Open AccessCollective Memory and Cultural Trauma in Female-Authored African American Life Narratives
Author(s) -
Michelle Santos Gontijo,
Thomas Laborie Burns
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
literatura e autoritarismo
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1679-849X
DOI - 10.5902/1679849x42516
Subject(s) - narrative , spanish civil war , period (music) , collective memory , history , girl , african american , cultural memory , gender studies , literature , sociology , psychology , anthropology , art , ethnology , political science , law , aesthetics , archaeology , developmental psychology
This study examines the relationship between collective memory and slavery as a cultural trauma in female-authored African American life narratives in the earlier decades of the development of this tradition in African American literature. The literary corpus focuses on Harriet Jacobs’ slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Susie King Taylor’s Civil War account, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops Late 1st S. C. (1902). Both texts reveal African American women’s underground memories (POLLAK, 1989) of antebellum period and the period of the American Civil War that challenge the national memory and American history-writing.