earticle

영어

This paper examines how the racial trauma experienced by Frank and Ycidra (pronounced Isidra) and discusses the process of their regaining agency as free Black Americans. The racial trauma that Black Americans experienced created psychological oppressions within them revealing undesirable influences and traits in their personalities. Centuries after obtaining freedom from their physical and psychological enslavement, many Black Americans are still stigmatized so much as to possess distorted personalities with the lingering ‘memories of trauma.’ Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison introduces us to the tumultuous life of siblings, Frank and Ycidra “Cee” Money in her 2012 novel, Home. The sibling’s journey back to their hometown in Lotus, Georgia is not without challenging obstacles, which compelled them to reconnect and confront the trauma of their past in a quest of obtaining their agency as free blacks during the American Golden Age. The repulsive memories of racial violence they witnessed during their childhood and the tenacious racism they have to undergo in the US during the 1950s added up in the fragmentation of their agency. For Frank, rescuing Ycidra from the foreboding threat of death from the hands of a white male eugenicists is a form of redemption and healing from the emasculation he experienced. For Ycidra, becoming independent from Frank and gaining connection to the community of women is a method of healing to gain her own sense of agency.