Toni Morrison’s Trauma Writing

Toni Morrison is one of the most significant writers in African-American literature.Her works, mainly focusing on the Black’s life, play a very important role in the world literature, and they are highly praised for the characters, the use of the language, and the vivid story as well as the rich imagination. In 1993, Toni Morrison became the first African American female writer who was awarded Nobel Prize in literature, which symbolizes that Black writers have won the real recognition in the global literature.With her own special writing techniques, she shows the readers a series of problems in Black Community caused by the unequal treatment such as racial discrimination and the Black’s mentality under the condition of oppression and depression. Additionally, she also depicts that the black people, with their traditional culture and merits, can reflect on the past, grasp the present and look to the future, and finally get the courage to save their soul and pursue the glorious and delightful future.Most researches on Morrison’s works mainly focus on the slavery’s influence on either black motherhood or the mother-daughter relationships by applying the feminist theory, narratology, cultural criticism and so on. But this dissertation intends to give an exploration into Morrison’s trauma writing techniques by analyzing her two famous novels---- Beloved and Paradise with the trauma theory. Through research and analysis of those two novels, we try to find out the characteristics of Morrison’s trauma writing.According to our studies, we find that Morrison created a lot of trauma plots in her works, especially under the condition of the cruelty of slavery. The Black had suffered from disappointing experience and hardship. They inherited the trauma from their forefather in the forms of the family trauma, national trauma, cultural trauma and psychological trauma, and recovered from it by strategies of telling traumatic stories,testimony and reconnecting with others.