Collective Memory and Cultural Trauma in Female-Authored African American Life Narratives

Authors

  • Michelle Santos Gontijo Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  • Thomas LaBorie Burns UFMG

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5902/1679849X42516

Keywords:

African American autobiography, Collective memory, Cultural trauma.

Abstract

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.

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Author Biographies

Michelle Santos Gontijo, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Mestranda em Literaturas de Língua Inglesa junto ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Literários (Póslit), da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG).

Thomas LaBorie Burns, UFMG

Professor do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Literários, área de Literaturas de Língua Inglesa, na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG).

References

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CRENSHAW, Kimberle. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, Chicago, IL, no. 4, pp. 139-167, 1989.

DORIANI, Beth Maclay. Black Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century America: Subversion and Self-Construction in Two Women’s Autobiographies. American Quarterly, Baltimore, MD, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 199–222, June, 1991.

DOUGLASS, Frederick; JACOBS, Harriet. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself/Harriet Jacobs. New York: Modern Library, 2000.

EVARISTO, Conceição. Becos da Memória. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Pallas, 2017.

EVARISTO, Conceição. Gênero e Etnia: uma escre(vivência) de dupla face. In: MOREIRA, Nadilza Martins de Barros; SCHNEIDER, Liane (Ed.). Mulheres no Mundo: etnia, marginalidade e diáspora. João Pessoa, PB: Ideia, pp. 201–212, 2005.

EVERTS, Cynthia Ann. Unbounded: Susie Kind Taylor’s Civil War. Thesis (Master’s in Liberal Arts in Extension Studies — Harvard Extension School, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2016.

EYERMAN, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the formation of African American identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

EYERMAN, Ron. Memory, Trauma, and Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

JAMES, Jennifer C. A Freedom Bought with Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil War to World War II. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

HALBWACHS, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translation by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1992.

OLNEY, James. “I Was Born”: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature. Callaloo, Baltimore, n. 20, p 46-73, Winter, 1984.

POLLAK, Michael. Memória, esquecimento, silêncio. Revista Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro, v. 2, n. 3, p. 3-15, junho, 1989

RUSSEL, Nicolas. Collective Memory before and after Halbwachs. The French Review, Bozeman, MO, vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 792–804, March, 2006.

SAYRE, Robert F. Autobiography and the Making of American. In: OLNEY, James (Ed.). Autobiography: essays theoretical and critical. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

SEKORA, John. Black Message/White Envelope: Genre, Authenticity, and Authority in the Antebellum Slave Narrative, Baltimore, MD, Callaloo, no. 32, pp. 482–515, Summer, 1987.

TAYLOR, Susie King. Reminiscences of My Life in Camp: An African American Woman's Civil War Memoir. Ed. Catherine Clinton. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999.

Capa do Dossiê n. 23 com o título "Em torno da memória e do testemunho"

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Published

2020-05-16

How to Cite

Santos Gontijo, M., & Burns, T. L. (2020). Collective Memory and Cultural Trauma in Female-Authored African American Life Narratives. Literatura E Autoritarismo, (23). https://doi.org/10.5902/1679849X42516

Issue

No. 23 (2020): Dossiê "Em torno da memória e do testemunho"

Section

Artigos

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Declaro que o presente artigo é original e não foi submetido à publicação em qualquer outro  periódico nacional ou internacional, quer seja em parte ou na íntegra. Declaro, ainda, que após publicado pela Literatura e Autoritarismo, ele jamais será submetido a outro periódico. Também tenho ciência que a submissão dos originais à Literatura e Autoritarismo implica transferência dos direitos autorais da publicação digital. A não observância desse compromisso submeterá o infrator a sanções e penas previstas na Lei de Proteção de Direitos Autorais (nº 9610, de 19/02/98).