The challenges of recovering from individual and cultural trauma in Toni Morrison’s "Home"

Authors

  • Aitor Ibarrola Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6018/ijes/14/1/179921
Keywords: Trauma Fiction, Toni Morrison, Home, Traumatic Memories, Politics of Mourning, Cultural Trauma, Recovery Processes, Representation of Trauma

Supporting Agencies

  • Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (code
  • FFI 2011-03833)

Abstract

The journey back home to Lotus, Georgia, that the protagonist of Morrison’s latest novel, Frank Money, undertakes is planted with too many obstacles to turn it into the kind of “reconnecting experience” that would help him to recover from the traumas he suffers from. Frank’s sense of alienation is exacerbated by some hateful childhood memories, his participation in the Korean War and his painful losses there, the failure to support the woman he loves, and the racism that he still experiences in the U.S. of the 1950s. Home (2012) offers amplegrounds to discuss topics such as acts of remembrance, memory traces, the politics of mourning, and direct (and indirect) representations of trauma and sorrow. Yet, the main question the novel poses is to what extent Frank’s journey to rescue his younger sister, Cee, helps him to achieve some kind of redemption and whether that redemption is fully materialized at the end of the novel.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6018/ijes/14/1/179921

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Author Biography

Aitor Ibarrola, Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz teaches courses in migrant fiction, ethnic relations and film adaptation at the University of Deusto, Bilbao. He has published articles on minority and immigrant narratives, the pedagogy of literature and cinema, and processes of cultural hybridisation. Currently, he is the Director of the MA Program in Migrations and Social Cohesion and Head of the Modern Languages and Basque Studies Dept. in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the UD. He has edited several volumes: Fiction and Ethnicity in North America (1995), Entre dos mundos (2004), Migrations in a Global Context (2007). He is working at the moment on a book on trauma and ethnicity, and two projects on religious diversity.
Published
13-02-2014
How to Cite
Ibarrola, A. (2014). The challenges of recovering from individual and cultural trauma in Toni Morrison’s "Home". International Journal of English Studies, 14(1), 109–124. https://doi.org/10.6018/ijes/14/1/179921
Issue
Vol. 14 No. 1 (2014): Open Issue
Section
Articles

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