court in Louisiana. Moreover, the experience in this Louisiana courtroom breaks Celestial of her naivete about the legal system and renders her helpless to change Roy’s fate. While Roy is in prison, Celestial continues her dollmaking business and ends up winning a contest with a doll she created in Roy’s image and dressed in blue prison uniform (Jones 2018, 64). However, when she is interviewed onstage about the inspiration behind the doll, she does not mention Roy at all. Roy is angered by the article and accuses Celestial of being ashamed of him and his current predicament. Celestial tries to explain to Roy why she omitted him from the interview. Ultimately, if she mentions Roy’s incarceration, her work and the message behind her work would be overshadowed by the fact that Roy is incarcerated, despite his innocence (66). Celestial does not give any credence to Roy’s suggestion that she is ashamed of him. However, the sentiment she conveys is that if she were to talk about him being in prison, this knowledge downplays what she wants to do with the dolls. Roy experiences global shame and counters that shame by highlighting how Celestial still has a husband striving for upward mobility even though he is not in conventional attire or in a more conventional workforce and that there is no need for Celestial to feel ashamed of him (66). Initially, Roy does not understand Celestial’s perspective regarding the article and her omission of his imprisonment. However, Roy’s cellmate (and biological father), Walter, articulates what Roy sums up as Celestial not wanting to sully her own mobility in her career goals by having her work associated with Roy’s incarceration and, by extension, the systemic racism that leads to many African Americans behind bars (67). In other words, Roy gradually comes to understand the social shame Celestial could have faced if she did bring up his imprisonment.

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CONCLUSION The traumatic experiences that appear in Jones’s An American Marriage are mass incarceration and misogynoir, while shame works as a feedback loop that connects these experiences to trauma on the individual and collective levels. To reiterate, Roy and Celestial’s personal and collective traumatic experiences are shaped by three layers of shame as articulated in Melissa Harris-Perry’s book Sister Citizen (2011). Harris-Perry argues for three elements when considering shame, which are social shame, global shame, and a psychological and physical urge to withdraw, submit, or appease others. For Celestial, social shame is apparent in her letters to Roy, from visiting Roy in prison, and being perceived as another “desperate” Black woman visiting an incarcerated loved one. Furthermore, Celestial’s social shame is associated with feelings of responsibility to Roy while he is in prison. Her global shame is also connected to social shame when she goes against expectations and becomes engaged to her childhood friend Andre. Then, there is Roy, whose feelings of social and global shame are connected to his position as a Black man in America who becomes yet another victim of wrongful imprisonment and continues after his release. Whereas Celestial’s feelings of global shame are rooted in misogynoir, stereotypes (specifically Sapphire, Jezebel, and Strong Black Woman) frequently associated with Black women, and the precarious relationships she has with her father and Roy’s parents. Specifically, Celestial is repeatedly compelled to justify her choice to be with Andre and not support Roy as his wife. The third layer of shame comes after Roy returns home to Atlanta and Celestial resolves to “make things right” with Roy because of how broken he is as a man. Nevertheless, she is unsuccessful as Roy comes to accept that they can never be who they were before he went to prison. Finally, their collective traumatic experience outside of the hotel room and during the criminal trial highlights the global shame they feel. Despite intangibles such as upbringing, education, and affluence, Roy and Celestial come to realize that these things did not help them or set them apart when they were at the mercy of a judge and jury in a Louisiana courtroom. Inevitably, Celestial and Roy’s marriage becomes more vulnerable when confronted with the reality of incarceration. Mass incarceration, as Alexander (2012) and Davis (2003) articulate, has negative, wide-sweeping effects that disproportionately affect Black men (though Black women are not far behind). According to Davis, mainstream society regards people of color as undesirables that populate our prison system. This mindset towards people of color, especially Black men, results in a category Alexander calls racial caste. The racial caste correlates for those who are incarcerated, even after they are released, as well as for the families and spouses who are also impacted by

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the effects of mass incarceration. As Carlson and Cervera’s (1991) research reveals, wives assume the roles left behind when their husbands are incarcerated, such as financial provider and primary caregiver. In doing so, however, African American women shoulder the burden almost singlehandedly, which is indicative of the Strong Black Woman trope. This trope, along with the others associated with Black women, corresponds with misogynoir. Misogynoir succeeds in creating another layer of trauma for Black women in addition to the trauma associated with mass incarceration. From the standpoint of mental health, Black women are less likely to seek help or be believed when they try to obtain help for their mental health needs. Thus, the pervasive cycle of traumatization continues. Misogynoir and mass incarceration demoralize African American communities on account of the intense feelings of shame associated with these traumatic circumstances. The next chapter analyzes and discusses the traumatic ramifications misogynoir and wrongful incarceration have on another Black family. Unlike the economic stature Roy and Celestial have in An American Marriage, the characters in the next chapter live in poverty in rural Mississippi. Additionally, this family is haunted both literally and metaphorically by spirits that hold the key to others’ healing. What the family learns from these spirits is that if they do not learn from and assimilate the past, it will haunt their futures. This mentality also applies to American society. We can see how American society is haunted by its racist past with mass incarceration, violence against African Americans, and police brutality to name a few. Specifically, if we continue to gloss over traumatic experiences that impact the African American community dating back to slavery, we will remain haunted by a past deeply rooted in white supremacy. NOTES 1. Bailey first uses misogynoir on the “Crunk Feminist Collective” blog to discuss misogyny toward Black women in hip-hop music. 2. Other societal examples involve the Black Lives Matter movement and the MeToo movement. Misogynoir is a factor in the erasure or diminishing of Black women’s experiences in these movements. The Black Lives Matter movement was founded by three Black women, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, in 2012. Like Black Lives Matter, the MeToo movement dates to 2006 with survivor and activist Tarana Burke, a Black woman. What both movements have in common are the instances of erasure, minimization, and general downplaying of Black women’s experiences of sexual harassment and assault, as well as wrongful deaths by law enforcement. Overall, the further removed we are from the onset of these movements, the less recognition African American women receive for their role in initiating conversations regarding the marginalization of their bodies both physically and sexually.

Chapter 3

Reclaiming the Ghosts of Trauma’s Past Witnessing and Testimony as Healing in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

In a 2017 NPR interview, Jesmyn Ward describes how she showcases and captures the truths about her hometown in Mississippi. She does not shy away from the harsh realities that face Black people in the community, including struggles with drug addiction, generational poverty, and systemic racism. Despite the attention to these issues, Ward genuinely loves her town and community because of her connections to family. However, she says, “It’s really frustrating to live in a place where you can see that, you know, the people in power do not care about your community. They don’t care about your family. They don’t care about people like you” (Briger 2017). In other words, elected representatives and others in power further marginalize poor communities of color, which exacerbates the struggles she highlights in the interview. Drug addiction, poverty, and systemic racism plague many of the characters in her 2017 novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. Furthermore, the novel is about not only traumas on a personal and broader, systemic level, but also how the characters attempt to navigate oppression that creates negative impacts on their lives and decisions. An example of such a character is the novel’s protagonist, Jojo, a thirteen-year-old biracial boy who comes of age in the fictional rural Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage. In the interview, Ward discusses how she writes about Jojo during a time when “he is attempting to figure out what it means to be a man, what it means to be a black man in the South, in America” (Briger 2017). Although this manuscript primarily examines Black women’s traumatic experiences, Black men and boys’ traumatic circumstances are worthy of exploration as well. Trauma does not discriminate in any capacity, and, while Black men and women do not experience the 73

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exact same trauma or traumatic experiences, a common source of trauma in the African American community is slavery. Such collective trauma allows for incorporating traumatic experiences that characters such as Jojo and his grandfather seek to overcome in Ward’s novel. I argue that examining overlaps in traumatic experiences between Black men/boys and Black women/ girls can advance not only the study of African American literature, but also the scholarly field of trauma studies to encourage more intersectional approaches that recognize other forms of trauma, such as racism. To advance my argument, I incorporate the concepts of witnessing and testimony to demonstrate how Black women’s, men’s, and children’s traumas become a crooked room they are forced to navigate. Collectively, trauma studies are not attentive enough to the Black community’s traumatic experiences, which is a major gap in the field. UPLIFTING BLACK EXPERIENCES WITHIN TRAUMA STUDIES None of us is immune to the impact traumatic experiences have on both the individual and collective levels. Some collective traumatic experiences include slavery, wars, the Holocaust, September 11, 2001, and natural disasters such as hurricanes, whereas some individual traumatic experiences include sexual violence, physical damage sustained from injuries such as car accidents and sports injuries, domestic violence, and psychological abuses. All these traumatic incidents result in various degrees of damage on one’s psyche. However, the collective trauma of slavery has affected generations of African Americans long after the traumatic event took place. For the Black community, the scars from slavery persist today, though in modified forms. Examples include wrongful imprisonment, thereby separating families; predominately white people policing Black bodies by deeming certain looks or behaviors deviant or disruptive; and marginalization of Black women by oversexualizing girls and women and downplaying and devaluing Black women’s experiences from a societal perspective. As Nasrullah Mambrol helpfully summarizes, “trauma studies explores the impact of trauma in literature and society by analyzing its psychological, rhetorical, and cultural significance” (Mambrol 2018). Mambrol’s distinction of examining trauma’s impact in literature and society is why trauma studies are useful as a lens for analyzing African American literature. Although trauma studies’ premise is to consider the psychological, rhetorical, and cultural significance of trauma, I find that most trauma studies scholarship examines the Holocaust, the impact wars have on soldiers and other survivors, genocides, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and even natural disasters. While these traumatic

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circumstances are worthy of discussion, most of the content surrounding trauma studies is told from and focuses on European, white perspectives. The problem with focusing primarily on European and white perspectives is that these perspectives are not broad enough to speak for all survivors of trauma. The impacts of trauma exist across race, gender, class, socioeconomic status, and so on, which is why incorporating intersectionality, along with analyzing African American literature, will enhance trauma studies. Scholarship in trauma studies seeks to analyze the “complex psychological and social factors that influence the self’s comprehension of a traumatic experience and how such an experience shapes and is shaped by language” (Mambrol 2018). And yet these experiences do not consistently incorporate groups that are not European or white, not because of forgetfulness, but because white people too often assume that white experiences encompass all of humanity. Even discussions about the traumatic legacy of slavery, in relation to trauma studies, are mediated through primarily white gazes. In a special issue for Humanities, Sonya Andermahr (2015) highlights a major project emerging from postcolonial studies that aims to decolonize trauma studies. Andermahr notes that, in 2003, “call[s] for a transformation of trauma studies from a Eurocentric discipline” emerged and, by 2008, critiques by Gert Beulens, Stef Craps, Michael Rothberg, and Roger Luckhurst “added to the voices calling for a radical re-routing of the field” (Andermahr 2015, 500). Moreover, Éva Tettenborn (2006), Elise Miller (2016), and Badia Sahar Ahad (2010) apply connected concepts from trauma studies, such as melancholia and psychoanalysis, to literature by African American writers across various genres. Although such intersectional approaches to trauma and literature exist, Black Feminist studies are another theoretical lens that can create a nuanced way to discuss issues of race and gender in African American literature. Reorienting trauma studies’ focus on African American literature, including a Black Feminist critical perspective, is a way to push against the Eurocentric roots, or emphasis, present in trauma studies.1 Although there is scholarship that discusses some African American literature alongside trauma studies, my work fuses the productive interventions of trauma studies with the necessary complications that postcolonial theory and Black Feminist studies provide. Using the concepts of testimony2 and witnessing3 from Testimony (1992), a canonical trauma studies text by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, in conjunction with Black Feminist studies provides one way to analyze traumatic depictions in Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. Although Testimony does not utilize African American literature, the definitions and use of witnessing and testimony in literature furthers my ideas about what contemporary African American literature is capable of in advancing the trauma studies field. Felman and Laub’s text foregrounds discussions about the intersections of

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race, trauma, and traumatic experiences. I analyze Sing, Unburied, Sing to explore not only testimony and witnessing, but also historical and recurring traumatic experiences such as slavery, police brutality, and wrongful imprisonment. Furthermore, many of the traumas depicted in Ward’s novel occur at more metaphorical, ghostly, and unconscious levels, all of which become essential for some of the characters to witness and testify to their traumas. While much of the story takes place on a road trip, one of the major settings for trauma is a prison often referred to as Parchman. PARCHMAN FARM: A GENERATIONAL CROOKED ROOM OF TRAUMA The Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm that was founded during the Reconstruction era and located in the Mississippi Delta. As Jojo’s grandfather, Pop, explains in Ward’s novel, when Parchman first emerged, it consisted of fifteen camps and “each one [was] surrounded by a barbed-wire fence” and the prison housed “a couple thousand men separated into work farms over all them acres. Damn near fifty thousand acres” (Ward 2017, 21). Parchman Farm also utilized a convict lease system and the trusty system. With the trusty system, white sergeants oversaw Black camps, and Black inmates serving sentences for murder were armed with rifles and guarded other inmates. Parchman Farm’s legacy is evident in various forms of popular culture and multimedia, all of which serve as records of collective traumatic experience, as well as testimony based on individuals who were incarcerated in the prison. Parchman Farm serves as a symbol within American culture for prison farms, imprisonment, and the inhumanity of incarceration, to name a few. For example, Parchman is the basis for prison farms depicted in movies such as Cool Hand Luke (1967) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Moreover, blues musician Bukka White composed “Parchman Farm Blues” (1940), a song that “warned young men about the horror of the prison” after his release from Parchman Farm (Grabenstein 2018). The following lyrics from White’s song highlight how Parchman operated as a hard-time prison labor work farm: We got to work in the mornin,’ just at dawn of day (2x) Just at the settin’ of the sun, that’s when the work is done

These lyrics from “Parchman Farm Blues” reiterate the sentiments Pop and Richie testify about to Jojo. Pop describes his experience working in cotton fields, as well as planting, weeding, and harvesting various crops (Ward

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2017, 22). Considering that Pop was a teenager when he was incarcerated, such excessive work in the fields was especially harsh. However, Pop was not the only younger inmate who performed these tasks. A twelve-year-old boy named Richie also worked in the fields with him and the other inmates (Ward 2017, 68). In other words, there was little rest for the inmates. Prior to Richie’s escape, a sergeant whips him using Black Annie, a whip commonly used on prisoners (Ward 2017, 120). After the whipping, Pop tended to Richie’s wounds by taking rags and placing them on Richie’s back to keep the wounds as clean as possible (126). The vicious treatment Richie received in Parchman further iterates how convicts, including those younger than Richie, were whipped, beaten, and underfed and rarely received medical treatment. As with most prisons in the United States, Parchman’s inmate population heavily consists of African American men, which is a circumstance that Michelle Alexander and Angela Davis discuss in their respective works. However, there are some non–African American men incarcerated in Parchman. For instance, in 1961, Freedom Riders were arrested and sent to Parchman, where activists, regardless of race or gender, were subjected to inhumane and deplorable conditions along with antagonism from jailers (Smith and Wynn 2009). The prison’s environment and inmate conditions came under legal scrutiny in the aftermath of the Freedom Riders’ experiences. Gates v. Collier (1974) ended the trusty system and flagrant inmate abuse and rendered various forms of corporal punishment against prisoners as cruel and unusual punishment that violates Eighth Amendment rights. Despite legal ramifications, renaming, and moving women to a new facility called the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, Parchman’s traumatic legacy as a plantation-style prison during the Jim Crow era that utilizes predominately Black labor to sustain the State of Mississippi then and now as an economic asset continues today. Part of Ward’s research for Sing, Unburied, Sing focused on Parchman Prison as she read David Oshinsky’s Worse Than Slavery (1996), which discusses how Black boys as young as twelve and thirteen were charged with small crimes and subsequently sent to Parchman Prison. Much like the men in Parchman, Ward mentions how the children were “enslaved and suffered and were tortured and sometimes died in Parchman prison, and their suffering had been erased from history” (Briger 2017). However, such mistreatment was justified under the guise of the Thirteenth Amendment’s provision for criminal labor. Section 1 of the amendment states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (Benns 2015). In other words, “Incarcerated persons have no constitutional rights in this arena; they can be forced to work as punishment for their crimes” (Benns 2015). Characters like Pop, his brother

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Stag, and Richie had no chance to avoid Parchman Prison, especially with the increase of prison labor camps and southern states’ insidious tactics to round up Black men on minor offenses. However, the presence of Parchman Prison transcends the literary universe Ward executes in her novel. Parchman Farm is about thirty miles from where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955 (Grabenstein 2018). This detail is significant because Till’s death at the age of fourteen is nearly parallel to Jojo and Richie’s ages in Ward’s novel when they encounter racial injustice and brutality at the hands of white Americans. In Ward’s novel, there are four people who, at some point in their lives, become Parchman inmates: Pop, Pop’s brother Stag, a twelve-year-old Black boy named Richie, and Jojo and Kayla’s white father, Michael. These individuals are irreparably altered and traumatized by their time in Parchman, which by extension becomes a crooked room they seek to navigate, physically and mentally. For example, Pop is haunted by memories of Richie and what he did as one of the trusty shooters. Also, Stag is portrayed as a mentally unstable man who “[stands] in the middle of the street sometimes” and routinely communicates with a neighborhood dog (Ward 2017, 15). Additionally, Richie remains tethered to the prison even as a ghost. Lastly, Michael goes to prison, leaving Leonie to raise their two children and for her to cope without him. Overall, Parchman is pivotal because the prison is the backdrop for many of the traumatic experiences that take place in the novel. Incarceration, much like racism, is underrepresented in trauma studies scholarship despite the traumatic overtones. If such traumatic aftermath can be captured in Ward’s novel, one can imagine the countless stories of incarceration and subsequent trauma associated with imprisonment that are untold. Ward’s novel provides a meditation on such untold stories and the traumatic implications that emerge when one carries the burden of bearing witness to their own trauma. WITNESSING AND TESTIMONY IN THE WAKE OF TRAUMA Pop bears witness to his traumatic experiences from Parchman in relative silence. After Pop’s time in Parchman, he and Mam (Philomène) have two children, a son, Given, and a daughter, Leonie. However, at eighteen, Given is killed during a hunting trip by Michael’s cousin, which becomes a pivotal traumatic experience for Leonie and Mam and yet another layer of trauma for Pop to go along with his memories of Parchman. Michael’s father, uncle, and cousin presented the death as a “hunting accident,” thereby reaffirming the insidious nature of white supremacy and how the American legal system prioritizes the value of white lives over Black lives. Given’s death leaves

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Pop, Mam, and Leonie shaken and grieving for years after. Mam plants a tree every year on the anniversary of Given’s death, while Leonie believes that her mother’s “grief for Given was hungry for life” (Ward 2017, 157). Pop laments that Given’s death was so palpable that he was consumed by grief to the point of not speaking and that “nothing [came] close to easing it until [Jojo] came along” (257). In other words, Mam and Pop remain in states of grief and trauma that Jojo and Kayla’s presence help to alleviate. Leonie turns to Michael and later drugs as a means for coping with Given’s death, which ultimately does nothing to alleviate Leonie’s trauma. A year after Given’s death, Michael and Leonie strike up a relationship. Leonie regards Michael as someone who has the capacity to look past her skin color and appearance and see “the walking wound [she] was” and be a source of healing (Ward 2017, 54). After Michael is sent to prison and while she is pregnant with Kayla, Leonie becomes addicted to drugs, and when she is high, she sees Given, the phantom version she also calls “Given-not-Given” (Ward 2017, 34). When we begin the novel, we see a family still reeling from grief and loss. According to Felman and Laub, the depiction of grief and loss indicates the reader’s role as witnesses to a (fictional) family’s tragedy. Ward’s depiction of collective grief through the representation of multiple characters’ interior lives allows us to experience what Felman and Laub define as three levels of witnessing: (1) the level of being a witness to oneself within the experience, (2) the level of being a witness to the testimonies of others, and (3) the level of being a witness to the process of witnessing itself (75). While the second level is more straight-forward, the first and third levels need further explanation. The third level coincides with the reader as a witness. In other words, the reader is a witness to a literary character witnessing a traumatic experience. For example, I as the reader am a witness to Jojo’s being a witness to Pop’s testimony about Parchman. The first level involves a character being their own witness within a traumatic experience. For example, in Ward’s novel, the scene involving the police officer pulling everyone over on the return home is told from Jojo’s and Leonie’s points of view respectively. Therefore, Jojo and Leonie both engage in witnessing, depending on who is narrating the story. Based on Felman and Laub’s articulation of witnessing, a character can be a witness to their own trauma, while also having the capacity to testify to their experiences later. In other words, a character can witness and testify, though not always at the same time. Much like Alexander’s three stages associated with mass incarceration, the three levels of witnessing become a way to methodically address the trauma and traumatic events Ward’s characters experience, as well as the way African American literature demands readers engage with depictions of trauma. Along with the three levels of witnessing, Elizabeth Dutro (2008) details three assumptions regarding testimony. These assumptions are (1) testimony

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is the written record of an experience, (2) the reader has some emotional distance from the testimony being offered in the literature, and (3) the confrontation with immense trauma demands that the reader serve as witness (Dutro 2008, 8). These assumptions warrant challenge, especially regarding Ward’s novel. First, testimony can also be oral or spoken in addition to written. Disregarding or not considering oral forms of testimony diminishes the power of many vernacular documents in African American culture, which goes against efforts by scholars in postcolonial and trauma studies to decolonize the field and incorporate more discussion about marginalized communities’ traumas. Furthermore, the characters are the ones who speak on their experiences. Second, emotional distance should not be a prerequisite for a witness to understand or listen to testimony. Jojo is a prime example of why this assumption can be challenged. He may only be a thirteen-year-old boy, but his narration is astute and clear, and he is aware of his surroundings. While he may not have a firm grasp on others’ motivations, Jojo still relays what happens in his surroundings in a way the reader can follow. Lastly, witnessing and testimony take place in the literature, and readers are external witnesses to characters’ traumas, witnessing, and testimonies. A reader’s witnessing may “involve empathetic emotional responses or expressions—verbal and non-verbal—that acknowledge the weight and importance of the stories told” (Dutro 2008, 8). To reiterate, Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing demonstrates how characters in the novel engage in testimony and witnessing in their attempt to navigate their traumatic experiences and grief. One scene where many characters are confronted with bearing witness to each other’s trauma, along with testimonies that occur thereafter, is when Leonie, Michael, Misty, and the children are pulled over by a white police officer after retrieving Michael from Parchman. Before the officer can search the car, Leonie swallows the bag of methamphetamine. When Leonie reveals they are on their way home from Parchman, the officer orders her and Michael out of the car and handcuffs them. Then, the officer turns his attention to Jojo and orders him to get out of the car and on the ground. When Jojo starts reaching into his pocket for the gris-gris bag, the officer draws his gun. In this scene, Leonie and Jojo are simultaneous witnesses. Leonie watches and thinks, “It’s easy to forget how young Jojo is until I see him standing next to the police officer. It’s easy to look at him, his weedy height, the thick spread of his belly, and think he’s grown” (Ward 2017, 163). Leonie’s thoughts mirror much of the American population, especially an American public that “continues to perceive black Americans in general, and black men in particular, as being far more prone to criminal offending than crime statistics suggest,” which they refer to as the racialization of crime (Smith and Merolla 2019, 626).

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The history of Black criminality provides the impetus not only for trauma inflicted upon Black people, especially men, but also for police officers to use their authority to regulate Black male bodies through traffic stops, “stop and frisk,” and zero-tolerance policies. Since Jim Crow, Black criminality has become a major “signifier of black inferiority” for white people (Muhammad 2010, 3). Moreover, the publication of the 1890 census and the census’s use of prison statistics “became the basis of a national discussion” about Black people as a “dangerous criminal population” (Muhammad 2010, 3). Also, white social scientists in the 1890s “presented the new crime data as objective, color-blind, and incontrovertible” (Muhammad 2010, 4). However, the portrayal of statistics relating to African Americans in prison is far from color-blind and objective. In more recent census data, 30 percent of the nation’s prison population consists of African Americans. White Americans across political ideologies gravitate towards Black criminality to justify “prejudicial thinking, discriminatory treatment, and/or acceptance of racial violence as an instrument of public safety” (Muhammad 2010, 4). Or, put another way, the discourse on Black criminality gives white law enforcement a scapegoat for racial profiling and police brutality against Black people. One way the concept of Black criminality perseveres is “when the White gaze reads the script of the Black body, [and] it acts on its interpretation of crime and hostility” (Bey 2016, 272). This reading of the Black body as violent and criminal is yet another form of trauma for African Americans. In the eyes of white law enforcement, “Blackness still signifies an epidermal confession of guilt. To be Black is to always be guilty of crime” (Bey 2016, 272). However, “even when Black bodies are perceived to be in alignment with their scripted roles in the White imaginary—that is, as thugs and criminals—they are then exterminated for their societal pariah status, a status that [is] projected onto them via the White gaze” (Bey 2016, 274). To return to Jojo and Leonie’s interaction with the police officer, the mother and son are read as potentially hostile criminals that need to be dealt with. That way, if a routine traffic stop escalates, the police officer can use their subconscious reading of Black bodies to justify using lethal force. In one vein, Leonie forgets that Jojo appears grown up. However, Leonie contradicts this thought when she regards Jojo as a “fat-kneed, bowlegged toddler” when he has a gun pointed in his face (Ward 2017, 163). Although Leonie imagines sinking her teeth into the officer’s neck and kicking him in the head (164), she is still helpless to Jojo’s plight. The encounter with the police officer resonates with Jojo and leaves him the most traumatized in the aftermath. Jojo not only witnesses his parents being placed in handcuffs, but is also the one who gets the officer’s gun pointed at him. In this sequence, Jojo as a Black boy is perceived as more dangerous than his recently incarcerated white father, Michael. Jojo narrates

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how the officer points the gun at him while demanding he get on the ground so he can be handcuffed and searched. The tension in the scene rises when Kayla jumps on Jojo’s back. Jojo worries about the prospect of him and Kayla being shot (Ward 2017, 170), but only momentarily before he focuses on the gun. After Kayla vomits on the police officer and he lets everyone go without further incident, Jojo recalls how the gun’s image is imprinted in his mind, and when he “rub[s] the indents in [his] wrists where the handcuffs squeezed,” he can still picture the gun (170–71). Jojo testifies to his traumatic experience with the officer. Although he does not testify verbally to anyone in the car, Richie is there to bear witness to Jojo’s experience. In the middle of narrating his story about Richie, Pop tells Jojo a story his grandmother told him regarding his great-grandmother’s forced journey via the Middle Passage to America and subsequent enslavement. His great-grandmother’s village learned about circumstances such as “the death march to the coast” and the ships filled to the brim with Black bodies that would sail into an unknown abyss (Ward 2017, 69). In other words, Pop tells Jojo about one instance of the slave trade and what it was like for many Black men, women, and children who were captured, brought to America, and enslaved. Pop’s great-grandmother was kidnapped and subsequently “learned the boats didn’t sink to some watery place, sailed by white ghosts” (69), but rather came to what is the United States. Pop goes on to explain other atrocities that happened to his great-grandmother, such as that “her skin grew around the chains” and “her mouth shaped to the muzzle” while she was “made into an animal under the hot, bright sun” (69). Here, Pop describes the traumatic experiences associated with slavery, such as the Middle Passage along with the physical and mental trauma from enslavement. Pop relates his great-grandmother’s experience to his and Richie’s experiences in Parchman to demonstrate how these experiences parallel one another in their brutality. Inmates are expected to work in the cotton fields as trusty shooters patrolled the prison boundaries (69). The prisoners are made to work like animals on the land and subjected to treatment that is not far removed from the days of slavery. Overall, Pop’s story demonstrates how one’s ability to listen well is “to be aware of the experiences of others and, in particular, those of the past” (Li 2020, 91). An ability to listen to others’ experiences, past and present, coincides with Felman and Laub’s ideas about witnessing, or bearing witness to testimony. In this case, Jojo’s ability to listen to Pop’s stories helps him to empathize and understand others’ experiences. Although Pop conveys information about their family legacy and ancestry in relation to those ancestors’ capture and enslavement, Jojo realizes that Pop has never told him the whole story about Richie. After Richie joins the group on their way to Bois Sauvage, he is critical of Pop’s storytelling regarding their time in Parchman. In Richie’s opinion “The story of me and Parchman,

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as River told it, is a moth-eaten shirt, nibbled to threads: the shape is right, but the details have been erased” (Ward 2017, 137). The shirt metaphor is accurate because Jojo, before he asks Pop to relay the final part of Richie’s story, explains how Pop tells Richie’s story in circles but does not articulate what happens to Richie at the end of the story (Ward 2017, 248). Pop’s talking in circles when he tries to tell Richie’s story in full is indicative of history not remaining confined to the distant past. For the longest time, Pop cannot bring himself to tell Jojo the painful conclusion about Richie’s death. Therefore, Jojo patiently waits for Pop to reach another point in the story that will enable Pop to testify to what he witnessed. The trauma Pop faced as a teenager in Parchman follows him as an adult, further highlighting history’s continuity in relation to trauma. Therefore, we receive his testimony firsthand and relatively streamlined through Jojo’s narrative. This time, however, Pop’s testimony does not appear in italics. At first, the italics “[affirm] how Jojo assimilates Pop’s voice into his own consciousness and points to his maturing perspective on others” (Li 2020, 98). I propose that the lack of italics for the last part of Pop’s testimony where he reveals how Richie died creates immediacy for Richie because he is witnessing Pop’s testimony alongside Jojo in real time. Moreover, Richie testifies simultaneously with Pop in their presence, though Jojo is the only one who can hear Richie. Pop continues his testimony when he explains how an inmate named Blue raped a female inmate and proceeded to run away from Parchman. Richie clarifies how he stumbled upon Blue during the rape and that he ran away with Blue not only out of fear, but also because he wanted to escape from Parchman and go home (Ward 2017, 251). Since Pop was placed in charge of the dogs, he became one of Kinnie Wagner’s dog trusties, and was ordered to track Blue and Richie. While on the run, Blue knocks down a white girl and rips her dress, which incites a mob. In the mob’s eyes, according to Pop, “they [were] going to see two niggers, two beasts, who had touched a White woman” (253). Despite the head start Blue and Richie had on the warden, sergeants, and mob, Blue is captured and viciously mutilated. Knowing Blue’s fate, Pop catches up to Richie and assures Richie that he will get away from Parchman. When Richie asks Pop if he is going home, Pop says he will take Richie home. Then Pop takes a shank from his boot and proceeds to stab Richie in the neck and holds him until he dies (255). By this point of Pop’s storytelling, Richie is screaming and slowly transforms into “a black hole in the middle of the yard” that seemingly absorbs the decades of trauma Pop clung to after he was released from prison (257). Pop concludes his testimony by explaining how, no matter how many times he washes his hands, the blood has not come out (256). Put another way, the memory of what he did to Richie became the traumatic aftermath that continues to haunt him.

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Prior to Pop’s testimony, Richie believes that learning how he died will allow him to achieve peace and finally not only depart from Parchman but also enter the afterlife. Richie longs for someone to testify to the experiences he cannot remember. He also wants to find a song (Ward 2017, 183). However, even when Pop reveals what happened, Richie does not achieve peace and his ghostly spirit persists. Before Mam dies, Jojo asks if Mam will be a ghost. Although Mam does not believe she will become a ghost, she tells him, “When someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it’s so awful even God can’t bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders” (Ward 2017, 236). Mam’s response is indicative of why Richie’s ghost is “caught in a purgatory that prevents him from joining those who die peaceably” (Li 2020, 101) and is unable to leave Parchman until Jojo appears. For Richie, Jojo is his last hope for achieving peace and becoming part of “the song.” After Mam dies, Richie returns once more, which annoys Jojo. Richie laments how he can no longer enter the house (Ward 2017, 281). One reason for this is because Pop has testified to his and Richie’s trauma and receives some semblance of forgiveness from Jojo. Another possible reason Richie cannot enter the house is because Pop, Jojo, and Leonie already knew that Mam was dying, and her death did not come as a surprise. For the most part, Jojo accepts Mam’s death and that she will not return to him even as a benevolent ghost. The lack and need that Richie yearns for so that he can enter the house does not exist. Nevertheless, Richie leads Jojo to a tree filled with ghosts who, like Richie, have a story of their violent fate. Those fates include being raped, suffocated, or drowned, starved, lynched, and mutilated to name a few (Ward 2017, 282–83). In this moment, Jojo is a witness to the garbled testimonies of all the ghosts in the tree. As Li explains, “by first learning to listen to his grandparents, Jojo becomes able to hear all the voices of his history. Hearing these stories is both his ethical obligation and his familial inheritance” (Li 2020, 102). Although Jojo is present for the ghosts’ testimonies, Kayla is the one who enables all the ghosts to find what they desire: a song. Kayla initially tells the ghosts to go home, but when they do not leave, Kayla sings “a song of mismatched, half-garbled words” (Ward 2017, 284). Jojo watches Kayla while she sings and sees the ghosts “smile with something like relief, something like remembrance, something like ease” (284). Kayla’s song soothes the ghosts’ traumatized spirits enough so they can finally go “home” (285). As Richie explains to Jojo, a song is synonymous with the ghosts’ final resting place. Kayla’s song is a place where these traumatized ghosts, including Richie, can go home and find peace in the aftermath of their traumatic experience. Moreover, Kayla’s singing is viewed as a form of witnessing and testimony. She hears the ghosts’ testimonies, and her song becomes a testimony to traumatic experiences. Ultimately, Kayla’s song becomes a home for the ghosts.

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Although Jojo and Kayla did not witness the traumatic experiences of the ghosts, their ability to listen and see these ghosts facilitates some semblance of healing. BEARING WITNESS TO LEONIE’S CROOKED ROOM OF ADDICTION While Sing, Unburied, Sing does not have a happy or healing ending for most of the characters, Mam is able to die on her own terms with Leonie and her deceased brother Given’s help. In Mam’s final days, Leonie is confronted with the realization that her mother is dying. Leonie bears witness to Mam’s pain before and after her journey to Parchman. After Leonie and the children return from Parchman, she goes to see Mam, who says, “If I lay in this bed for much longer, it’s going to burn the heart out of me” (Ward 2017, 214). Mam’s suffering is apparent here. Leonie recalls how when Mam realized that her body was succumbing to cancer, Mam sought herbal remedies and expressed optimism that her efforts would lead to a cure (Ward 2017, 103–4). Unfortunately, Mam has exhausted her array of herbs, medicines, and religious deities that could potentially heal her. So Mam asks Leonie to bring on her death by “constructing an altar of stones,” along with cotton, cornmeal, and rum, so that she can call upon Maman Brigitte, the “Mother of all the Gede” (Li 2020, 97). As part of the mystère, Maman Brigitte is the “mother of the dead” and “the judge” and Mam believes “if she come, maybe she take me with her” (Ward 2017, 215). Initially, Leonie is conflicted by her mother’s wish until Mam insists that she wants to die with a semblance of dignity, to “leave with something of [herself]” (216). Leonie gives in and gathers all the objects necessary to prepare the altar. Later, when she sees the further diminished physical state Mam is in, smelling of rot and tangled in her own bedsheets, Leonie prepares to say the litany that will bring Maman Brigitte. Despite Jojo’s begging Leonie to be quiet, Leonie finishes the litany and Given goes to Mam, holding her and letting her know that she can go with him (Ward 2017, 269). With Given’s guidance, Mam follows her son to the afterlife and dies. In this scene, we can see that Leonie “acted out of mercy as her love led her to a deed that was not ‘a choice’ but a necessity” (Li 2020, 97). Pop reaffirms the sentiment of mercy when he explains to Jojo why Mam finally had to leave them. Nevertheless, Leonie’s actions bring about further traumatization for herself not only because she witnesses her mother’s death, but also because she bears witness to her own traumatic experience. These initial acts of witnessing are ultimately detrimental to Leonie because she does not have enough emotional distance from what she witnesses. For instance, Leonie is still

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in Mam’s room, holding onto her mother’s nightgown while grieving and processing Mam’s death. Nevertheless, she is forced to confront Jojo, who is frustrated by Leonie’s actions. Her emotions shift from grief and sadness to anger and indignation when Jojo demands to know why Leonie said the litany, which from his perspective takes Mam and Given away from them (Ward 2017, 270). However, Leonie explains, “[Jojo] doesn’t understand what it means, to have the first thing you ever done right by your mama be to usher in her gods” (270). This notion of letting go and acknowledging loss and grief is something that she did not do with Given, which is why she frequently saw him when she was high. After her altercation with Jojo, Leonie begs Michael to take her so she can get high. She longs to see Given again. However, she thinks to herself that wherever he and Mam went would not allow her to see Given again (273). Her reasoning goes back to Jojo and Mam’s last conversation where Mam explains that she will likely not wander the earth as a ghost. Although Mam’s final moments were fraught with pain and fear because of Richie’s presence, Mam and Given can be reunited in death, which provides them both with peace. However, peace is not extended to Leonie, as she reaches her breaking point. Enraged, she proceeds to physically lash out at Jojo by hitting him repeatedly in the face (Ward 2017, 272). Eventually, Pop pulls her away, which stops her from inflicting further violence on Jojo and Kayla, who was in his arms. Although Leonie wants to tell Jojo that they are a family (272), she leaves with Michael so he can eventually take her somewhere so she can get drugs and get away from “[her] death-crowded household” (274) and from her responsibility to her family. Jojo recalls how Leonie and Michael are inconsistent when they return home because they only stay for a couple of days before they leave to resume their drug addiction. Jojo observes how Leonie and Michael “sleep on the sofa, both of them fish-thin, slender as two gray sardines, packed just as tight” (277). Leonie has fallen into full-fledged drug addiction to ease the pain of the trauma caused by Mam’s death and Given’s second departure from this world, but as a ghost spirit. This reality mirrors Sonny’s experiences in Homegoing because Sonny and Leonie’s only means of dealing with trauma creates further trauma. Sonny and Leonie resort to drug use to cope with their respective traumas although these efforts become another source of trauma for them. Due to Leonie’s traumatic experiences, she inadvertently inflicts trauma on her children. Trauma studies do not often account for individualized responses to trauma and traumatic experience. Although Leonie is a source of trauma for her children, that does not make her trauma less significant to address and analyze. Leonie’s drug addiction and her neglectful, abusive behavior towards her children makes her one of the more ethically complicated characters in Ward’s novel. In some instances, Leonie is aware enough of her actions to

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know how wrong they are. For example, she recalls how she would consume drugs, namely cocaine, every other day despite knowing she was pregnant because that was her way of coping after Michael went to jail (Ward 2017, 51). From this recollection, Leonie reveals that she did drugs while she was pregnant with Kayla and acknowledges that she knows her actions are wrong. However, there are moments when she wishes she were a better mother to her children. For example, while she and Jojo tend to Kayla on the side of the road, Leonie wrestles with internal conflict. On the one hand, part of Leonie wanted Kayla to seek out her nurturing and care over that of Jojo’s (Ward 2017, 98). Leonie wants to be the caring, doting mother whose children need her. However, she recognizes that Jojo does not acknowledge her because his energy is directed at soothing his sister and that, ultimately, her desire to be a nurturing, devoted mother is fleeting (98). Leonie realizes that Jojo does not rely or count on her in a motherly way and that even her desire to take care of her children remains, in her words, inconstant. As the story concludes, Leonie believes that the first, and perhaps only, act of redemption she performed is to “usher in [the] gods” (Ward 2017, 270) so that Mam can enter the afterlife. Given Leonie’s sometimes troubling actions as a person and mother, she could easily be rendered as an unsympathetic figure. However, Leonie is a by-product of trauma caused by white privilege and white supremacy in the rural South. Together, white privilege and white supremacy from people such as Michael’s father, Big Joseph, and Leonie’s friend and coworker, Misty, along with poverty and poor communication between Leonie and her parents after Given’s death, exacerbate Leonie’s traumatic experiences. WHITE PRIVILEGE AND WHITE SUPREMACY IN RELATION TO TRAUMA In her influential essay, Peggy McIntosh (1998) explains white privilege through metaphor as “an invisible package of unearned assets” that white people “can count on cashing in each day” (148). McIntosh compares white privilege to an “invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks” (148). Here, her main point of emphasis is white privilege’s invisibility. We may not see these privileges until the privileges are made overt or obvious to white beneficiaries. Some examples McIntosh includes in her list are going shopping alone without being followed or harassed, not speaking for all white people, remaining oblivious to the plights of people of color, and not being pulled over based on race, just to name a few (149). In Ward’s novel, Misty tells Leonie to “take advantage,” but this notion of taking advantage comes from a place of privilege that Leonie does not have. This example goes back to

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McIntosh’s metaphor of white privilege being an invisible knapsack filled with various resources that a white person could utilize to their benefit. As Frances Kendall (2012) explains, “one of the primary privileges is having greater access to power and resources than people of color do; in other words, purely on the basis of our skin color doors are open to us that are not open to other people” (62). Kendall speaks directly to white readers in this instance, though her sentiments reiterate the undercurrent of white privilege for the white characters in Ward’s novel. White privilege and white supremacy are historically pervasive and materially relevant to American lives—a point Ward dramatizes throughout her novel. They do not occur in a vacuum, meaning that regardless of what century we want to examine American history, we will inevitably find events where white supremacy and privilege prevailed. Kendall provides an array of historical examples of inhuman treatment rooted in white supremacy and privilege: Breaking apart Black families during slavery . . . removing American Indian children from their homes, taking them far from anything they knew . . . slaughtering tribal people rather than abiding by the treaties that we had entered into with them; using Chinese laborers to build the transcontinental railroad, paying them sixty cents on the dollar that white men were paid, and cutting off their food supply when they went on strike for better wages. (64)

All these heinous acts yield the same result: oppressing people of color while upholding white superiority and generating wealth for white people. Systematic discrimination against people of color exists in “housing, health care, education, and the judicial systems,” as well as “in the less obvious ways in which people of color are excluded from many white people’s day-to-day consciousness” (Kendall 2012, 64). While excluding experiences of people of color is not always intentionally malicious, the outcome leads to marginalization of nonwhite racial groups. The historical track record involving white supremacy and white privilege continues to prolong trauma for the Black community. To be clear, I consider white supremacy and white privilege to be connected but not the same. White people can benefit from white privilege but not embrace white supremacist ideologies. As Ibram X. Kendi details in his groundbreaking history of racist ideas in America, Stamped from the Beginning (2016), the ideological foundations of white supremacy date back at least to seventeenth-century scientific racism. Definitions of white supremacy highlight the belief that white people are superior in many ways to other races, thereby justifying dominance over other races. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explains, white supremacy “exist[s] to marginalize Black influence . . .

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while also obscuring major differences in experience in the social, political, and economic spheres among white people” (Taylor 2016, 210). Moreover, Frances Lee Ansley (1989) refers to white supremacy as a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material sources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings. (Ansley 1989, 1024)

White supremacy and white privilege have major implications in the novel and, more broadly, in relation to trauma and traumatic experience. However, most trauma studies scholarship does not call attention to these issues or how pervasive they are in perpetuating trauma. Characters such as Michael and Misty benefit from white privilege, even if their actions and words do not necessarily invoke white supremacy. Then we have Michael’s mother, Maggie, who uses her privilege to help Leonie get a job at a local bar after Michael goes to prison (Ward 2017, 32). Lastly, Michael’s father, Big Joseph, is someone who expresses the malice of white supremacist ideology, especially towards Leonie and her family, and uses his white privilege to minimize punishment that his nephew endured for killing Given. Leonie’s interactions with Big Joseph display the continuity of white supremacy as they invoke earlier centuries of African American history. After they return from Parchman and drop off Misty, Michael and Leonie arrive at her parents’ house, only to find out that Mam and Pop are not home. Michael proposes taking Leonie and the children to visit his parents. Although Leonie is nervous about the idea, she eventually relents, and they drive to his parents’ house in the Kill. Leonie’s anxiety about being in proximity to Michael’s parents, especially Big Joseph, is warranted. After Michael’s phone call about his release, Leonie drives to Michael’s parents’ house to drop off a note for them. However, Big Joseph, on a riding lawn mower, sees Leonie and accelerates his lawn mower in her direction. As Leonie tries to start her car, she fears for her life. Between the way Big Joseph speeds towards her on his lawn mower while pointing to a tree, Leonie senses that a violent and deadly fate awaits her if she does not get away from him (Ward 2017, 56). Leonie implies that, if Big Joseph had his way and caught up to her, he would have gone so far as to lynch her himself or use his rifle against her as another form of lynching. Big Joseph directs Leonie’s attention to a “No Trespassing” sign near the mailbox (56). Between that sign and her presence, Big Joseph believes there is ample enough reason to react with violence. Leonie is close enough to his property and Black enough to warrant extermination. Nevertheless, Leonie

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does escape and is now confronted with the prospect of being inside Big Joseph’s home with Michael and the children in tow. Once they arrive, they are not necessarily welcomed by Big Joseph and his wife, Maggie, but the four do go inside. Although Maggie attempts to be cordial to Leonie and the children, Jojo and Kayla barely speak, which irks Big Joseph. He refers to Jojo and Kayla as rude and, though Leonie urges Jojo and Kayla to say “hello,” she garners no response from the children (Ward 2017, 206). Their silence only fuels Big Joseph’s remarks as he says, “Hell, they half of her. Part of that boy Riv, too. All bad blood. Fuck the skin” (207). Not only does he express hatred towards Leonie, but he also hates her father. Referring to Pop as “boy” verbalizes his white supremacist worldview. Furthermore, Big Joseph tells Michael, “Told you never to sleep with no nigger bitch!” (208). This incenses Michael and he proceeds to head-butt his father and they end up fighting on the floor in front of everyone else. Eventually, Leonie works up the nerve to grab her children and leave the residence and wait for Michael in the car. Although Leonie makes the best decision to remove herself, Jojo, and Kayla from Michael’s parents’ house, Michael and Big Joseph’s fight exacerbates the violence Jojo and Kayla have been exposed to in their short lives. The adults in this situation are ultimately not setting positive examples for Jojo and Kayla. Lastly, the verbal exchange between Michael and Big Joseph reaffirms Leonie’s traumatic experiences with racism at large, including her interactions with Big Joseph. Leonie drives this point further when she thinks, “And I can see Big Joseph in my mind’s eye, standing over Given, breathing down on him like he’s so much roadkill” (Ward 2017, 207). Leonie’s mental picture of Big Joseph at the scene of Given’s death is not far removed from the reality of what happened that fateful night. Michael’s cousin killed Given because of a bet that the cousin lost. After Big Joseph goes to the scene and sees Given’s lifeless body, the three men return to his house and agree that Given’s death should be referred to as a “hunting accident” (Ward 2017, 50). Although Michael’s cousin is sentenced to three years in Parchman, this sentence provides little solace to Leonie and her family as they are subjected to the humiliation of having Given’s death amount to so little punishment (50). This chain of events demonstrates how whiteness and white privilege lead to a miscarriage of justice and become another traumatic circumstance for Leonie’s family. However, the novel’s displays of white privilege are not limited to Michael’s family, as we can identify scenes where Leonie internalizes the frustration she has towards her coworker and friend, Misty, and how her frustration results from Misty repeatedly, though unknowingly, exposing her white privilege. Leonie’s friendship with Misty is problematic because she is aware of Misty’s white privilege. Misty is Leonie’s coworker at the Cold Drink, a local

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bar. Leonie and Misty are both in interracial relationships. Leonie’s boyfriend is white, and Misty’s boyfriend is Black (Ward 2017, 35). When we are first introduced to Misty, she invites Leonie to the pink “cottage she’s had since Hurricane Katrina” (34), courtesy of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), so they can get high together. The cottage is significant in placing us in the novel’s post-2005 time and setting. On one hand, many people in states close to the Gulf of Mexico were negatively impacted by Hurricane Katrina, so perhaps Misty’s acquisition of this cottage comes as no surprise since she is a Mississippi resident. However, another implication of the “pink MEMA cottage” is that Misty did not have to work for her home. Rather, the government gave her the cottage, or Misty could only afford the cottage through nefarious means, such as selling drugs. Although Leonie realizes the white privilege associated with Misty’s securing her cottage, this knowledge does not prevent Leonie from accepting Misty’s offer to consume drugs. Leonie acknowledges that Misty does not like to get high alone, and Leonie has an opportunity to forget the mishaps surrounding Jojo’s birthday, such as his disappointment in having a baby shower cake instead of a thoughtful birthday cake, her not buying him a gift, and her placing more priority on taking a phone call from Michael (Ward 2017, 33). Leonie also considers the predicament she places Jojo in by making him sleep on the floor in case she comes home (33). In other words, Leonie, to an extent, uses her access to drugs to forget her trauma and her shortcomings as a mother when her presence matters most. However, her drug use also creates further trauma for those around her, such as Jojo and Kayla. When Leonie gets high, she sees Given, which prompts Misty to ask what Leonie is looking at. Not wanting to appear strange to her friend, Leonie attempts to lie and make excuses for her behavior. However, Misty knows Leonie is lying and continues to prod Leonie for the truth. Leonie becomes irritated with Misty to the point of wanting to punch Misty in the face (36). However, what stops her from acting on this is the implications that come with her being a Black woman physically harming a white woman. Ultimately, if someone called the police, the optics of the situation would lead to Leonie being arrested and taken to jail, regardless of her friendship with Misty (36). Leonie acknowledges an unspoken reality of their friendship dynamic: Misty, as a white woman, benefits from the inherent racism of the justice system. For instance, white privilege works in Misty’s favor when she, Leonie, Michael, and the children are pulled over. Misty is not handcuffed or harassed by the police officer, unlike Leonie, Michael, and Jojo. Leonie witnesses Misty and Jojo getting out of the car and how the officer “looks between [Misty and Jojo] and makes his decision” to place Jojo in handcuffs (Ward 2017, 163). The officer even orders Misty to take Kayla while he handcuffs Jojo. Out of all the passengers, minus Kayla, Misty earns the least of the officer’s attention.

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Another example of Misty’s exposing white privilege happens during Leonie’s visit to Misty’s house. They discuss what later becomes their pit stop to Misty’s friends’ house to pick up meth on the way to get Michael from Parchman. Misty persuades Leonie to participate in retrieving the drugs by explaining that the money they earn would be enough for Leonie and Michael to afford a deposit for their own place, which would get them away from their respective parents (Ward 2017, 91). In other words, Misty presents Leonie with a way out of her predicament of living with her parents and to get a place for her and Michael. In fairness, Leonie wishes that she and Michael could get away from their present circumstances by moving away from their respective families in Mississippi. However, Misty’s plan to transport and sell drugs comes with significant risk, especially for Leonie. As Michelle Alexander details in The New Jim Crow (2012), many of the revised drug policies since 1988 result in “extraordinarily punitive” legislation (53). Such punitive outcomes include eviction from public housing, elimination of federal benefits (e.g., student loans), “expanded use of the death penalty for serious drug-related offenses,” and “new mandatory minimums for drug offenses, including a five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession” that could affect first-time offenders (Alexander 2012, 53). Not surprisingly, “ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino” (Alexander 2012, 58), a statistic that lends credibility to Leonie’s reluctance to engage in Misty’s drug transporting scheme. Leonie is especially resentful towards Misty and her remark “You better take advantage” (Ward 2017, 91, original emphasis), a statement that comes from a place of privilege. For Leonie, Misty speaks offhandedly about taking advantage of opportunities to make money, regardless of the legal ramifications or consequences (91). Leonie even asks herself, “How easy had it been for [Misty], her whole life, to make the world a friend to her?” (91). Leonie regards Misty as someone who can mold the world to whatever she wants or needs, whereas Leonie learned that the world she knows is unfair and unjust to African Americans because they cannot take advantage of privileges available for white people. After leaving Misty’s friends’ house, they pass by a billboard advertising a town called Mendenhall, which proclaims to have the most beautiful courthouse in Mississippi (Ward 2017, 95). Misty insists on seeing the courthouse, but Leonie refuses. In Misty’s mind, the courthouse is a place of aesthetic beauty. However, to Leonie, the courthouse embodies what goes on inside of Parchman according to Michael’s letters. Leonie recalls how Michael’s letters described physically violent acts between inmates and those between inmates and guards, as well as sexual escapades between an inmate and a female guard (96). What all these instances expose is the insidious, violent nature of the American justice system, which runs counter to the “beautiful” image of

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a courthouse. Much of this violence remains obscure to the American public, hence Misty’s apparent obliviousness to what comes after a trip to court, such as a stint in Parchman. The obliviousness goes back to Kendall’s point that white privilege comes with a lack of knowledge about what people of color, especially Black people, experience. Moreover, the oversight of the relationship racism has with trauma is also suggestive of a blind spot in trauma studies. Again, this chapter is yet another example of how relevant and significant African American literature is in making trauma studies more intersectional. This close reading of Leonie’s traumatic experiences demonstrates a reality for Black women’s stories that are marginalized from a racial and gendered standpoint. LEONIE’S (FAILED) COPING EFFORTS IN THE AFTERMATH OF TRAUMA Leonie’s outlook on the world is bleak, though her worldview is valid because of the grief that enshrouds her and her family. First, her brother, Given, dies at eighteen, leaving her, Pop, and Mam to grieve. Prior to becoming bedridden, Mam coped with Given’s death by planting a tree every year on the anniversary of his death. Pop throws himself into farmwork and caring for Mam and Leonie’s children. Leonie copes with Given’s death by using drugs and obsessing over Michael. Communication between Leonie and her parents is strained due to their respective feelings of grief and due to Leonie’s drug use. Ultimately, these coping mechanisms do nothing to strengthen the family’s bond, but rather create more trauma. Moreover, the family’s financial state is precarious, at best. Mam and Pop rely on what the earth and nature can provide. For instance, Mam tries to teach Leonie about herbs and natural medicines because she believes that Leonie will have the means to navigate the world through a reliance on the earth and nature (Ward 2017, 105). Although Mam and Pop’s reliance on nature reiterates the family’s poverty, Mam’s efforts to convey herbal remedies and spiritual guidance are a means to help Leonie stay grounded with her familial ancestry, especially in times of trouble. In other words, these herbs and spiritual guidance are not founded on trauma and are meant to assist Leonie with navigating a world that turns on white supremacist ideology. However, Leonie does not fully embrace her mother’s herbal teachings, and this becomes evident when she tries to find herbs that could help Kayla. While Misty, Jojo, and Kayla wait, Leonie searches for herbs and, in the process, laments how she wishes she listened to her mom carefully (Ward 2017, 103). Ultimately, Leonie resented Mam for all the herbal remedy lessons and what she calls “misplaced hope” (105). The misplaced hope Leonie refers

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to is that the world can still be good despite adversity. In Leonie’s case, the immediate adversity is Kayla’s sudden illness and the desire to ease Kayla’s pain and vomiting. Leonie laments how the world she inhabits is spiteful and creates unnecessary adversity for people like her and Michael. Moreover, she wants mercy from the world to find the wild strawberries she needs to make a remedy that will help Kayla. Although Leonie does not find wild strawberries, she does find wild blackberries and hopes that she can make a remedy out of those. However, she still laments that the kind of world she inhabits is one that “gives you a blackberry plant, a doughy memory, and a child that can’t keep nothing down” (105). Leonie is remarking on unfairness in a world that can be unforgiving to individuals who are not only poor, but also desperate. This unfairness is twofold. One, Mam’s alternative knowledge of herbs and medicine does not help Leonie because she cannot remember Mam’s teachings. Two, white supremacy leaves no room for approaches or ways of thinking that do not center whiteness. Leonie also cannot help but think about her mother who seemingly believes there is good in a world that gave her cancer and left her to physically deteriorate (105). In other words, Mam’s optimism about the world is a significant contrast to the circumstances she and her family face, such as her cancer diagnosis, losing her son, Given, and the pervasive racism from individuals in the community. Additionally, Leonie’s poor memory as she searches for herbs calls attention to how she differs from Jojo. Jojo listens to Pop’s stories and tries to emulate him. Leonie, however, resists Mam’s teachings as she becomes a teenager and after Given’s death. Moreover, Leonie’s inability to remember all her mother’s herbal teachings reiterates, for her, an unfairness in the world because she too is poor and desperate. Feeling poor and desperate also fuels Leonie’s wish that she and Michael could get away from their present circumstances by moving away from their respective families in Mississippi. In Leonie’s mind, having her own place with Michael without the children would give them a chance to return to how they were when they first began dating. In the early stages of their courtship, Michael was a witness for Leonie in the aftermath of Given’s death, perhaps unknowingly fueling her obsession for him. Leonie remembers that Michael had not spoken to her until a year after Given’s death, and he apologizes for his cousin’s actions that led to Given’s death (Ward 2017, 53). Then, weeks later, they go on a fishing date and Leonie learns more about Michael’s father. Michael refers to his father as an “old head,” and she knows that between the lines, Michael’s father “believes in niggers” (53, original emphasis). Big Joseph believes in the violence of calling Black people “niggers” and believes in white supremacist ideology. Nevertheless, Leonie ultimately reassures herself that Michael is not like his father because he could see beyond her blackness, and, while it may not have been a conscious choice, his presence

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alleviates Leonie’s loneliness and pain (54). Put another way, Michael has the capacity to love and care about Leonie regardless of her skin color, and the empathy he has for her in the aftermath of Given’s death gives Leonie a sense of belonging. For Leonie, the accumulated trauma she and her parents carry creates the wedge between them, whereas Michael can heal her in a way that does not involve herbs and medicine lessons from Mam or emotional distance from Pop. Because Mam and Pop are grieving Given’s death, they are unable to help Leonie work through her grief. Pop is consumed with Richie’s blood on his hands, even years after his death. Pop carries the grief from Richie and Given’s deaths, which consumes him on many levels including psychologically and emotionally. Pop’s state of mind, along with Mam’s battle with cancer, correlates to Leonie’s inability to emotionally engage with her parents the same way she can with Michael. Leonie remembers how she felt less ensnared by the grief she has inside of her and “how everything seemed so much more alive with him” (Ward 2017, 153). Their relationship is emotionally intense, which mirrors the traumatic experience of learning about Given’s death and subsequently witnessing Given’s killer receive a light sentence before them in court. Moreover, her relationship with Michael is dangerous for her because of his family’s racist roots. However, Leonie is not conscious of the imminent danger she faces by being with Michael. The unconscious effects of traumatic experience make Leonie subconsciously latch on to Michael as a means of feeling closer to Given and for an escape for her grief. However, Mam realizes Leonie’s obsession with Michael and tries to intervene. Mam knows that Michael is related to the people responsible for the cover-up of Given’s death and sees Leonie’s obsession with Michael as a way for Leonie to keep Given’s memory close, even if that memory is traumatic. Mam believes Leonie’s relationship with Michael reinscribes the traumatic experience of Given’s death and the relationship also reinscribes Leonie’s trauma in the present, specifically trauma caused by drug addiction and the presence of Given’s ghost. In a flashback, Leonie recalls her conversation with Mam about the pregnancy. At first, Leonie denies her mother’s insinuations of being infatuated by Michael’s presence. Then, Leonie admits to herself that she is consumed with Michael in a way that yields feelings of shame. One reason for Leonie’s shame comes from bearing witness to her and her parents’ grief at Given’s death. As a teenager, she sees how deeply her parents are affected by their grief. Mam can sense the shame Leonie feels during their exchange and she reassures Leonie that she does not fault Michael for being born into the same family that took her son away (Ward 2017, 155). Even when Mam says this, Leonie believes that Mam is thinking about Given (155). Leonie cannot help but notice her mother’s disposition change whenever she thinks of Given. When Leonie tells Mam that she is pregnant,

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she is forced to decide what to do about the pregnancy. However, Leonie believes that Mam wanted Jojo “because her grief for Given was hungry for life” (157). Despite her belief, Leonie knows that she initially hesitated and wrestled with wanting to be a mother and, by extension, provide an outlet for Mam’s grief for Given to transform into joy for new life (158). To alleviate her feelings of shame for being with Michael in the face of her parents’ grief, Leonie keeps her unborn child (Jojo) to fill a void for her parents and to always have a piece of Michael that would make both her and Michael happy. CONCLUSION Like Gyasi’s Homegoing and Jones’s An American Marriage, Ward’s novel depicts Black women’s shame to show the particularly gendered burden those women face in relationship to their families and communities. As Black women, Leonie and Celestial are obligated to their families at the expense of themselves, which relates to my idea of misplaced responsibility introduced in the previous chapter. Both women are tasked with loyalty towards their families. For Leonie, that means Mam, Pop, and Given. For Celestial, that means her father, Franklin, her mother, Gloria, and her husband, Roy. However, both women choose men that go against loyalty to their families. There are various instances where Celestial’s family and even her husband, Roy, question her choice to step away from her marriage and pursue a relationship with Andre. Specifically, Celestial’s father accuses her of not remaining loyal to her husband, Roy. Her father’s efforts succeed in fueling Celestial’s already existent feelings of guilt and shame. Celestial traverses many moments of misogynoir from the men in her life because of her decision to be independent. Like Celestial, Leonie at one point must confront her feelings of guilt and shame for pursuing a relationship with Michael. During a fishing trip with Michael, they talk about their families and Leonie tells herself that Michael and Big Joseph are not the same (Ward 2017, 54). In other words, “the father [is] not the son” (original emphasis, 53) and Michael can see through Leonie’s skin color and that when she is with Michael, she feels a sense of belonging. Though in contrast to Celestial, Leonie is perhaps too loyal to Michael despite their unhealthy and, at times, violent relationship with each other. Leonie only has eyes for Michael, so much so that she neglects Jojo and Kayla. However, her loyalty to Michael makes her feel guilty because of Given. Leonie feels global shame for not being a better parent to her children, as well as for her desire to be with Michael because this desire runs counter to her loyalty to Mam and Pop and Given’s memory. Leonie could have chosen not to have any involvement with Michael. However, Michael saw through her grief and talked to her when she virtually had no one else. Nevertheless, Michael’s

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presence also works as a constant reminder that her brother is not alive. Or, more broadly, Michael’s family (his father, the cousin, and his uncle) is the reason for Leonie and her family’s pain associated with Given’s death. Given’s death, as well as Leonie’s personal circumstances with her family, her children, and Michael, are the result of white privilege and white supremacy from outside influences. While not all the outside influences are malicious, the result is the same: Leonie is ensnared by her grief, which later propels her drug addiction. Despite Roy and Celestial’s rise to affluence socially and economically, their plight is like Leonie’s because none of them are free from the perils of white supremacy. An American Marriage and Sing, Unburied, Sing are two examples of literary texts that convey how Black people can succumb, though not willingly, to a society riddled with white supremacist ideologies and white privilege that perpetuates trauma. Moreover, even in academic contexts that are seemingly equitable, white privilege is pervasive. Although early trauma studies scholarship gives us a lens for reading literature and propelled further research in the field, trauma studies collectively have not always been attentive to Black people’s experiences. Rather, early trauma studies scholarship uplifts white voices and favors traumatic circumstances that primarily affect people who are white or European. Prioritizing white voices enables marginalization for communities of color, especially African Americans. Ultimately, the primary texts I analyze are a means for bridging the intersectional gaps that exist in trauma studies. Although Jones’s and Ward’s novels are set in a contemporary era, the following chapter examines one of the earliest traumatic legacies for African Americans and how pervasive other traumas associated with slavery still are. NOTES 1. I acknowledge that some scholars have used trauma studies to engage with issues of race and gender, such as J. Brooks Bouson, Michael Rothberg, Laurie Vickroy, and Naomi Mandel. Bouson and Mandel have engaged with Toni Morrison’s novels and how Morrison articulates traumatic experiences for characters, especially in relation to slavery. 2. Felman and Laub’s Testimony (1992) considers the intersections of trauma and testimony in literature. Literature is a form of testimony for conveying the stories of those who have been marginalized for centuries. Sometimes years pass before an individual can discuss traumas they have suffered; however, that gap between the trauma and the testimony does not make the event less of a reality. Also, the way individuals advance the discussion of trauma can manifest in oral, written, or other visual forms. The relationship between the writer and the witness takes place within the context of literature. A writer has the capacity to provide characters, fictional or nonfictional, that experience traumas and seek to convey that experience to a witness, both inside

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and outside the pages of the text. Or, put another way, writers can utilize imagination as an act of testimony. Another aspect of testimony involves the hearer or listener to the trauma, whether this individual is inside or outside the text. Ultimately, being the listener comes with the responsibility of functioning as witness to the trauma witness, but also being a witness to oneself. To reiterate, literature invites responses from readers and is a space that facilitates bearing witness to one’s trauma. 3. There are three levels of witnessing: the level of being a witness to oneself within the experience, the level of being a witness to the testimonies of others, and the level of being a witness to the process of witnessing itself (Felman and Laub 1992, 75). These levels of witnessing are useful in understanding specific traumas tied to being Black in the United States, from the violence of slavery to modern-day traumas like lynching, police brutality, and wrongful imprisonment. Overall, most trauma studies literature examines the Holocaust, world wars, genocides, slavery, and even natural disasters. However, there is minimal discussion of trauma as a racialized phenomenon, with particular attention to the collective trauma at the heart of contemporary African Americans’ experiences. This necessitates further examination of literature that is rich in describing or conveying the Black community’s experiences with trauma.

Chapter 4

Cora’s Resilience The Magnitude of Trauma and Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

By contextualizing early trauma studies scholarship, I emphasize how trauma studies, like so many fields caught in the intersection of racism and sexism, do not account for Black women as relevant subjects. Within trauma studies, there is minimal discussion of trauma as a racialized phenomenon, with particular attention to the collective trauma at the heart of contemporary African Americans’ experiences. However, as the previous chapters demonstrate, limitations in trauma studies can be transcended by incorporating contemporary African American literature that calls attention to Black women’s experiences in America. Specifically, the traumatic legacy of slavery is a crooked room that African Americans, especially women, continually navigate in society no matter how much distance we have from slavery’s onset. Ramifications of that crooked room include mass incarceration, misogynoir, not having physical and mental health concerns consistently taken seriously, and collective and personal traumas associated with racism and white supremacy, to name a few. These examples and others are depicted in Homegoing, An American Marriage, and Sing, Unburied, Sing. Furthermore, the concepts of witnessing and testimony aid in our understanding of traumas that are specific to African American life. Although witnessing and testimony serve as viable points for discussing Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, my work also calls attention to the persistence of African Americans’ collective traumas across time. Whitehead’s novel is set in the early nineteenth century, across numerous states including Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Even though the novel’s protagonist, Cora, escapes from the 99

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plantation in an effort to assume a new life of freedom, her traumatic experiences follow her across state lines. Put another way, Whitehead’s novel shows us that traumatic experiences resonate beyond physical freedom because enslaved people are not mentally free from their pasts. I argue that testimony and witnessing trauma highlight not only slavery’s legacy, but also how pervasive white supremacy is for formerly enslaved people that seek physical and psychological freedom from trauma and cannot free themselves mentally from their past. No matter how far the Underground Railroad takes Cora, she remains mentally and physically tethered to the traumatic landscape of the Randall plantation. My argument speaks to slave narratives of the nineteenth century, which commonly foreground the moment of freedom as narrative climax and as comprehensive in its liberation for the Black protagonist. However, the moment of freedom does not erase an enslaved person’s trauma. Freedom cannot alleviate the toll slavery takes on one’s physical, mental, and emotional state. Ultimately, freedom is merely an illusion, especially in relation to trauma studies. Trauma studies have gaps that are intersectional and rooted in racism and sexism. Specifically, trauma studies do not adequately represent Black women’s experiences with trauma. Trauma studies need to be supplemented with African American experiences, and Whitehead’s novel filters various traumatic experiences of enslaved people while also not limiting the focus to slavery as the only form of trauma. By having Cora as the protagonist, Whitehead brings an enslaved Black woman’s traumatic experiences to the forefront. To advance my argument, I analyze the circumstances surrounding Cora’s time on the Randall plantation before she agrees to run away with another enslaved person named Caesar, her time spent in South Carolina and North Carolina, her captivity alongside the slave catcher Ridgeway, and Cora’s recurring instances of resentment towards her mother, Mabel. Together, these discussion points reiterate the ways Cora’s traumatic experiences continue to follow her no matter how much physical distance she traverses using the Underground Railroad. THE STRUGGLES OF A RESILIENT BLACK GIRL Before Cora makes the decision to run away with Caesar, we learn about her circumstances on the Randall plantation as an orphan and outcast. By age eleven, Cora realizes that she does not have any allies or anyone who has allegiance to her late grandmother, Ajarry, or her mother, Mabel. The main way Cora becomes a target is through other enslaved individuals’ vandalism of the plot of land she has inherited from her grandmother through her

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mother. After the shock of Mabel’s disappearance wears off and she becomes aware of her family’s plot of land, Cora strives to maintain and keep the land despite her youth and having no one to fend for her (Whitehead 2016, 14). Cora found herself constantly protecting her land from others on the plantation, including children who would trample or dig up her crops. Although the plot is “scarcely three yards square,” others resent Cora for having this land (14). For many of the enslaved, witnessing a fellow enslaved person have something that brings them some semblance of joy causes resentment in others, so much so that they “coerce [someone] from [their] claim using methods of intimidation, various provocations” (13). In other words, seeing another enslaved person’s happiness with something another person does not possess can fuel desires to take resources away. For these enslaved individuals, inequality is both a source of trauma and a motivation for causing trauma. The first enslaved person who attempts to take Cora’s land is a woman named Ava, who did not get along with Mabel. Ava wants the land for an expanded chicken coop and makes a point to say that Cora having the land instead of her is a waste (Whitehead 2016, 15). When antagonizing Cora directly is unsuccessful, Ava makes a deal with Moses, a plantation overseer’s enforcer, and has Cora removed to Hob “where they banished the wretched” (16). Even though Cora becomes a resident of Hob, this circumstance does not stop other enslaved individuals from attempting to maneuver Cora’s land from her. Two enslaved men become intrigued by the land for different reasons. First is Old Abraham, who was relatively indifferent to the land plot itself, but “wanted the plot gone on principle” (Whitehead 2016, 16). In his mind, respecting Cora’s land simply because it used to belong to her grandmother and was bestowed to Cora later was nonsensical (16). Like Ava, Old Abraham places no sentimental value on the legacy of this land plot for Cora. Rather, they see a young girl whose presence irks others for unknown reasons. The second enslaved man, Blake, is a new arrival to the Randall plantation, and he is a violent man who makes his presence felt quickly. Blake and the other men who arrived with him “were not above helping themselves to that which was not theirs” (17). Such a mentality inevitably translates to further adversity for Cora and her land. Blake’s eagerness to claim Cora’s land mirrors European forces staking claim to land that is not theirs. Both instances result from white supremacy and a desire to exude power and oppress marginalized groups. The difference for Blake’s circumstances is that he is just as much a victim of slavery as Cora. Nevertheless, this shared victimhood does not sway Blake’s efforts to acquire Cora’s land by force. Blake decides to help himself to Cora’s land for his own use and proceeds to build a doghouse on her garden (17). Although Cora’s status as a stray and resident of Hob renders her invisible to most people, Blake “sought her eyes when she was close, to

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warn her that she was invisible no more” (18). Cora resolves to reclaim her land by retrieving a hatchet and destroys the doghouse, doing so in front of not only onlookers, but also Blake. Although Cora succeeds in scaring Blake from her property and reclaiming her land, the consequences of her actions are twofold. One is that she is permanently relegated to Hob and two, Blake and his friends, Edward and Pot, spread rumors about Cora to keep her “outside the circle of respectability” (Whitehead 2016, 21), thereby reaffirming her ostracism and pariah status. Once she is further isolated and begins menstruating, Edward, Pot, and two others subsequently rape her (21). This act of physical violence echoes the mentality Blake had during his confrontation with Cora: “You may get the better of me, but it will cost you” (20). In other words, Blake’s manhood was threatened by Cora’s actions, especially in front of other people, and while he may not have participated in the rape, he did nothing to prevent the violence from happening. For Black men, wreaking trauma on Black women and girls is to wield power in the violent context of slavery. Thus, Blake seeks domination because that is what he has learned through being a trauma victim himself. Sexual violence against enslaved Black women and girls is a painful rite of passage that comes from not only white slave owners, but also enslaved Black men. Moreover, such trauma can persist in generational forms, which we see with Ajarry, Mabel, and Cora. Ajarry is kidnapped and sent by boat to her uncertain destination in America. While on the boat, we learn that despite the captors’ initial hesitation due to Ajarry’s age, she was eventually “dragged from the hold six weeks into the passage” for the captors’ heinous sexual gratification (Whitehead 2016, 4). This is reminiscent of Esi’s rape while she is held captive in the castle dungeons. Towards the end of Whitehead’s novel, the reader learns about how Mabel became a victim of sexual violence to save Cora from the same fate. Unfortunately, Mabel could not have known that she prolonged Cora’s fate at the hands of four enslaved men. BLACK BODIES AS WITNESS AND TESTIMONY All these instances of rape call attention to men exercising power and control over Black women. White men see Black women and girls as property, exotic commodities, and reproductive agents who add to white men’s fortune by birthing new enslaved people. Black men, who are subjected to marginalization and abuse at the hands of white slave owners, take their powerlessness out on the Black women and children in their proximity with physical or sexual violence. Ultimately, Black women and girls are the proverbial punching bag for Black men who are traumatized and by white men who exude power and control over their property. A literary example of this appears in

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Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. As Saidiya V. Hartman (1997) articulates, the “terrible spectacle” that Douglass refers to as introducing him to slavery is his Aunt Hester’s beating (3). Moreover, Hartman calls attention to “the ease with which such scenes [like Aunt Hester’s beating] are usually reiterated, the casualness with which they are circulated, and the consequences of this routine display of the slave’s ravaged body” (3). Put another way, Douglass renders scenes of violence against Black women in graphic detail to serve his own rhetorical needs, which furthers Black women’s marginalization and victimization. Not only do Douglass and others bear witness to his aunt’s beating, but her beating is an example of the marginalization of Black women. In the 1999 introduction to Narrative, Deborah McDowell contends that with Douglass’s recitation of whippings, the women are “no longer identified by name [and] become absolutized as a bloody mass of naked backs” (xxii). From hearing his Aunt Hester’s screams when she is beaten to the various unnamed Black women who are whipped at the whims of the white masters, Douglass’s rhetorical move further marginalizes the Black woman’s body. Furthermore, “Douglass’s ‘freedom’—narrative and physical alike—depends on narrating black women’s bondage. He achieves his ‘stylistic signature’ on the backs of black women” (McDowell 1999, xxii). For Douglass, enslaved women “remain trapped in the physical, in the body, excluded from language and symbolic activity” (McDowell 1999, xxiv). However, Whitehead rejects such a depiction of Black women by having Cora’s perspective as our central consciousness in the novel. Unlike Douglass’s narrative where the women are either nameless, absent, or vessels for conveying physical violence, Whitehead’s novel provides names to the victims and presents a young woman’s dangerous journey to freedom. Despite the adversity that Cora’s family faces from white and Black men, Cora navigates her trauma to the best of her abilities. The confrontation between Cora and Blake not only results in reclaiming her land, but also alludes to the kind of boldness that enables her to stand up for others. However, Cora’s boldness does not come with positive results, because the same way Cora experienced consequences for destroying Blake’s doghouse, she found herself facing consequences for coming to a young, enslaved child’s defense. During Jockey’s birthday party, Chester, a child, accidentally bumps Terrance Randall and makes him spill his wine. Terrance canes Chester in front of everyone. Although Cora had seen many acts of physical violence against other enslaved individuals, as well as dead bodies on display, she did nothing. However, when she sees Chester, an unforeseen feeling of defensiveness came upon her and without thinking through the ramifications of her actions and empathy, she used her body as a shield to protect Chester

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from further harm (Whitehead 2016, 34). This feeling is what compels her to challenge the status quo of plantation life. Many of the women on the plantation are submissive and cooperative and otherwise do not go out of their way to cause trouble. Even Cora acknowledges that the feeling is almost involuntary, and she knows that the consequences will exacerbate her misery. Nevertheless, Terrance still hits her until the cane’s “silver teeth [rips] across her eyes” (34). As if the damage she sustains to her head and eyes was not enough, Connelly (a Randall plantation overseer) beats Cora and Chester over three days. After the beatings, Connelly demanded their backs be scrubbed with pepper water (37). Among the enslaved individuals who witnessed these beatings is Caesar, who tries to convince Cora to run away with him. However, Cora counters his proposition to run away and depicts herself as a lesson to anyone who gets a “thought in [their] head” (46). She is ultimately brutalized for her perceived bold and defiant actions, not only for defending Chester but also for defending herself and her property. These repeated attacks physically and mentally demoralize her, which becomes yet another trauma she carries with her. She dismisses Caesar’s proposition outright and her response foreshadows the fate of another enslaved person. The Randall family regarded an enslaved person’s acts of boldness or defiance as an opportunity to enact public displays of violence, often leading to torture and death. For example, an enslaved man named Big Anthony ran away, but only “made it twenty-six miles” before he was found (Whitehead 2016, 44). Once Big Anthony is captured and returned to the plantation, he is secured to stocks and beaten over two days. On the first day, they removed his genitals, stuffed them into his mouth, and sewed his mouth shut (47). By the third day, Big Anthony is “doused with oil and roasted,” as onlookers were forced to watch (47). Such violent displays of punishment as what happens to Big Anthony, Cora, Chester, or any other enslaved person is status quo on the Randall plantation. Furthermore, the narrator explains how enslaved people are compelled and forced to bear witness to the various abuses bestowed upon others as a form of “moral instruction” (46). No matter how hardened an enslaved person is to witnessing abuse and violence at the hand of the slave owners or overseers, they reflect on the “slave’s pain” and how a day may come when it is their turn to receive vicious punishments for others to witness. In other words, the witnesses cannot help but think to themselves, “That was you up there even when it was not” (46). Such a public and brutal display of torture reminds enslaved individuals, especially those on the Randall plantation, that they are expendable and that the traumatic experience of one is the traumatic experience of many. In other words, the trauma is theirs even when someone else is on the receiving end of that trauma. The public display of Big Anthony’s burning body coincides with Terrance’s addressing everyone and announcing not only his brother

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James’s death, but also the changes that are to take place under his stewardship. Moreover, in the aftermath of Big Anthony’s death, Cora realizes that if she does not take Caesar’s proposition to run away, she will be at the mercy of Terrance Randall. Since she was on the receiving end of Terrance’s violence before, she knows that more bodily harm awaits her if she does not escape the plantation. Cora and Caesar’s escape from the Randall plantation is successful, but not without adversity. First, Cora’s friend Lovey escapes with them, which is an unexpected addition to their plan. Second, some hog hunters come across the trio and attempt to capture them. Caesar fights off his assailant, while Lovey is dragged away and later returned to the Randall plantation. Cora’s assailant is a young boy and they violently tussle. During the struggle, Cora has a flashback to the evening when she was sexually assaulted, and this triggers her fight response during the struggle with the hunters. In other words, Cora “[fights] now as she had not been able to then” (Whitehead 2016, 59). This memory from Cora’s sexual assault is the crooked room that she must navigate before she can free herself from these captors. Additionally, Cora’s physical and mental response to this attack serves as both a trauma response and yet another example of her boldness in the face of dangerous circumstances. Cora inadvertently kills one of the captors, which means that she and Caesar will receive consequences befitting the crime of murdering white men (63). Enshrouded with this knowledge, as well as the dismay at Lovey’s capture, Cora and Caesar take the next train away from Georgia and the plantation. LESSONS ON HEGEMONIC POWER DYNAMICS After a treacherous ride on the Underground Railroad, Cora and Caesar arrive at a station in South Carolina. They are greeted by a white station agent named Sam who acquaints the duo with their new surroundings. Cora and Caesar receive paperwork containing their new identities. Caesar points out in the paperwork where it says they are the US government’s property (Whitehead 2016, 92). Although Sam assures them that the statement is a technicality, Cora and Caesar come to realize that they cannot escape their status as property, even in an “enlightened” place like South Carolina. According to Sam, South Carolina is less restrictive in comparison to the life Cora and Caesar knew in Georgia. Runaways and enslaved persons are spared from being sold, or otherwise disposed of, and are provided with necessities such as food, jobs, housing, and opportunities for education, leisure, and starting families (Whitehead 2016, 92). The lifestyle Sam articulates comes with plenty of luxuries that Cora and Caesar are not used to, which ultimately diminishes their willingness to continue their journey to

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the North. These new prospects act as a momentary shield from the trauma that underlies the Black community in South Carolina. During Cora and Caesar’s stay in South Carolina, they have a steady diet and income as they gradually start to “forget the daily sting of the plantation” (104), which lulls them into a false sense of comfort and security. Ultimately, their prolonged stay not only allows them to recover physically and, to some extent, mentally from their time on the plantation and train ride, but their stay also allows them to become privy to some of the insidious elements of the town. South Carolina provides the illusion of betterment, license, and free will. However, Whitehead places South Carolina as a parallel to a slave state like Georgia to demonstrate how pervasive hegemonic power structures are. Such power can be seen within the medical community, as well as the jobs Cora takes as a maid and as a “type” in local museum exhibits. UPHOLDING WHITE SUPREMACY THROUGH MEDICAL RACISM Whitehead engages with another hegemonic power structure in the scene where Cora goes to the new hospital’s “colored wing” and encounters seemingly benign strategies to aid Black citizens. After the examination, physician Dr. Stevens asks Cora about considering birth control. Dr. Stevens describes a new surgical technique to Cora that involves severing “the tubes inside a woman” (Whitehead 2016, 113). Although Dr. Stevens makes it sound as though Cora has a choice in refusing the procedure, he explains that the procedure is a requirement for some African Americans in South Carolina as a means of population control (113). Cora is distraught at the suggestion of mandatory birth control. In Cora’s mind, white doctors found a way to steal futures from Black families by either taking their children away outright or taking away a woman’s autonomy in conceiving and birthing a child (117). These doctors do not police white women citizens of the town with birth control procedures or surgeries, but for a Black woman like Cora, they treat the surgery as a means of taking control of her reproductive abilities. The South Carolina doctors’ efforts to sterilize Black women are no different than the violent encouragement of reproduction that exists on plantations. With these surgeries, white doctors exercise a significant amount of control on Black women (and men) under the guise of science and medical caretaking, which becomes yet another trauma in the crooked room that African Americans had and continue to navigate. However, as Deirdre Cooper Owens (2017) argues, for these “pioneering gynecological surgeons, black women remained flesh-and-blood contradictions, vital to their research yet dispensable once their bodies and labor were no longer required” (3). Owens’s work

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seeks to remedy the failure to acknowledge the role enslaved Black women played in early American gynecology and to demonstrate the “synergistic relationship” among slavery, science, and medicine (3). Many doctors share Sam’s sentiments about South Carolina’s “enlightened attitude towards colored advancement” (Whitehead 2016, 91) and act in the role of “benevolent patriarchs not only on plantations but also in slave hospitals and southern medical colleges” (Owens 2017, 13). The mentality of these white doctors resonates with a predecessor like James Marion Sims, otherwise known as “the father of gynecology.” Although the narrator does not mention Sims by name, I surmise that Dr. Stevens did study under Sims. This is based on the narrator’s revealing that Dr. Stevens “studied under the man who pioneered the technique, which had been perfected on the colored inmates of a Boston asylum” (Whitehead 2016, 113). A South Carolina native, Sims performed dozens of experimental surgeries on many enslaved women in his effort to cure those affected by vesico-vaginal fistulae, a common condition suffered in childbirth (Owens 2017, 1). He also commanded assistance from enslaved Black women as nurses with these surgeries, though for centuries these women did not garner much recognition for the role they played in “help[ing] him birth a new field” (Owens 2017, 2). However, as Harriet Washington (2017) explains, Sims is problematic in other ways aside from using enslaved Black women for his experiments and procedures. The women had no right to refuse surgery because all Sims needed was the women’s owners’ permission (Washington 2017, 309). As Washington contends, “voluntary consent is impossible if you do not own your own body” (309). Moreover, Sims did not use anesthesia for his patients and this action “[reflects] a convenient, widespread belief that African Americans did not feel pain” (309). Today, Sims is still recognized as a pioneer in gynecology. However, all medical care for Black women and men is inextricable from the violence enacted on them daily within the anti-Blackness of slavery. Cora’s revelations about the insidious nature of Dr. Stevens’s proposition for birth control are confirmed shortly after she and Caesar decide to stay in South Carolina indefinitely. On her way home, Cora sees a young woman running towards the schoolhouse looking disheveled and in hysterics. Although some people attempt to calm the woman, she yells, “‘My babies, they’re taking away my babies!’” (Whitehead 2016, 105). This exclamation has a double meaning in this context. The first meaning is the fact that taking babies away from Black mothers is a common occurrence during slavery. For example, Frances E. W. Harper’s poem “The Slave Mother: A Tale of the Ohio” (published in Harper’s 1854 work Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects) follows a similar trajectory as Toni Morrison’s Beloved because Harper retells Margaret Garner’s story. The

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poem’s second and third stanzas allude to the impending doom that will come to the children, specifically in the lines “My home might seem a joyous spot, / But with their sunshine mirth I blend / The darkness of their future lot” (lines 10–12). The mother’s heart goes faint, and at times beats wildly at the prospect of losing her children to slavery. The mother regards her children as “treasures of [her] soul” and she would do anything to make their freedom possible. Like Harper’s poem and Morrison’s novel demonstrate, the meaning of Black motherhood within the racial violence of slavery is always violent and centered on exploitation and loss. Or, for someone like Cora’s grandmother Ajarry, none of her children were sold. However, all the children, except Mabel, died before the age of ten. Nonetheless, there is little to no solace for a Black woman born into slavery who subsequently gives birth to children. While the onlookers sigh at a familiar sentiment of a Black mother lamenting the life of slavery her children will be raised in, Cora remembers her conversation with Caesar. Specifically, he discusses the men at the factory he works at who are haunted by their memories of plantation life despite the physical distance between them and the plantation. Put another way, the memories are pervasive and wait to “abuse and taunt when chance presented itself” (Whitehead 2016, 105–6). Here, the narrator testifies to the effects of trauma on many of the men and women in the town. The second meaning, which Cora reaches prior to escaping, is that the woman was not recalling a distant memory from her time in slavery, but rather “a crime perpetrated here in South Carolina. The doctors were stealing her babies from her” (Whitehead 2016, 123). Specifically, the doctors are performing “strategic sterilization” (122) on Black women under the guise of birth control. However, as Sam overhears from a bar patron, the sterilization efforts are meant to “protect [white] women and daughters” from so-called jungle urges or desire to engage in interracial relationships, while also freeing African Americans from “bondage without fear that they’d butcher” white people (122). In other words, these white doctors believe that if they medically and scientifically extract the traits and genes that make Black men and women dangerous to white people, then the anxieties about races coexisting can be alleviated for white people in the South. The day before Cora escapes, she and Caesar learn of the medical malpractice taking place at the hospital regarding the Black male patients. Sam relays what Dr. Bertram tells him, which is that Bertram’s patients “believed they were being treated for blood ailments” but were participating in a study on syphilis instead (Whitehead 2016, 121). Although Whitehead’s novel takes place in the 1800s, this revelation about Black men unknowingly participating in studies and experiments has parallels to what is formally called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male clinical study (1932–1972). Whitehead’s anachronistic narrative choice

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here—juxtaposing the Tuskegee experiments and the onset of gynecology in the same moment—shows how traumatic experience does not go away, but rather evolves. For people like Cora, Caesar, and others in South Carolina, just because they left one place of trauma, they did not leave trauma behind because in South Carolina the traumatic circumstances of sterilization and syphilis experiments are variations of the same trauma. The Tuskegee experiments are a forty-year study that began in Macon County, Alabama, at the Tuskegee Institute where 600 Black men—399 with syphilis and 201 who did not have the disease—participated in the study under the guise of being treated for “bad blood.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “bad blood” is a local term used to describe severe ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. Whitehead alludes to this notion of “bad blood” when Cora goes for her second hospital visit. While Cora waited to see the doctor, she saw a group of men waiting for their blood treatments. Although Cora was not familiar with the notion of “bad blood” prior to arriving in South Carolina, she noticed that the condition “afflicted a great number of the men in the dormitories” and that the town doctors made a concerted effort to alleviate this illness (Whitehead 2016, 112). Cora’s observation reiterates what Dr. Bertram tells Sam about wanting to isolate traits that result in attitudes such as “sexual aggression and violent natures” and “melancholic tendency” (Whitehead 2016, 122). A rationale for why white doctors and other medical professionals espouse racist attitudes like Dr. Bertram comes from Sander Gilman (1985): “Medicine uses its categories to structure an image of the diversity of mankind; it is as much at the mercy of the needs of any age to comprehend this infinite diversity as any other system which organizes our perception of the world” (205). In other words, medicine can serve as an extension of hegemonic power by marginalizing Black bodies and elevating white bodies. Moreover, Allan Brandt (1978) contextualizes the racism and medical opinions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries regarding the Tuskegee study. For instance, in Whitehead’s novel, Dr. Bertram echoes medical sentiments of the nineteenth century because many physicians believed that “freedom had caused the mental, moral, and physical deterioration of the black population” (Brandt 1978, 21) and that castration instead of lynching for Black men’s sexual crimes would alleviate what white physicians perceive as “overzealous sexuality” (21). Although Cora and Caesar want to warn the men that they are sick and not receiving treatment, they know they are working against a corrupt system. The system Cora and Caesar confront is rooted in medical racism. A heavy reliance on Social Darwinism led scientists and medical professionals to believe that African Americans are “particularly prone to disease, vice, and crime” and “could not be helped by education or philanthropy” (Brandt 1978, 21). Social Darwinism is a theory used in the late nineteenth and early

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twentieth centuries to explain how certain individuals and groups of people are subject to the same laws of natural selection as plants and animals, while also enabling and justifying racism. White scientists and physicians believe that the Black community is beyond saving due to their degenerative evolutionary state. According to Brandt, “doctors generally discounted socioeconomic explanations of the state of black health, arguing that better medical care could not alter the evolutionary scheme” (22). Considering medical professionals of the time leaning on Social Darwinism and white supremacist ideology regarding treatment of Black people, the Tuskegee study was conducted without the patients’ informed consent. Moreover, the men did not receive proper treatment to cure their illness, even when penicillin emerged in 1947 as the drug of choice to treat syphilis. Despite concerns raised about the ethics of the study in 1969, a committee at the CDC decided that the study should continue (Brandt 1978, 21). However, in July 1972, after accounts of the study appeared in the national press, the advisory panel at the CDC concluded that the Tuskegee study was “ethically unjustified,” and the study ended. UPHOLDING WHITE SUPREMACY THROUGH MISEDUCATION In addition to uncovering the medical deception taking place on Black citizens in South Carolina, Cora goes from working as a maid and nanny to the Andersons (a white family) to working in the Museum of Natural Wonders as part of the exhibits. Specifically, she worked inside the exhibits as one of museum curator Mr. Fields’s “types” (Whitehead 2016, 110). The use of Black women as part of the exhibits is reminiscent of the “Hottentot Venus” exhibitions of the 1800s (Gilman 1985, 213). The “Hottentot Venus” was an African woman presented across Europe in front of white European audiences to display physical characteristics, such as her “protruding buttocks,” further distinguishing the unique “anomalies” of the Black body (Gilman 1985, 213). Although Cora’s anatomy is not the focal point of her work in the exhibit, her body is nonetheless included as part of the display for white audience’s entertainment and fascination. Cora worked in three living exhibits: Scenes from Darkest Africa, Life on the Slave Ship, and Typical Day on the Plantation. Each display is a form of testimony. The Scenes from Darkest Africa display with its large black birds hanging from the ceiling remind Cora of “buzzards that chewed the flesh of the plantation dead when they were put on display” (Whitehead 2016, 110). The display titled Life on the Slave Ship portrays the story of an African boy who “helped out on deck with various small tasks, a kind of apprentice” (110), which is far from the stark, traumatic

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reality for enslaved Black people on the ships. Lastly, the Typical Day on the Plantation display reminds Cora of the Randall plantation, and she is vocal with her criticisms on the accurate representation of this display. Collectively, these museum exhibits work as entertainment and as pleasant renditions of falsehoods in American history for the white patrons that enter the museum. Cora notes many of the inaccuracies depicted in the display, such as white kidnappers praising or otherwise being kind to those who were captured, let alone allowing African children onto the boat decks even in a cleaning role (Whitehead 2016, 116). Furthermore, Cora knows that none of the white patrons “wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world” (116) or hear about the harsh realities that Africans face on the way to America. The white patrons who come to the museum ridicule and marvel at the displays and proceed to antagonize Cora and the other “types” Mr. Fields hired to work in the displays. The only way Cora can enact some semblance of revenge on these patrons is to give them the evil eye. She even fixes Maisie, the Anderson family’s young daughter, with the evil eye. For Cora, this is like what she did to Blake, who tried to take her land plot on the plantation. Cora broke Blake then and breaks Maisie from within her display frame. Turning her evil eye on the patrons is a way to teach the patrons that enslaved Africans are watching them too (126). In other words, Black people—enslaved or free—do not blindly accept or appreciate white people’s supposed benevolence. Furthermore, Black people are subjects, despite the persistent white effort to render them as objects. WHITE WOMAN BENEVOLENCE AS A SOURCE OF TRAUMA However, a white person’s self-proclaimed benevolent efforts towards Black people can still create trauma under the guise of white supremacy. Specifically, many white men and women use Christian ideology to redeem or “save” Black people whom they regard as savages. An example of this appears in the North Carolina chapter when Cora is taken in by Martin and Ethel, a white married couple. Martin is a former conductor for the Underground Railroad and Ethel is a woman whose life is fraught with resentment and a zealousness for missionary work. Martin and Ethel are both Christians and they attempt to use Cora for their own purposes. For Martin, Cora is an opportunity to receive some semblance of reassurance that he is doing the best he can to uphold his father’s abolitionism. For Ethel, Cora is an opportunity to achieve spiritual fulfillment and act in the role of a missionary. However, their aims are ultimately selfish and out of pity.

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In Ethel’s chapter, we learn about her upbringing in a Christian household, specifically about how she is supposed to regard enslaved Black people. Ethel learns to distinguish between her family and enslaved people through the intersection of white supremacy and Christianity. As a child, Ethel regarded enslaved people as someone who “lived in your house like family but [were] not family” (Whitehead 2016, 192). However, her father tells Ethel the biblical story of Ham as a rationale for why those of African descent are cursed (192). In turn, Ethel leans further into the idea that Black people need Christian guidance. Cora is not the only person Ethel projects her missionary efforts onto. The first person is Ethel’s childhood friend Jasmine, an enslaved Black girl who lives in Ethel’s family’s home. They engaged in roleplay where Jasmine was the “native” and Ethel was the “missionary” (191). Moreover, Ethel’s father engages in nightly visits to Jasmine’s bedroom where he presumably rapes her. Although still a child, Jasmine is victim to the burdens of Black womanhood and is objectified by both people for different reasons, much like Cora is with Ethel and Martin. Jasmine forcefully serves as both a childhood plaything for Ethel and a sexual being for Ethel’s father, whereas Cora unknowingly serves as a sounding board for Martin’s grievances about being an abolitionist and as a savage for Ethel to save. In other words, Cora’s experience in Martin and Ethel’s home is not an isolated incident where seemingly benevolent white people force their desires on enslaved Black people. However, with Ethel, those desires become romantic towards Cora and Jasmine, which adds another power dynamic that is rooted in white supremacy. Ethel performs affectionate gestures with Cora and Jasmine under the guise of saving them from their own nativity and ignorance as enslaved individuals with the use of Christianity, which is another historical trauma that African Americans faced. Nevertheless, Ethel exudes contempt for Black women like Jasmine and Cora. Although Ethel is a white woman with more agency than Cora and Jasmine, she still projects similar hatred towards Black women as her father did when she was a child. The question that emerges as Ethel observes Martin’s trips upstairs to help Cora, which also goes back to seeing her father’s upstairs visits, is “If they could, why not her?” (Whitehead 2016, 195). Her question implies that she feels entitled to the same sexual exploitation she sees as white men’s entitlement to Black women’s bodies. The question also alludes to two white men, her father and husband, attempting to “heal a biblical wound” (193) for their own selfish reasons. Ethel wants to traverse a biblical rift for her own reasons, whether to fulfill her missionary dreams or alleviate her latent desire for a romantic relationship with a woman. Ultimately, Ethel’s misogyny towards Cora is mainly because of her feelings of contempt and desire for Cora.

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Although misogynoir as a term was coined in 2010, Whitehead’s novel exposes how Black women have been subjected to a particular brand of race-based misogyny throughout American history, as seen through the South Carolina woman who claimed white people were taking her children and Ethel’s parents’ relationship to the enslaved women who lived in their home. Many white women in the antebellum era were complicit in white supremacy, despite white male counterparts relegating them to second-class citizens that serve in the men’s interests. The image of a “kind, industrious plantation mistress” who is less violent towards enslaved women and maintained “secret alliances” with enslaved women is a myth (Feely 2019). The myth gained traction in the twentieth century with scholars such as Anne Firor Scott and Catherine Clinton who prioritized gender over race when discussing power dynamics between white women and enslaved African Americans (Feely 2019). As a counter to this myth, Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers (2019) argues that slave-owning white women directly engaged in and benefitted from the South’s slave market, economically and socially. Jones-Rogers contends that slave-owning white women did not fight racial patriarchy because the institution of slavery enabled white privilege for men and women alike. Though white women were able to navigate the legal system so they could keep and profit from slavery without a husband’s influence, their rejection of the status quo comes at the expense of enslaved people. Slave-owning white women participated in slave auctions, inspected Black bodies, and intervened in Black women’s reproductive lives and sexuality for profit (Feely 2019). Although we do not encounter any white women slave owners, recognizing white women’s complicity in the institution of slavery calls attention to the multilayered system of white supremacy that Black women like Cora navigated in the slavery era. CORA’S RELENTLESS SEARCH FOR FREEDOM The system of white supremacy that Cora had difficulty recognizing in South Carolina, such as the inherent racism subtending medical services and her employment at the museum, follows her to North Carolina. Once again, we see how trauma can transcend time and space. Cora’s realization about the distance between the Georgia plantation and South Carolina is a fictional explanation of trauma’s persistence in her life. As Cora finds herself alone waiting for the next train to take her from South Carolina, she laments her inability to recognize she was not far enough removed from the horrors of the South. From a geographical standpoint, Cora and Caesar had only crossed the Georgia state line into another southern state. In the end, Cora is still in the South and white supremacist views on African Americans are pervasive.

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She is still subjected to metaphorical chains which are initially unrecognizable until they are binding her from head to toe. Unfortunately for Cora, she recognizes new chains and another confining space in North Carolina. Martin shows Cora the road called Freedom Trail where corpses that are either naked or partially dressed “hung from trees as rotting ornaments” (Whitehead 2016, 152). Given that Freedom Trail extends to the town, the deceased bodies serve as a symbol of what will happen to any Black man, woman, or child who is found on North Carolina soil. For in North Carolina, “the negro race did not exist except at the ends of ropes” (156). Freedom Trail also serves as a space for Cora and any other Black person to bear witness to the silent, physical testimony of the dead’s suffering. Moreover, the fate of any white abolitionists discovered harboring Black people is death by hanging, hence the reason Martin and Ethel make Cora hide in their attic. Cora’s newfound home for the next few months is the opposite of what she had in the dormitories of South Carolina. With the inability to stand in the attic, Cora has a carved hole from a previous occupant that serves as the “only source of light and air” that faces the street and park (Whitehead 2016, 154). Filtered through the narrator, Cora muses on what it means to be free or out of bondage. Freedom is described as “a thing that shifted as you looked at it” and, by extension, freedom reveals “its true limits” (179). Cora realizes that freedom has “nothing to do with chains” or spatial range (179). When she was on the plantation, “she was not free” but could move unimpeded on the land itself. However, while in Martin and Ethel’s attic, her space confines her so severely that she cannot stand (179). Cora’s experience in the attic has significant parallels to Harriet Jacobs’s experiences that she describes in her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Jacobs ran away from a plantation and spent nearly seven years hiding in an attic crawl space in her grandmother’s house and, like Cora, the space did not allow her the ability to sit or stand. Overall, both women are forced to hide from their respective captors to eventually achieve freedom. What Cora’s musings in the attic demonstrate are the plights and price of freedom. In Georgia, Cora is confined to a plantation and a master. In South Carolina, the dormitories, jobs, and leisure available to Black people are a ruse for more insidious affairs like sterilization. In North Carolina, the plantation is now the stifling, cramped space of the attic with limited rations and night riders who are eager to sacrifice and expose any Black people or abolitionists in their midst. All of this is to say that Cora exchanges one bondage format for another in her attempt to seek freedom. In any case, the attic serves as both a living prison and a haven for Cora because she remains alive with the hope of her current state being temporary. However, the hole provides Cora with a means to witness the townspeople’s depravity during the Friday Festivals. Whitehead juxtaposes the entertainment of the minstrel

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performances and terrorism by the white night riders as part of the same continuum of white supremacy. Both “theatrical” events give the white citizens a sense of power and control, which reaffirms their goal of a separate nation “free from northern interference and the contamination of a lesser race” (Whitehead 2016, 160). In addition to a minstrel show performed by white men, Cora witnesses the lynching of a Black woman named Louisa captured by night riders. Cora becomes an inadvertent witness during one of these public displays of punishment against someone who finds themselves at the hands of night riders. At this Friday Festival, Louisa is dragged onstage in physical disarray from her bloody attire and shaved head (Whitehead 2016, 159). Although Cora turns away before Louisa is lynched, she bears witness to Louisa’s trauma and the testimony of her battered body. The presence of the night riders serves as a source of anxiety for not only Cora, but also Martin and Ethel. Like the premonitions (the medical procedures and the hysterical woman) during her time in South Carolina, the tipped chamber pot, night riders searching the house, and the hanging of a husband and wife who hid two Black boys become three close calls that leave the trio shaken. Martin and Ethel are essentially prisoners because they are “terrified of the watchful eyes behind every darkened window” (179). The North Carolina section of the story ends with yet another public display of punishment. This time, Cora is on the receiving end of the punishment while also bearing witness to the fate that awaits Martin and Ethel. Cora is tossed down the stairs before being escorted outside. Martin and Ethel’s porch served as the stage for Friday’s spectacle of Black and white people alike receiving depraved and fatal punishments for the “town’s amusement” (184). The townspeople and Jamison are ready to proceed with the Friday routine of sniffing out anyone who may be empathetic to the plight of enslaved people and subsequently ridiculing them in front of the white crowd before killing them (185–86). However, the slavecatcher Ridgeway announces himself and takes Cora in his wagon, away from the scene of Martin and Ethel’s hanging. DECIPHERING MABEL’S TRAUMATIC LEGACY The dynamic between Ridgeway and Cora is significant because they both seek Mabel (Cora’s mother), though for different reasons. First, the parallel Whitehead asserts between Ridgeway and Cora is horrific and almost ironic: they both have hatred for Mabel (Whitehead 2016, 222). Furthermore, Ridgeway and Cora are subconsciously chasing Mabel in hopes of reclaiming what they lost. For Ridgeway, he lost respect amongst his peers and his reputation suffered on account of his inability to capture Mabel. For Cora, she

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lost any opportunity to have a relationship with her mother and her efforts to locate Mabel are in vain. Throughout the novel, Cora’s conflicted feelings about her mother, Mabel, exacerbate her feelings of abandonment that haunt her as she flees the plantation. On the one hand, Cora asks many people about her mother’s whereabouts. On the other hand, Cora resents her mother for running away and leaving her alone at the mercy of a vicious life on the Randall plantation. Before Cora was born, Mabel apologizes for giving birth to a child who will inevitably become enslaved. Furthermore, Mabel also apologized to Cora in her sleep “for making her a stray” (Whitehead 2016, 291). Ultimately, Cora does not hear the apologies and does not know her mother’s rationale for running away without her. Even Cora’s memories of Mabel carry very little fondness. For example, Mabel “had complained enough about her hard delivery,” the frigid weather conditions, and how she bled for days before a doctor was eventually called (Whitehead 2016, 12). This recollection serves as a reminder of how much Mabel suffered to give birth to Cora. Mabel’s struggles are not limited to Cora’s birth. In the chapter “Mabel,” we learn that Moses, a slave boss, orders her to the schoolhouse with the intention of raping her (Whitehead 2016, 292). Although she initially fights back, Moses threatens to pursue Cora, who was only eight years old at the time (292). Mabel concedes to Moses’s wishes to protect Cora before she “learns the size and heft of a woman’s burdens” (293). By the time Mabel decides to escape, she watched her mother, Ajarry, die and her friend Polly hang herself, and experienced repeated sexual assaults by the slave boss. Ultimately, Mabel resolves not to die on the Randall plantation and escapes. Mabel’s escape from the Randall plantation remains legendary, especially to the slavecatcher Ridgeway, who is a living embodiment of slavery’s impending doom and a source of perpetual trauma for Cora. The narrator explains how Mabel did not tell anyone about her plans to escape and no one admitted to knowledge after the fact (Whitehead 2016, 40). No one had successfully run away from the Randall plantation, and those who tried were captured swiftly and punished so severely that they died from their wounds. Ridgeway is enlisted by Old Randall a week after Mabel’s escape. However, after two years, Ridgeway returns empty-handed and apologizes to Old Randall for his inability to find Mabel. In the “Ridgeway” chapter, we learn that his failure to capture Mabel continues to haunt him (Whitehead 2016, 82). This apparent obsession with Mabel drives him as he searches for Cora. When Ridgeway captures Cora in North Carolina, they proceed through Tennessee and he and Cora discuss Mabel at length. Ridgeway remains dumbstruck at how Mabel eluded him all these years. He thinks Mabel is in Canada “laughing at the Randalls and me” and takes this unfounded speculation personally (Whitehead 2016, 222). He can merely speculate

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about Mabel’s whereabouts and laments her escape as a grave shortcoming on his part. Then, Ridgeway goes on to compare Cora and Mabel, specifically emphasizing their resilient natures. He tells Cora, “You and your mother are a line that needs to be extinguished” (222). In Ridgeway’s mind, Cora and Mabel serve as a glimmer of hope for future runaways that escape is possible. He even concedes that Cora and Mabel are an exception to the norm of other enslaved people who ran away and contends they are the “best of [their] race” (223). Ridgeway conflates the two women and surmises that if he can return Cora to the plantation, he will continue his mission of diminishing the hopes of any prospective runaway. Through his efforts in capturing and returning enslaved people, many others abandon their plans to run away (223). He maintains his relentless pursuit of Cora when she, yet again, escapes from him. This time, he captures her in Indiana and forces her to lead him to the Underground Railroad. Even at what becomes their final encounter, Ridgeway concedes that capturing Cora will not be a simple task because she is Mabel’s daughter and potentially capable of not being successfully captured and returned. Cora knows that Mabel is the one “who first laid him low” and that if not for Mabel’s elusiveness, Ridgeway would likely not obsessively pursue Cora (Whitehead 2016, 301). However, this realization about her mother provides little to no solace to Cora. In fact, Cora remains bitter and resentful towards her mother. Although Cora believes her mother escaped the plantation and continues to live a free life without her, the reader knows Mabel’s “freedom” is a form of salvation from trauma she suffered from on the plantation. Ultimately, Mabel’s “freedom” is a source of trauma for Cora because of the circumstances she deals with in Mabel’s absence. Cora expresses her resentment towards Mabel after she is banished to Hob, and after she unsuccessfully asks others about her mother’s whereabouts while in South Carolina and Indiana. She cannot overcome the void caused by her mother’s escape and disappearance. Because of Mabel’s departure, Cora becomes an orphan on the plantation and is relegated to Hob. Cora’s relocation to Hob is important because Hob is the place for enslaved people who are physically and mentally disabled from repeated punishments and labor, as well as for enslaved people who have no familial ties (Whitehead 2016, 16). In other words, strays like Cora fall into the last category. Ultimately, Cora realizes that she has no allies on the plantation (minus the Hob residents). She thinks, “White men eat you up, but sometimes colored folk eat you up too” (Whitehead 2016, 54). In other words, some Black people will marginalize weaker groups of people, such as Black girls and any other traumatized person who will not fight their oppression, to minimize the traumatic fallout they deal with at the hands of white people. Although Hob provides some protection for its inhabitants, one can surmise that someone like Cora would

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be at the mercy of not only the white slave masters, but also other enslaved people. Before Cora executes her escape with Caesar, she thinks of Mabel, though her memories of her mother are faint as she yearns to know where Mabel is and why she seemingly abandoned her (54). Moreover, Cora recalls her mother’s sadness and how she embodied the qualities of a Hob woman (54). Cora believes that her mother left her without so much as a loving kiss or goodbye, though the reader will eventually realize that Cora is mistaken about her mother’s actions when she escaped. Still, Mabel leaves Cora with a traumatic legacy in two ways: as a runaway who evades capture, but also as a woman who was suited to Hob due to her inability to integrate herself with other enslaved people on the plantation. Mabel’s escape becomes an additional source of trauma for Cora that follows her much like the traumatic experience of slavery and her life on the Randall plantation. Furthermore, Cora’s fractured thoughts surrounding her mother reiterate the pain she feels at her mother’s abandonment. These questions follow Cora as she leaves the plantation. When Cora and Caesar are in South Carolina, she tries to find more information about Mabel, but to no avail. Yet her effort to search for Mabel fuels her resentment. After her arrival to South Carolina, Cora “realized that she had banished her mother not from sadness but from rage,” and that “she hated her” for leaving her at the mercy of various adversaries on the plantation (Whitehead 2016, 98). Cora cannot surmise a viable explanation for why her mother left her on the plantation and, by extension, at the mercy of slave masters and other enslaved people. Although Cora believes Mabel would be proud of her for running away to freedom, Cora still regards this sentiment as an unwanted thought that she wishes she could hide or deny (97). Cora seeks to minimize any thoughts about her mother that do not yield vindication or revenge against her. Much like the enslaved people on the Randall plantation, Cora tries to claim any semblance of power she has for herself in the face of trauma. When thoughts of her mother do not result in vindication or revenge on Cora’s part, the thoughts perpetuate trauma and render Cora retraumatized. Cora is unable to reconcile her desire to know what happened to Mabel with fantasies where she enacts revenge on Mabel. For example, while trapped in Martin and Ethel’s attic, Cora fantasizes about seeing Mabel “begging in the gutter, a broken old woman bent into the sum of her mistakes” (Whitehead 2016, 171). On the one hand, Cora hates her mother and, on some occasions, thinks about ways she can enact revenge on her. On the other hand, the same dogged obsession about finding Mabel that fuels Ridgeway also exists in Cora. Nevertheless, the reader does learn what happened to Mabel. Despite the speculations by Ridgeway and others that Mabel’s journey ended in Canada and in obscurity, we learn that she was not far from the Randall plantation at

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all. Instead, Mabel found herself on the other side of a swamp. She traversed the swamp and was able to feel some semblance of freedom (Whitehead 2016, 294). Mabel fulfilled her wish to go beyond the plantation property. She also wanted to convey her brief runaway experience to Cora one day in the hopes that Cora may seek her own freedom. Even though she wanted to return to the plantation for Cora, Mabel dies by a snakebite in the swamp and her body is never found. Although readers have the benefit of learning about Mabel’s fate, Cora is not afforded the same opportunity. Instead, Mabel’s disappearance and Cora’s fruitless attempts at discovering her mother’s whereabouts ultimately manifest as repeated trauma. NEO-SLAVE NARRATIVES AND THE ROLE OF TRAUMA STUDIES Repetitive traumatic circumstances not only center the dramatic narrative in Whitehead’s novel, but also recur in the African American literary subgenre to which Whitehead contributes: the neo-slave narrative.1 Just as trauma studies bring together many ways of understanding the social and cultural implications of traumatic experiences and emotional pain, African American literary critics offer a broad consideration of slavery’s representation in contemporary African American fiction and the neo-slave narrative. One influential early contributor to this scholarly discussion is Bernard Bell, who is frequently credited with coining the term “neoslave narrative” (without the hyphen). Bell (1987) describes “neoslave narratives” as “residually oral, modern narratives of escape from bondage to freedom” that are “based primarily on folk material” (286, 289). Then, Ashraf Rushdy (1997) introduced the hyphenated term “neo-slave narrative.” The use of the hyphenated form of “neo-slave narrative” allows for “fictional varieties of the literary form: historical, social realist, magic realist, genealogical, and palimpsest novel, to name a few categories” (Kennon 2017). Rushdy (1999) provides another characteristic of the neo-slave narrative genre, which is that neo-slave narratives are concerned with the “contemporary narrativity of slavery” and are “contemporary novels that assume the form, adopt the conventions, and take on the first-person voice of the antebellum slave narrative” (3). However, A. Timothy Spaulding (2005) contends that contemporary narratives of slavery “create an alternative and fictional historiography based on a subjective, fantastic, and anti-realist representation of slavery,” while also including third-person narration, parody, satire, and science fiction (2). Although the foundations for the neo-slave narrative genre date back to Bernard Bell in 1987, the genre continues to evolve to encompass many variations in literary style. As with most traumatic experiences, the traumatic legacy of slavery

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is almost unthinkable for many people. Obviously, slavery happened and the ripple effects from slavery persist for the Black community and society at large. However, from a literature perspective, traumatic experiences still need to be rendered accessible to contemporary audiences; otherwise, stories about trauma and traumatic experience may go unread or untold. Thus, neo-slave narratives provide an adequate form of retelling the stories of their nineteenth-century slave narrative counterparts. Neo-slave narratives began as primarily based on folk material and as oral narratives. The neo-slave narratives take on characteristics such as first-person voice and as stories about freedom from bondage and slavery, which are reminiscent of the antebellum slave narrative. With more recent takes on the neo-slave narrative, we can observe the emergence of third-person voice and alternative genres of storytelling that allow for more fantastical renditions of the slavery era and one’s escape to freedom. Neo-slave narratives are primarily contemporary works set in the slavery era or which depict the experiences of enslavement in a present-day context. Examples include Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986), Ernest Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), and Margaret Walker’s Jubilee (1966), to name a few. Valerie Babb (2017) writes that neo-slave narratives “use histories of slavery to query race, gender, sexuality, place, and to debate the degree to which past practices remain current” (218). Along with the objectives Babb puts forth, I find that neo-slave narratives are helpful for understanding representations of trauma and traumatic experiences across time, which aids the discussion about the prevalence of past practices in modern contexts. That is, Babb’s emphasis on the past as current recalls my previous discussion of trauma’s recurrence. Moreover, Babb contends that neo-slave narratives “provide a means of seeing a frequently represented institution differently. They go beyond the binaries of slaves and masters, victims, and victimizers, to show the pervasiveness and complexity of a social system” (218). Although slavery lasted approximately four hundred years, the traumatic ramifications persist today in the Black community with systemic racism, poverty, police brutality, and the unspoken ways that an uninterrogated white supremacist culture objectifies and dehumanizes Black people. The surge in neo-slave narratives dating back to the twentieth century is a means to retrospectively address the traumatic effects of slavery on Black people then and now by centering a particular individual’s or family’s struggles with generational trauma stemming from slavery. Joan Anim-Addo and Maria Lima (2018) explain why we see this genre trend in African American writing about one hundred years after slavery ended. The main reasons for the widespread emergence of the neo-slave narrative genre are a “will to re-affirm the historical value of the original slave narrative and to reclaim the

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humanity of the enslaved by (re)imagining their subjectivity” (Anim-Addo and Lima 2018, 1). Neo-slave narratives operate in a similar manner to slave narratives by allowing a space for untold stories to be told, and subsequently digested by broad audiences. Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016) is a more recent publication within the neo-slave narrative genre, though his novel utilizes a third-person narrator to articulate the experiences and traumas for the characters. The third-person narration is an advantageous approach to composing neo-slave narratives because a third-person narrator can testify to the traumatic experiences in the novel to a broader audience. Moreover, a third-person narrator allows readers to glean the motivations, qualities, and circumstances of many characters beyond the protagonist. By extension, a third-person narrator also allows readers to understand the motivations of white slave owners and how white supremacy enabled the institution of slavery and mistreatment of enslaved Black people. For Whitehead’s novel specifically, such transparency from not only Cora, her mother, Mabel, and Caesar, but also the slavecatcher Ridgeway and Dr. Stevens, the white doctor who tries to persuade Cora to undergo sterilization, can potentially cause readers distress if they find themselves empathizing with the presumed antagonists. The novel corresponds with scholarly assessments of the neo-slave narrative genre, particularly with the way Whitehead incorporates elements from slave narratives like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Whitehead also mentions Douglass and Jacobs in the acknowledgments of The Underground Railroad. The use of slave narratives enables Whitehead to “gather incidents from other sources and link them together in a theorizing of race and culture in the United States” (Babb 2017, 234). For example, Whitehead creates an enslaved man called Jockey whose birthday “only came once or twice a year” (11). The narrator poses a hypothetical question about an enslaved person knowing their birthday that essentially asks what point is there in knowing the day you were born into a world where African Americans are enslaved. For the narrator, and perhaps for many of the enslaved characters in the novel, birthdays are best forgotten (25–26). The idea that “niggers didn’t have birthdays” (11) is the prevailing message for many of the slaves on the Randall plantation, including Cora, who is uncertain of her age or birthday, though she puts her age at sixteen or seventeen. The birthday example echoes Douglass’s Narrative where he laments never knowing his birth date. Another example of Whitehead’s utilizing a slave narrative within the novel’s plot is when Cora finds herself in North Carolina and is forced to hide inside the attic of a white married couple to avoid the fate of a state that “leaves lynched bodies hanging from trees as macabre reminders of who holds power” (Babb 2017, 234). As previously stated, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents follows Linda Brent (Harriet

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Jacobs’s pseudonym), a fugitive who, in her effort to achieve freedom, hides in a small garret under the roof of her grandmother’s house for nearly seven years before escaping to New York. Like Jacobs, Cora is unable to stand in the attic crawlspace and can observe outside life through a carved hole inside the attic. What contemporary African American literature, slave narratives, and neo-slave narratives reveal is a space and necessity for critical intervention that utilizes trauma studies frameworks. Aida Levy-Hussen (2016) explains that trauma theory is “instructive for readings of the contemporary narrative of slavery and its surrounding criticism,” not only because slavery was traumatic, but because “[trauma theory] joins the psychic structure of trauma to an epistemological critique of conventional modes of historical representation” (195). One reason we have the neo-slave narrative genre is because trauma associated with slavery is not confined to pre-emancipation. If anything, trauma studies encourage examination of slavery’s traumatic legacy across history to help us make sense of why African Americans remain targets for racial violence in the United States today. Another way the neo-slave narrative genre overlaps with trauma theory is that “they share an elemental curiosity about how trauma disrupts and restructures narrative itself, locating in traumatic narrativity a mode of encountering history differently” (Levy-Hussen 2016, 197). Whitehead’s novel in particular blurs historical lines to convey later traumatic histories that could easily be part of the story’s nineteenth-century context. In an NPR interview, Whitehead says, “I didn’t see any particular value in doing a straight historical novel. The use of certain fantastical elements was just a different way to tell a story. If I stuck to the facts then I couldn’t bring in the Holocaust, and the KKK, and eugenic experiments” (Gross 2018). Straying from a direct and wholly accurate timeline for events does not minimize the traumas that characters like Cora experience, but rather allows readers to see that slavery’s traumatic legacy has evolved and repeats itself in different ways. CONCLUSION We can see the ways slavery’s traumatic legacy has evolved in contemporary African American literary works like Gyasi’s Homegoing, Jones’s An American Marriage, Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, and Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. Gyasi’s novel starts readers in the early stages of colonialism and slavery in America, while Jones’s novel and Ward’s novel provide present-day settings for observing traumatic experiences and the ways we can understand trauma in modern contexts. Gyasi’s novel presents the story of Ness, an enslaved ancestor from Esi’s line of descendants who,

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along with her husband and child, run away from a plantation. However, like Cora’s friend, Ness does not get far from the plantation before she is captured. Only Ness’s son, H, successfully escapes to the North. Jones’s novel shows traumas associated with wrongful conviction and incarceration, the demise of Roy and Celestial’s marriage, and even Celestial’s navigating misogynoir from loved ones. Ward’s novel depicts traumas that occur at ghostly, unconscious levels, such as grief, death, and addiction, as well as traumas that are tied to former inmates at Parchman Farm, like Jojo’s grandfather and the ghost boy, Richie. Both novels depict the ramifications of incarceration and reveal how trauma not only follows individuals during incarceration, but also when they return to loved ones and a life that must account for their past experiences in prison. Unlike Jones and Ward, Whitehead’s novel observes traumatic circumstances during the slavery era. Like Ward’s novel, Whitehead depicts generational trauma for Cora, her mother, and her grandmother. Jones, Gyasi, and Whitehead do provide a Black woman protagonist in their respective novels and succeed in bringing awareness to Black women’s traumas, particularly how each woman is forced to be resilient and strong in the face of adversity and is unable to fully lean on others for support. Ultimately, the resilience when confronted with adversity and suppression of emotions is indicative of the strong Black woman stereotype. Black women’s attempts at being recognized as not only citizens, but also people whose lives matter and are valued, are one way they can provide testimony of their traumas. On an individual level, Cora’s collective experiences throughout the novel act as a form of testimony. As Felman and Laub (1992) explain, “testimony seems to be composed of bits and pieces of a memory that has been overwhelmed by occurrences that have not settled into understanding or remembrance, acts that cannot be constructed as knowledge nor assimilated into full cognition” (5). Cora is a runaway who has no time to reconcile one traumatic circumstance before another takes place, which is indicative of how white supremacy works to create one traumatic experience after another. Mabel’s disappearance not only resonates deeply with Cora, but so do the ramifications of being an orphan. Although the ostracism to Hob is, at times, a means of solace for Cora, the reputation of the Hob women serves as testimony for others. The Hob women’s physical and mental attributes are a testament to the harsh climate of plantation life. Later, Cora takes advantage of the opportunity to run away from the plantation. With this chance, station agent Lumbly explains how each state she may encounter is unique “with its own customs and ways of doing things” (Whitehead 2016, 68). Ultimately, Cora experiences the various possibilities that each state provides as the Underground Railroad takes her further away from the life she has known. With South Carolina, the sterilizations, syphilis experiments, and time spent as a museum display all compel Cora to question

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what freedom means, especially for Black people who manage to escape from plantations. When Cora and Caesar learn about the experiments, they are not immediately concerned because, in their eyes, the experiments pale in comparison to the life they led on the plantation (Whitehead 2016, 124). Cora and Caesar believe that even their enslaved peers would willingly accept promises of new circumstances in favor of persistent violence at the hands of white slave owners. In other words, is being property of the US government worse than being enslaved and property to a slave owner? The answers to these questions are unclear especially when confronting the horrors of slavery and being enslaved. Then, in North Carolina, Cora finds herself once again questioning what freedom means. She regards Martin and Ethel’s attic as both a “living prison” and a “haven” much like Hob (Whitehead 2016, 179). Cora acknowledges that she could move unrestricted on the plantation land, though she has a master and no freedom. However, the attic proves that freedom can still come with invisible binds or chains that prevent living life to the fullest. In other words, Cora begins to realize that freedom in many respects is an illusion because, at least in the slavery era, one can exchange guaranteed suffering on a plantation for a life of uncertainty and danger at the expense of being free from the binds of slavery. Cora is not free even though she has left the plantation because of the recurrence of her traumatic experiences. One example is that she is reluctant to dance or be in the company of too many men in the aftermath of her rape. Another example is that her mother’s disappearance and not knowing her whereabouts continue to haunt her, much to her annoyance. Yet another example is that she has occasional flashbacks to defending herself when she and Caesar fought off some white hunters attempting to capture her and her friends, specifically hitting the youngest hunter and killing him. With these examples, Cora remains mentally tethered to the plantation despite physically succeeding in escaping from Ridgeway and joining a traveling caravan presumably heading West. These thoughts are unconscious recurrences in her psyche, and trauma perpetuates the psychological enslavement. Overall, Cora and other enslaved people’s traumatic experiences are not isolated incidents. Rather, they are fictional representations of a harsh reality that plagued African Americans during the slavery era. Their experiences further iterate how African Americans’ collective trauma and traumatic experience yield important discussions that enhance trauma studies. If anything, trauma studies teach us that not only is traumatic remembering an unconscious recurrence, but also we can see that recurrence across time in various ways. This includes wrongful imprisonment, thereby separating families, instances of white people policing Black bodies, marginalizing Black women and girls by oversexualizing them, and devaluing Black women’s experiences in America. The collective trauma of slavery has affected generations

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of people long after the direct trauma took place. For the Black community, the psychological and physical damage sustained in the aftermath of slavery persists today. NOTE 1. Although most scholars use the term “neo-slave narratives,” Margo Crawford (2016) makes an argument for “post-neo-slave narratives.” Crawford contends, “The post in post-neo-slave narrative is not a chronological distinction; it is a space-clearing gesture that shows a conceptual rather than a chronological difference” (original emphasis, 71). Crawford uses the notion of space-clearing alongside an observation made about Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), specifically the novel’s inside-turned-out architecture of the psychic hold of slavery (original emphasis, 71). In other words, Crawford calls attention to the ways remembering the trauma of slavery “is often inseparable from the need to twist and turn this lingering pain inside out” (original emphasis, 71). Rather than building on the nineteenth-century slave narrative, the post-neo-slave narrative “is a move from the literary imagination that fills in the gaps (what historians cannot know) to the refusal to fill in the gaps but to linger in the unknown” (71). For the sake of this chapter, I use the term “neo-slave narratives.” However, Crawford’s discussion of “post-neo-slave narratives” provides the impetus for discussing the relationship between healing, trauma studies, and neoslave narratives, particularly Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.

Conclusion

I want to conclude this book on a hopeful, optimistic note by revisiting key moments from Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021. In addition to Kamala Harris getting sworn in as the first woman, first African American, and first Asian American vice president of the United States, another highlight from Inauguration Day was Amanda Gorman reading her poem “The Hill We Climb.” At twenty-two-years-old, Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in US history. During a conversation with Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, Gorman says, “My hope is that my poem will represent a moment of unity for our country . . . that with my words I’ll be able to speak to a new chapter and era for our nation” (Wang and Merry 2021). While a large undertaking, Gorman captures this desire as she delivers the line, “It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it” (Wang and Merry 2021). To place this line in context with my work, America’s past is riddled with nostalgia and innovation for some, and trauma and injustice for others. We are not removed from the nation’s past, no matter how distant or uncomfortable that past may be. Nevertheless, Gorman emphasizes that we have the capacity to “step into” the past and “repair it.” The prospect of repairing the past can improve the present, which suggests that a collective healing can emerge for those willing to rise to the challenge of navigating America’s past. As the introduction states, literature can provide healing that extends beyond a story’s characters to readers who can relate to trauma or traumatic circumstances. Specifically, African American literature depicts traumas with real world implications and provides the impetus for public, collective healing. Furthermore, literature that depicts traumatic experience has the potential to either portray closure for its characters or to leave their journeys open-ended for the reader to discern what happens in the aftermath of trauma. Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing offers closure when the diverging family lines collide with Marcus and Marjorie, the youngest descendants. Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage provides closure for Roy’s, Celestial’s, and Andre’s 127

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lives. Roy has a fulfilling life with a new career and romantic partner after his release from prison and his marriage to Celestial ends, while Celestial moves on with her career goals and relationship with Andre. Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing also provides closure for Jojo and his family, though this closure is bittersweet. Towards the end of the novel, Pop is finally able to unburden himself from the grief and pain he carries for killing Richie while incarcerated at Parchman and the family is collectively able to grieve Mam’s death. Overall, the family is released from their respective grief and the ghosts that haunted Jojo and Kayla can go “home” thanks to Kayla’s song. Unlike Gyasi’s, Jones’s, and Ward’s novels, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad leaves Cora’s story open-ended. We know that Ridgeway is dead and that Cora escapes on a caravan headed West. However, the possibility for further traumatization exists and Cora understands that the institution of slavery does not end by escaping the plantation and crossing state lines. Ultimately, readers whose trauma gets ignored or minimized can bear witness to characters testifying to their own traumas, which can provide a semblance of healing for readers. To be clear, healing and recovery are not linear ideas that have a tangible end. I also do not want to glorify African American literature as a healing resource that takes the place of medical professionals. Rather, healing and recovery is an ongoing process and literature is one of many approaches to recovering from trauma. As Judith Herman (1997) explains, the “fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community” (3). These stages are utilized in therapy and psychological contexts, but still have merit in the discussion of literary texts. For example, in Sing, Unburied, Sing, Pop is haunted by the traumatic memory of Richie’s death for decades. For years, Pop tells Jojo about Richie, but leaves out the boy’s death. However, after Jojo returns from the trip to Parchman Prison, Jojo insists on hearing the rest of Richie’s story. In this moment, Pop feels a sense of safety and reconstructs the trauma story. After telling Jojo the story, Pop is emotionally overcome as Jojo holds him. We can read this gesture as Pop’s reconnection to those around him from an emotional standpoint. Although Pop cannot become whole in the aftermath of his trauma, having Jojo bear witness to his testimony alleviates much of the pain he carried for years after his imprisonment. This sentiment of testifying and witnessing after traumatic experiences appears in Homegoing. For example, Akua testifies to hers and Yaw’s traumas from the night she set fire to the hut and burned them both. By extension, Yaw bears witness to his mother’s testimony and can claim a semblance of healing that enables him to marry and bare himself to another woman. Although Akua can never take away his physical scars, she does encourage him to not remain

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tethered to his traumatic legacy. Moreover, slavery’s traumatic legacy persists with Esi’s descendants, though they know the least about their ancestors. Marjorie can bear witness to Marcus’s despair at not knowing where his family comes from beyond his great-grandfather H. By visiting Ghana and giving Marcus her necklace, the reader can see how Marcus, and by extension, his ancestors are welcomed home as a healing and recovery gesture. Much like Homegoing, Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad also reflects on the traumatic legacy of slavery and the effect this has on Cora. However, Whitehead’s novel does not leave the reader with the same level of closure as Gyasi’s novel (or even Ward’s and Jones’s novels). Cora remains on the run despite Ridgeway’s death and continues to wonder about her mother’s freedom. No matter the distance between her and the plantation, Cora reckons with her traumatic experiences on her own. Especially with Whitehead’s novel, the reader is the one who bears witness to Cora’s testimonies as they are filtered through a third-person narrator. In the context of collective traumas that impact African Americans, Jones’s An American Marriage calls attention to mass incarceration and its effect on one family. Roy and Celestial are the epitome of a Black, middle-class, married couple that is on the verge of having everything they could want. However, those circumstances change after Roy is accused and later convicted for a crime he did not commit. After Roy is released from prison, he and Celestial must consider their respective journeys towards healing and recovery in the aftermath of trauma. Celestial’s journey propels her dollmaking business and towards her childhood friend (and lover) Andre, while Roy’s journey compels him to return home to Louisiana, start a business with his father, and start a new relationship with Davina. Despite Roy’s and Celestial’s respective healing journeys leading them away from each other, Jones’s novel reminds readers that remembering trauma does not mean we cannot attempt to seek healing or closure that allows us to continue living. Although these novels uplift and recognize traumatic experiences that are specific to Black women, I recognize that trauma studies are not expansive enough regarding Black women’s experiences and traumas beyond the collective trauma of slavery. However, trauma studies should not be dismissed as a viable literary theory. Using Black Feminist studies to analyze trauma that is prevalent in the Black community addresses an intersectional gap within the scholarly field of trauma studies. Navigating intersectional gaps within trauma studies goes a long way towards encompassing traumas and traumatic experiences that are indicative of other ethnic groups beyond white or European. However, the scholarly combination of trauma studies and Black Feminist studies should not be limited to literature. I contend that literature is not a closed system of representation because literature is often attentive to contemporary writers’ ties to other public acts or social movements by Black

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people that call attention to trauma for audiences. In addition to literature, aspects of Black entertainment such as sports, music, film, and television present traumatic circumstances across history. This project leaves the door open for scholarship that incorporates other forms of text that address African Americans,’ especially Black women’s, traumatic plights. One literary form that could benefit from scholarly engagement with trauma studies and Black Feminist studies is poetry. There is a wealth of African American poets to choose from whose works articulate what it means to be Black in America. Much like novels and other book-length texts, poetry collections convey broad concepts like trauma, as well as Black womanhood and girlhood. Throughout my trauma studies research, I did not find scholarship that addresses African American poetry. I am not convinced that the lack of poetry’s presence in trauma studies means that poetry is not worth placing in conversation with trauma studies. Rather, this is an opportunity to address another gap in trauma studies while also incorporating Black Feminist studies for analysis of works by African American poets. In this book, I perform a close reading of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “The Slave Mother” and reference Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb.” However, an examination of these poems is not as extensive as the analysis performed on the primary texts by Gyasi, Jones, Ward, and Whitehead. Still, my book covers a range of texts and related topics, and though poetry by African American authors would advance trauma studies and Black Feminist studies, this project succeeds in addressing the intersectional gaps that emerge when discussing trauma with the four novels selected. Another text that could benefit from scholarly engagement with trauma studies and Black Feminist studies is American sports culture. In what will likely become another book-length project, I will take the theoretical frameworks provided by trauma studies and Black Feminist studies and focus on contemporary traumas in American professional sports, namely football along with men’s and women’s basketball. I want to analyze various instances of Black athlete activism within the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), and subsequently place these activist efforts in conversation with movements such as Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name. Black athletes call attention to issues such as police brutality against unarmed people of color and pervasive instances of racism inside and outside their respective sports realms. These issues are not limited to the last five years; rather, they are a source of trauma that dates to at least slavery on account of widespread attitudes of white supremacy. Furthermore, Black athletes are not in a bubble; they maintain awareness of racial injustices in the United States and engage in public forms of witnessing to the traumas and injustices within the Black community. Whether an athlete or

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other entertainer has witnessed a traumatic experience either to themselves or others, they use their respective platforms to call attention to issues through protest or other modes of activism. These acts of protest and activism are, I argue, intended to navigate white supremacist ideologies that audiences consciously or unconsciously espouse, along with stereotypes subscribed to their identity inside and outside of the entertainment sphere. I would like to return once again to Gorman’s inaugural poem where she alludes to one aspect of America’s past: slavery. Gorman describes a time in United States’ history where Black women and girls can descend from slaves or be raised by a single parent and become anything from a poet to even a pivotal political leader like a president. On the one hand, Gorman does not shy away from the traumatic heritage for many African Americans like herself who descended from slaves. On the other hand, these lines still provide a sense of hope for Black girls and women that, they too, can rise above an inherited traumatic legacy. However, such optimism is not meant to dismiss the harsh realities for Black people in America. For example, Gorman describes her first awakening to America’s political climate. In an interview, she acknowledges her mother’s efforts at making sure Gorman was “‘prepared to grow up with Black skin in America’” and that her first political memory was of her mother “making sure she knew her Miranda rights” (Wang and Merry 2021). In other words, Gorman’s mother prepared her for the possibility (or likelihood) of interacting with law enforcement as a Black person in America. Ultimately, acknowledging the traumatic legacies of this nation and how that influences African Americans’ present circumstances can produce an atmosphere that is conducive for collective healing in the Black community and beyond.

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Index

abolition and abolitionism: newspapers, 32–33; trauma continuing after, 31 abortion, 62–63 ACLU. See American Civil Liberties Union activism: of Black athletes, 130; in civil rights movement, 35–36 addiction. See drug addiction African American history: as frame for trauma, 44; Gyasi on, 17–19, 44 African American literature: canonization of, 6–7; in healing of trauma, 127–28; Morrison on, 6–7; trauma represented in, 5–10; trauma studies and, 74 Ahad, Badia Sahar, 13n12 Alexander, Michelle, 77; on drug policy, 92; on felony convictions, 56; on mass incarceration, 49–54, 71–72 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 50 An American Marriage (Jones), 7, 8, 96, 99, 127; collective shame and trauma in, 68–70; invisible punishments in, 54–59; mass incarceration investigated in, 51–54, 71–72, 129; misogynoir investigated in, 47–48, 71–72; shame as theme in, 48 Andermahr, Sonya, 75

Angry Black Woman. See Sapphire stereotype Anim-Addo, Joan, 120 Ansley, Frances Lee, 89 Are Prisons Obsolete? (Davis), 49 arrests, 38 Asante, 17, 44 Asante Kingdom, 17, 30 The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (Gaines), 120 Babb, Valerie, 120 bad blood, 109 Bailey, Moya, 72n1; misogynoir coined by, 59 Bell, Bernard, 119 Beloved (Morrison), 6, 107–8 Bernier, François, 18 bias. See racial bias birthdays, under slavery, 121–22 Black athlete activism, 130 Black Feminist studies, 10n2; defining, 13n11; trauma studies and, 10, 11n4, 13n11, 75, 129–30 Black Lives Matter, 72n2, 130 Black men: Black women and, 102–3; criminality discourse and, 81; mass incarceration of, 50; medical racism against, 108–10 139

140

Index

Blackness, 5, 81; social mobility and, 33 Black women: Black men and, 102–3; careers of, 60; emotional labor of, 68; Harris-Perry defining politics of, 3; idealized standards of, 64–65; identity of, 3; marginalization of, 4, 15; medical racism against, 107–8; shame of, 2–5; stereotypes of, 3, 59–61; trauma studies failing to account for, 99, 100; victimization of, 102–3; Whitehead depicting, 103; white men and, 37–38, 102, 112; as witness and testimony, 102–5. See also specific topics Bouson, J. Brooks, 13n12, 97n1 Britain, abolitionism in, 32–33 British Empire, 17–18, 25; slavery in, 31 Burke, Tarana, 72n2 Butler, Octavia, 47, 120 careers, Black women and, 60 Carlson, Bonnie E., 72 Caruth, Cathy, 11n4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 41, 109, 110 Cervera, Neil J., 72 Charles, Ron, 127 Christianity, 111–12 church, 35 Civil Rights Act, 41 civil rights movement, 35–36 collective grief, 79 collective shame, in An American Marriage, 68–70 collective trauma: in An American Marriage, 68–70; of slavery, 74, 124–25 Collins, Patricia Hill, 13n11 colorism, 33–34 Combahee River Collective (CRC), 10n2, 13n13 Constitution, US, 77–78 Cool Hand Luke (film), 76 Crawford, Margo, 124n1

CRC. See Combahee River Collective Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 59; intersectionality coined by, 13n13 crime policy, 49 criminality, 53–54; Black men and discourse of, 81 crooked rooms, 2–5; drug addiction as, 85–87; generational trauma as, 76–78; maternal absence as, 16–17; of misplaced responsibility, 62–68; oppression as, 28–39; slavery as, 4 Crunk Feminist Collective, 72n1 Cullors, Patrisse, 72n2 Davis, Angela, 77; on mass incarceration, 71–72; on prisons, 49 defiance, 103–4 Dessa Rose (Williams), 120 Douglass, Frederick, 5, 47, 121; freedom of, 103 dreams, 28 drug addiction, 36, 39; in Sing, Unburied, Sing, 85–87 drug policies, 92 Dutro, Elizabeth, 79–80 emotional labor, of Black women, 68 evil, trauma as, 27–28 families: sacrifice and, 30–31; slavery tearing apart, 33; whitewashed narratives of Black, 38–40. See also fatherhood and fathers; motherhood and mothers; parenthood, trauma of Fante, 17, 44 fatherhood and fathers, 63–64; trauma and absence of, 36–37 Felman, Shoshana, 11n4, 11n5, 75, 123; on trauma and testimony, 97n2 felony convictions, Alexander on, 56 fire: in Homegoing, 23–28; as trauma symbol, 23–28; water and symbolism of, 42–43 formal control stage, in mass incarceration, 51, 53

Index

freedom: of Douglass, 103; search for, in The Underground Railroad, 113– 15; trauma and, 100 Fugitive Slave Law, 44 Gaines, Ernest, 120 Garza, Alicia, 72n2 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 5–6, 45n1 Gates v. Collier, 77 generational trauma, 76–78 Ghana, 39, 42–43 Gilman, Sander, 109 Gorman, Amanda, 127, 130–31 Great Migration, 33, 39 grief, collective. See collective grief Gyasi, Yaa, 7, 8, 12n6, 86, 96, 127; on African American history, 17–19, 44; research of, 17. See also Homegoing gynecology, 106–7. See also medical racism Harlem Renaissance, 33 Harper, Frances E. W., 107, 130 Harris, Kamala, 127 Harris-Perry, Melissa, 2; Black women’s politics defined by, 3; on shame, 3, 48, 57, 71 Hartman, Geoffrey, 4–5, 11n4 Hartman, Saidiya V., 103 Heinz, Sarah, 19 Henderson, Mae G., 15 Herman, Judith, 128 “The Hill We Climb” (Gorman), 127, 130 hip-hop culture, 59 Holocaust, 122; in trauma studies, 74–75 Homegoing (Gyasi), 7, 8, 12n6, 86, 96, 99, 127; fire as trauma symbol in, 23–28; Gyasi’s research for, 17; homosexuality in, 29–31; mothers in, 16, 19–23; oppression in, 28–39; shame in, 21–22; stone in, 16, 21–23; testifying and witnessing in, 128–29; trauma in, 16–17; water in, 39–44

141

homosexuality, 29–31 Humanities (journal), 75 Hurricane Katrina, 91 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), 114, 121, 122 infidelity, 63–64 institutional racial bias, 50 intersectionality, 10, 59; Crenshaw coining, 13n13; in trauma studies, 75, 100–101 invisible punishment stage, in mass incarceration: in An American Marriage, 54–59; shame and, 54–59; traumatization from, 56–57 Jacobs, Harriet, 5, 47, 114, 121, 122 Jezebel stereotype, 60, 68 Jim Crow, 31, 38, 44, 81 Jones, Tayari, 7, 8, 47–48, 51, 96, 127. See also An American Marriage Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E., 113 Jubilee (Walker, M.), 120 Kendall, Frances, 88 Kendi, Iram X., 18; on white supremacy, 88–89 Kindred (Butler), 120 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 53 Laub, Dori, 11n4, 11n5, 75, 123; on trauma and testimony, 97n2 Levy-Hussen, Aida, 122 Lima, Maria, 120 literature: in healing of trauma, 4–5, 127–28. See also African American literature lynching, 115, 121–22 Mambrol, Nasrullah, 74 Mammy stereotype, 59–60 Mandel, Naomi, 13n12, 97n1 mass incarceration: Alexander on, 49–54, 71–72; in An American Marriage, 51–54, 71–72, 129; of

142

Index

Black men, 50; causes of, 49; Davis on, 71–72; formal control stage of, 51, 53; individual impact of, 51; invisible punishment stage of, 51–59; racial caste in, 71–72; ramifications of, 49–50; roundup stage of, 51, 52; stages of, 51–54; as transcendent historical phenomenon, 50; trauma of, 48, 50, 51–54 Matriarch stereotype, 60 McDowell, Deborah, 103 McIntosh, Peggy, 87 McKinney, Texas, 41 medical racism: against Black men, 108–10; against Black women, 107– 8; white supremacy and, 106–10 MEMA. See Mississippi Emergency Management Agency A Mercy (Morrison), 12n6, 124n1 MeToo movement, 72n2 Middle Passage, 41–42, 82; trauma of, 40 Miller, Elise, 13n12 Miranda rights, 131 miseducation, white supremacy upheld by, 110–11 misogynoir: American Marriage investigating, 47–48, 71; Bailey coining, 59; defining, 47–48, 59; in hip-hop culture, 59; misplaced responsibility and, 62; shame and, 48; trauma from, 72; in The Underground Railroad, 113 misogyny, 59 misplaced responsibility: crooked room of, 62–68; misogynoir and, 62 missionaries, 24–25, 111–12 Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), 91 Morrison, Toni, 47, 107–8, 124n1; on African American literature, 6–7; on memory of slavery, 6 motherhood and mothers, 45, 85–86; in Homegoing, 16, 19–23; maternal

absence as crooked room, 16–17; parental trauma recognition, 19–23 Moynihan, Daniel, 38 Moynihan Report, 38 NAACP, 36 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), 103, 121 Native Son (Wright), 6, 12n8 Naylor, Gloria, 6, 12n9 neo-slave narratives, 124n1; Babb on, 120; Bell on, 119; defining, 119–20; post-neo-slave narrative, 124n1; Rushdy on, 119; surge in, 120–21; trauma studies and, 119–22; The Underground Railroad as, 119–22 The New Jim Crow (Alexander), 49–50 obroni, 25 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (film), 76 oppression, in Homegoing, 28–29 Owens, Deirdre Cooper, 106 Parchman Farm: generational trauma and, 76–78; young boys imprisoned on, 77–78 “Parchman Farm Blues,” 76 parenthood, trauma of, 19–23 penicillin, 110 Petry, Ann, 6, 12n7 pluralistic model of trauma, 12n10 police brutality, 130–31 postcolonialism, 1 post-neo-slave narrative, 124n1 power dynamics, hegemonic, 105–6 Prempeh I (King), 25 prisoners’ rights, 77–78 prisons, Davis on, 49. See also mass incarceration racial bias, 51; institutional, 50 racial caste, 50; in mass incarceration, 71–72 racial profiling, 81

Index

racism, 38; colorism, 33–34; medical, 106–10; trauma studies on, 74 recovery, stages of, 128 recreational segregation, 40–41 responsibility. See misplaced responsibility Rothberg, Michael, 13n12, 97n1 round up stage, in mass incarceration, 51, 52 Rushdy, Ashraf, 119 sacrifice, family and, 30–31 Sapphire stereotype, 60, 63, 68 Say Her Name, 130 segregation, 38; recreational, 40–41; stereotypes and, 41 September 11, 2001, 74 sexuality, 55–57; homosexuality, 29–31. See also medical racism shame, 52–53, 96; in An American Marriage, 48; of black women, 2–5; collective, 68–70; Harris-Perry on, 3, 48, 57, 71; in Homegoing, 21–22; invisible punishment and, 54–59; misogynoir and, 48 signifying, defining, 45n1 The Signifying Monkey (Gates), 45n1 Sims, James Marion, 107 Sing, Unburied, Sing (Ward), 7–9, 73, 99; drug addiction portrayed in, 85–87; generational trauma in, 76–78; research for, 77; testimony in, 78–84; trauma in, 93–96; witnessing in, 78–84 Sister Citizen (Harris-Perry), 2, 71 “The Slave Mother” (Harper), 107, 130 slavery, 28–29; birthdays under, 121–22; in British Empire, 31; collective trauma of, 74, 124–25; as crooked room, 4; families torn apart by, 33; magnitude of, 32–33; Middle Passage, 40–42; Morrison on memory of, 6; public awareness of, 5; rebirth of, 50; trade, 31–32; traumatic legacy of, 4, 73–74,

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120–21, 131; white women and, 113; witnessing and, 104. See also abolition and abolitionism; neo-slave narratives Smitherman, Geneva, 15 Social Darwinism, 109–10 social mobility, Blackness and, 33 the South, American, 32–33 Spaulding, A. Timothy, 119 Spillers, Hortense, 38 Stamped from the Beginning (Kendi), 18, 88 stereotypes: of Black women, 3, 59–61; Jezebel, 60, 68; Mammy, 59–60; Matriarch, 60; Sapphire, 60, 63, 68; segregation and, 41; Strong Black Woman, 60–61, 66–68, 69 sterilization, forced, 108 stone, as symbol in Homegoing, 16, 21–23, 42 The Street (Petry), 6, 12n7 Strong Black Woman stereotype, 60–61, 66–68, 69 Sula (Morrison), 7 swimming pools, 40–41 syphilis, 108–9 Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, 88–89 temporality, of trauma, 7 Testimony (Felman & Laub), 11n5, 75, 97n2 testimony and testifying, 11n5, 123; Black women’s bodies as, 102–5; defining, 75–76; Felman and Laub on, 97n2; in Homegoing, 128–29; levels of, 79–80; in Sing, Unburied, Sing, 78–84; Smitherman on, 15; trauma and, 78–84; in The Underground Railroad, 99–100 Tettenborn, Eva, 13n12 Thirteenth Amendment, US Constitution, 77–78 Till, Emmett, 78 Tometi, Opal, 72n2

144

Index

trauma: abolition and continuation of, 31; from absent fathers, 36–37; from activism, 35–36; African American history as frame for, 44; African American literature in healing of, 127–28; African American literature representing, 5–10; aftermath of, 93–96; benevolence of white women as, 111–13; defining, 11n3; as evil, 27–28; familial, 27–28; Felman and Laub on, 97n2; fire as symbol of, 23–28; freedom and, 100; in Homegoing, 16–17; from invisible punishment, 56–57; from legacy of slavery, 4, 73–74, 120–21, 131; literature in healing of, 4–5, 127–28; of mass incarceration, 48, 50–54; of Middle Passage, 40; from misogynoir, 72; of parenthood, 19–23; pluralistic model of, 12n10; in Sing, Unburied, Sing, 93–96; temporality of, 7; testimony and, 78–84; as transcendent historical phenomenon, 50; in The Underground Railroad, 115–19; water and, 40; Whitehead on medical violence and, 108–9; white men as source of, 37–38; white privilege and, 87–93; from white supremacy, 87–93; witnessing and, 78–84. See also collective trauma; generational trauma trauma studies, 97n1; African American literature and, 74; Black experiences uplifted in, 74–76; Black Feminist studies and, 10, 11n4, 13n11, 75, 129–30; Black women unaccounted for in, 99, 100; emergence of, 11n4; Holocaust in, 74–75; intersectionality in, 75, 100–101; Levy-Hussen on, 122; Mambrol on, 74; neo-slave narratives and, 119–22; race in, 97n1, 98n3; on racism, 74; white European perspectives in, 74–75; white privilege and, 96

Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male, 108–9 Underground Railroad, 100 The Underground Railroad (Whitehead), 7, 9–10, 12n6, 128; freedom sought in, 113–15; hegemonic power dynamics portrayed in, 105–6; misogynoir portrayed in, 113; as neo-slave narrative, 119–22; resilient Black girl struggles in, 100–102; traumatic legacy in, 115–19; white supremacy portrayed in, 106–11; white women in, 111–13; witnessing and testimony in, 99–100 “undersirables,” 49 United States (US), 77–78 “Unspeakable Thing Unspoken” (Morrison), 6–7 US. See United States Vickroy, Laurie, 13n12, 97n1 Walker, Alice, 13n11 Walker, Margaret, 120 Ward, Jesmyn, 7–9, 128; on Mississippi, 73; research for, 77. See also Sing, Unburied, Sing War of the Golden Stool, 17, 25 Washington, Harriet, 106 Wasserman, B., 17 water: fear of, 40–42; fire and symbolism of, 42–43; in Homegoing, 39–44; trauma and, 40 White, Bukka, 76 Whitehead, Colson, 7, 9–10, 12n6, 47, 99, 128; Black women depicted by, 103; on medical violence and trauma, 108–9. See also The Underground Railroad white men: agency of, 37–38; Black women and, 37–38, 102, 112; as trauma source, 37–38 white privilege: McIntosh on, 87; trauma and, 87–93; trauma

Index

studies and, 96; white supremacy distinguished from, 88–89 white supremacy, 96; medical racism and, 106–10; miseducation upholding, 110–11; trauma from, 87–93; in The Underground Railroad, 106–11; white privilege distinguished from, 88–89 white women, in The Underground Railroad, 111–13 Williams, Sherley Anne, 120

145

witnessing: Black women’s bodies, 102–5; defining, 75–76; drug addiction, 85–87; in Homegoing, 128–29; levels of, 79, 98n3; in Sing, Unburied, Sing, 78–84; slavery and, 104; trauma and, 78–84; in The Underground Railroad, 99–100 The Women of Brewster Place (Naylor), 6, 12n9 Worse Than Slavery (Oshinsky), 77 Wright, Richard, 6, 12n8

About the Author

Apryl Lewis, PhD, is an English instructor at Fresno City College. Her areas of specialization are African American literature, Black Feminist studies, and trauma studies. Along with a publication with Women, Gender, and Families of Color, she has book chapters forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press and Routledge. Apryl completed her PhD and BA in English at Texas Tech University and her MA in English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

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