trauma and home; (im)mobility and displacement; african american literature
Abstract :
[en] Toni Morrison’s novel Home narrates Frank Money’s journey to save his unsuspecting sister,
Cee, from her employer, a physician who uses her body as a scientific experiment to prove his
racist, eugenist beliefs. In the process, it recounts Frank’s own difficulties as he copes with his
traumatic experiences as a result of his involvement in the Korean War. In my talk, I explore
how Toni Morrison’s Home 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 that give rise to everyday indignities, brutal violence, and
traumatic displacements, home is only a vague promise for many black Americans. I will begin
my talk by demonstrating how mobility is used to address issues of family dislocations, ruptured
communities, and socioeconomic marginalization. By featuring Frank Money’s frequent
displacements after his return from the Korean War in the 1950s, I argue that rather than home
as a specific geographical or physical location, it must be regarded as an imagined ideal that
enables healing and self-validation. Central to this is the deconstruction of idealized notions of
manhood that impede self-awareness and true spiritual growth.
