[en] Abstract
Title: Forced Displacement and Its Traumatic Effects in Toni Morrison’s Home and A Mercy
In my talk, I explore how Morrison’s A Mercy and Home revisit the theme of mother-daughter
relationship as well as issues of homelessness and traumatic displacements. I will begin my talk by demonstrating how Morrison underscores African Americans’ objectification and addresses the legacies of traumatic displacements because of racist practices and slavery. In Home, I explore how Morrison portrays the difficulties experienced by African Americans as they attempt to re-envision and reconstruct the concept of home in a land of deep racial animus. Because of Jim Crow practices in the American South that give rise to everyday indignities, brutal violence, and traumatic displacements, the correlation with home and the South is only a vague promise for many black Americans. Using postcolonial and trauma theories (Homi K. Bhabha, Kelly Oliver,
J. Brooks Bouson and Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber) I attempt to show how mobility is used to address issues of family dislocations, motherlessness, ruptured communities, and socioeconomic marginalization. By featuring Frank Money’s and Florens’s displacements, I argue that home must be regarded as an imagined ideal that enables healing and self-validation. Central to this is the deconstruction of idealized notions of manhood and feminine subjectivity that impede self-awareness and true spiritual growth.