Racism, Memory and Trauma in Canada and the 'Soucouyant'

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Rostock (Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Witchcraft, Memory, and the Legacy of Sugar in Caribbean Literature, language: English, abstract: African American slavery and racism that black people and other ethnic minorities often had and still have to face in their every-day lives in Canada, are disabled from Canadian history and their modern representation. When associations are made to the topic of slavery, most people do not know that slavery existed in Canada, because slave trade mostly took place in the larger Atlantic Ocean and America. Therefore it was suppressed from Canadian's history, even if it is very much a part of it. The novel Soucouyant by David Chariandy, published in 2007, picks out main topics as forgetting and remembering, trauma, dislocation, family but also racism as a central theme. However, I want to emphasize on all these themes in the subsequent chapters - whereas the topic of family will be on the fringes. Also, I would like to present how racism in Canada developed and how a traumatic event is processed in one's mind. For the illustration of these subjects, I will use the novel Soucouyant, as well as The Hanging of Angélique - but will mostly concentrate on Soucouyant because it allows a great deal of interpretation in the context of themes as racism, memory and trauma.

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