Haiti’s “Painful Truths”: A Postcolonialised Reading of Trauma in Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.43.2022.265-287

Keywords:

postcolonial trauma, systemic rape, resilience, victimisers, Haitian American literature

Abstract

Drawing on a postcolonialised approach to the traditional trauma paradigm, this paper analyses Roxane Gay’s novel An Untamed State as a trauma narrative which does not solely revolve around the Haitian American protagonist’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ensuing her abduction and violation in Port-au-Prince, as suggested by previous critical work. Particularly, it aims to demonstrate that Gay’s heroine is a resilient survivor of both a rape-related trauma and the traumatic blow to her partly Haitian identity caused by her direct contact with Haiti’s social and gender issues. Lastly, the essay examines how the novel delves into the unresolved cultural traumas derived from the effects of (post)colonialism in Haiti, which push the protagonist’s victimisers to commit such terrible acts.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV. American Psychiatric Association, 1994.

Brison, Susan J. “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self.” Acts of Memory. Cultural Recall in the Present, edited by Mieke Bal et al., UP of New England, 1999, pp. 39–54.

Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, Johns Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 100‒12.

Caruth, Cathy. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Caruth, Johns Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 3–12.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.

Casimir, Leslie. “Reporting Silence.” The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States. Edited by Edwidge Danticat, Soho, 2001, pp. 167–70.

Craps, Stef. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

d’Adesky, Anne-Christine, et al. Beyond Shock: Charting the Landscape of Sexual Violence in Post-Earthquake Haiti. UCSB Center for Black Studies Research, 2012.

Duramy, Benedetta F. Gender and Violence in Haiti: Women’s Path from Victims to Agents. Rutgers UP, 2014.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Grove Press, 1967.

Gay, Roxane. An Untamed State. Black Cat, 2014.

Garvey, Johanna X. K. “Fissured Memory and Mad Tongues: The Aesthetics of Marronnage in Haitian Women’s Fiction.” Madness in Black Women’s Diasporic Fictions, edited by Caroline A. Brown and Garvey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 103–38.

Glissant, Édouard. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Translated by Michael Dash, UP of Virginia, 1989.

Hallward, Peter. Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment. Verso, 2007.

Herrero, Dolores, and Sonia Baelo-Allué. Introduction. The Splintered Glass: Facets of Trauma in the Post-Colony and Beyond, edited by Herrero and Baelo-Allué, Rodopi, 2011, pp. ix–xxvi.

hooks, bell. “Doing It for Daddy.” Constructing Masculinity, edited by Maurice Berger et al., Routledge, 1995, pp. 98–106.

hooks, bell. Yearning Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Routledge, 2015.

James, Erica C. Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti. U of California P, 2010.

Jean-Charles, Régine M. Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary. Ohio State UP, 2014.

Jean-Charles, Régine M. Review of An Untamed State, by Roxane Gay. Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2015, pp. 203–06.

LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.

Lamour, Sabine. “The Toxic Masculinity of the ‘Legal Bandit’.” NACLA: Report on the America, vol. 1, no. 53, 2021, pp. 88–93.

Lundahl, Mats. Poverty in Haiti: Essays on Underdevelopment and Post Disaster Prospects. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Mardorossian, Carine M. Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered. Rutgers UP, 2014.

Martínez-Falquina, Silvia. “Postcolonial Trauma Theory in the Contact Zone: The Strategic Representation of Grief in Edwidge Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light.” Humanities, vol. 4, 2015, pp. 834–60.

Pleck, Joseph H. “Men’s Power with Women, Other Men, and Society: A Men’s Movement Analysis.” Feminism and Masculinities, edited by Peter F. Murphy, Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 57–68.

Rothberg, Michael. “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: A Response.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 40, 2008, pp. 224–34.

Visser, Irene. “Decolonizing Trauma Theory: Retrospect and Prospects.” Humanities, vol. 4, 2015, pp. 250–65.

Downloads

Published

23/11/2022

How to Cite

Roldán-Sevillano, L. “Haiti’s ‘Painful Truths’: A Postcolonialised Reading of Trauma in Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State”. ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, no. 43, Nov. 2022, pp. 265-87, doi:10.24197/ersjes.43.2022.265-287.

Issue

Section

Articles