Narrating Violence and Its Attendant to Trauma in Immaculée Ilibagiza’s <i>Left to Tell</i>

Abstract

The Rwanda genocide has spawned a great deal of new literary works that draw inspiration from its experience. Specifically, over the last three decades, violence and trauma are vital contributing thematic focuses in Rwandan post genocide literary works. This study was therefore designed to examine the representations of the experiences of the victims of the genocide in order to establish how violence induces trauma in the characters. Postcolonial theory and trauma were adopted as the framework basically to examine the challenges of violence perpetuated by the state against her citizens, as well as interrogate the traumatic state of the characters, while interpretive design was used for critical analysis of the text. Immaculée Ilibagiza’s <i>Left to Tell</i> inscribes different traumatic situations such as bereavement, grief, psychological dislocation, and physical threat to life, as influenced by interpersonal and collective violence to describe her experiences and that of other victims as they journey in isolation and silence as the perpetrators of the genocide lurk around their protector’s residence. The writer exposes the dangers of socio-political violence. This prose narrative helps to unburden the writer’s pains while helping others to have a grasp of the challenges Rwandans faced during the genocide. This study establishes the dangers of bad governance, the harsh realities of war and the intertwined relationship between violence and trauma.