https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.005
Black Bodies and Blue Histories: Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots
Anagha Rajan
Research Scholar
Maharaja’s College (Autonomous) Ernakulam, Kerala
Dr Lekshmi R Nair
Professor of English
Government College Kottayam, Kerala
Abstract: This paper titled “Black Bodies and Blue Histories: Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots” explores the entangled domains of trauma, gendered violence, conflicting identities, resistance, and theological reorientation. The selected texts are rooted in divergent cultural contexts and are published nearly four decades apart, 1982 and 2024 respectively. Hence, this paper delves into a comparative analysis of how both authors narrate the notions of pain, trauma, resistance and healing. Drawing on the chromatic symbolism of blue as melancholy, bruising, and memory of how pain is lived through generations, this paper navigates through Black trauma as affective, and embodied histories. As trauma extends beyond emotional and sensory dimensions, encompassing the social, cultural and historical elements, the paper evaluates the thematic intersections and the narrative forms of both texts. It foregrounds gender discrimination and trauma as a reality rather than an abstract idea, reinforced by years of social conditioning that has to be consciously unlearned. It examines the lives of Black women on how they navigate through suppression, trauma and how they reclaim their voices. The theoretical contributions of Alfred Adler, Cathy Caruth, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir and Kimberle Crenshaw have informed the understanding of trauma and its transmission, and the intersectioality of race, gender and class as depicted in the select texts. By engaging in selected vital cultural texts with the aid of theories of collective trauma and gender, and the concept of spiritual metanoia the paper seeks a deeper understanding of the resilience and potency of Black womanhood.
Keywords: Collective Trauma, Black Feminism, Spiritual Metanoia, Gender Anxieties
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