h is paper aims at tackling the question as to why Sula as a social nonconformist and sexual dissident ends up as an avatar of evil, a powerless victim of witch-hunt and eventually a scapegoat for the decline and misfortunes of her community. To facilitate this critical task, this paper shall i rst apply Michel Foucault's genealogy of "the body as the bearer of pleasure and desire" as laid out in Abnormal to illustrate that Christian folks in Sula's community interpret Sula's nonconformity as evil and treat her as a danger to their social order. h us, this paper argues that the black folks' ostracism of Sula betokens their mass hysteria and witch-hunt to exorcise their community of danger and evil. Moreover, this paper suggests that Sula is gendered and racialized as a black witch and symbolically executed. In conclusion, this paper contends that an identii cation of body with l esh, a phallocentric gender ideology and race bias converge into the black folk's association of Sula with a witch and a danger and their subsequent victimization of Sula as a scapegoat for all the misfortunes of their community. Keywords: body politics; gender politics; Toni Morrison; Sula; witch, witch-hunt.
This paper explores how Jennifer Chow’s The 228 Legacy (2013) recaptures the buried hi/stories of the 228 Massacre with a trauma narrative about Silk’s deep-kept secrets. It first delineates the evolution of trauma theory and trauma fiction highlighting the significance of articulating trauma and its relevance in healing, hi/storytelling and identity construction. This demarcation shall frame a critical lens to illustrate how Chow innovates distinct insulated narratives on the protagonists to mimic intergenerational ramifications of trauma in the Lu family, to represent their psychological healing and to express the association between silence-breaking, remembering and identity construction. This critical endeavor will also demonstrate that Silk’ story of survival promises the survival of hi/story. Thus, the novel proper not only portrays the traumatic impact, a nightmarish “legacy,” of 228 but also renders Silk’s trauma narrative as the “legacy” to connect with Taiwanese heritage and construct Taiwanese American identities. Given Chow’s innovative form and unique themes about trauma and Taiwanese American diaspora, the article situates her novel in the emerging Taiwanese American literature, Asian American literature, contemporary American diasporic literature and trauma fiction.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.