Cultural Memory And The Self-definition Of African Americans In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead is a well-known African American writer.His latest novel The Underground Railroad(2016)won the National Book Award for fiction in 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2017.Previous researches of the novel mainly deal with the narrative strategies or themes involving initiation,trauma,liberty and identity.This thesis studies The Underground Railroad based on Jan Assmann’s Cultural Memory Theory,focusing on cultural memory hidden in the memory fragments of African Americans such as the underground railroad,the museum and the hospital,and exploring the roles of cultural memory in their self-definition under the slavery by tracing back to the cultural and historical contexts of the novel.Cultural memory helps individuals or groups to locate their identity.African Americans reestablished their identity thanks to the collective knowledge passed on generation after generation.This thesis elaborates the concrete embodiment of cultural memory from the dimensions of time,space and culture in The Underground Railroad.Temporally,the cultural memory of black triangle trade has become the origin of American Africans’ identity.Spatially,the significant localities and space carry the memory of African Americans being oppressed under the slavery and being marginalized in American society.Culturally,cultural memory becomes the symbol of African Americans’ pursuit of freedom and equality.This thesis holds that cultural memory involves the legacy of traditional African culture and all the hardships that African Americans suffered on the American Continent.It helps African Americans to reconstruct their subjectivity under the slavery and inspires them to strive for freedom and equality.Whitehead’s emphasis on the past and memory in the novel manifests his considerations on the relationship between cultural memory and self-definition.Such a rewriting reveals his intention to encourage African Americans to affirm the values of their culture and to raise their sense of racial pride in the multicultural environment.