On The Intergenerational Transmission Of The Racial Traumatic Memory In Toni Morrison's Novels

Toni Morrison,the first African-American female awarded the Nobel Prize in literature history,has published eleven novels since 1970.She writes the stories,especially the trauma stories,of many African-American families consisted of three generations in almost each of these novels.The three generations have their own traumatic experiences,but the experiences of each generation have a successive relationship which leads to an intergenerational transmission based on a family unit.This article aims to analyze the narration of the intergenerational transmission of the racial trauma in Morrison's novels on the basis of the theory of trauma associated.Except the introduction,the main body of the article will be divided into three sections.The first chapter of this article will focus on the generation who transmits the trauma to analyze the mechanism of how trauma is transmitted to the later generations.Among the three generations,the trauma of the parents' generation influences their children mainly through the bodies while the grandparents' generation influences them mainly through the language.This chapter will mainly analyze the difference of these two mechanisms.The second chapter will focus on the generation who inherits the trauma,especially the later generations' different reactions to the antecedents' traumatic memory,to analyze the ethical dilemma resulted by the the dual character of the African-Americans' traumatic memory.Morrison not only describes how trauma is transmitted to the later generations,but also describes the later generations' reaction to the inherited trauma.These reactions are quite different.Some want to forget while the others prefer to remember.At the same time,the ways to remember are also different.Some want to remember in an intact way while the others choose to reconstruct the antecedents' memory.These different choices reflect the dual character of the African-Americans' traumatic memory.It provide a frame of the self-identity construction,but the emotion of the exclusivity and hatred hidden in the memory will probably bring catastrophe to the African-Americans.Starting from the problem of whether the intergenerational transmission of the racial trauma has been stopped or not,the third chapter will comparatively analyze the latest and the formernovels of Morrison to further study her negative attitude to the question whether the intergenerational transitive trauma of slavery happened on the African-Americans has been cured or not.As for whether trauma has been cured or not at the end of each book,the most researchers make the conclusion that Morrison is optimistic about the future of the African-Americans,because they think the characters in her books have cured themselves through narration.But actually the trauma hasn't been totally cured at the end of every story of Morrison.Her latest novel God Help the Child put the background of the story at 21 st century when Morrison wrote the novel.The theme and structure of it echo correspondly to the Bluest Eye written the earliest among all her books and the Mercy whose story time is the earliest.From the angle of the three generations,she describes big things through small ones by using the intergenerational transmission of the slavery trauma in many African-Americans' families to reflect the intergenerational transmission of cultural trauma memory to the whole race.By emphasizing the intergenerational transmissibility,Morrison aims to warn the contemporary African-Americans to be constantly alert to the racialism taking on new forms.