Trauma and the Formation of Radical Black Girl Subjectivity in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber

Abstract

In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990), bell hooks argues for a postmodern radical Black subjectivity that “quest[s] to find ways to construct self and identity that are oppositional and liberatory” (29). For Black girls in a postmodern moment, traumatic experiences, such as racial violence and sexual abuse, impact their construction of “self and identity.” Although Black girls’ postmodern experiences may not necessarily be vastly different from those Black women experience in other historical moments, I contend that such trauma does not prevent a postmodern radical Black subjectivity from emerging in young Black girls, who are often neglected within discussions of racial and gender oppression. However, the radical world-making of Afrofuturism provides space for Black girls to narrate their trauma and imagine new ways to develop an oppositional positionality. The protagonist Tan-Tan in Nalo Hopkinson's speculative novel Midnight Robber illustrates how Black girls can overcome and create a radical postmodern subjectivity by seeking personal justice and community accountability.