FRACTURED IDENTITIES IN FICTIONALIZED AUTOETHNOGRAPHIES: AN ANALYSIS OF TONI MORRISON’S A MERCY (2009) AND JUNOT DÍAZ’S THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (2007)

Abstract

A major portion of American literary criticism is directed towards an attempt to examine the implications of cultural trauma and resulting impacts on the identity formation of various ethnicities that color the demography of the Americas. The current study attempts to analyze the traumatic cultural experiences of ethnicities that do not belong to the mainstream dominant white culture. In an attempt to decipher the cultural trauma, two seminal works of American fiction are selected. Amongst the selected novels, A Mercy (2009) by Tony Morrison symbolize the experience of women with respect to identity distortion and ethnic subjugation while The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Diaz is an account of the implications of dictator, Rafeal Trujillato’s on the process of identity disruption in those who belong to the Haitian-Dominican-American diaspora. These divisions of American multicultural panorama, present important dissections that also helps to understand the cultural wars that initiated since the 1980s. There are several common threads that connect the two works, where primarily being autoethnographies, they are culturally representative narratives. Their respective authors have made efforts to display the identity struggles in his/her ethnic group in an otherwise large pool of ethnicities that constitute the vast cultural landscape of the United States. The theory of “Hybridity” by Homi K Bhabha has been taken as a theoretical model for investigations in this study. Qualitative research paradigm has been employed, where analysis has been made through analytical approach, using archival method. It has been found that the collective memories staged in the discussed works point to ethnic differences, where such marginalization has contributed to massive exasperation and atrocities. The current investigation into contemporary American fiction has brought forward the cultural trauma and resulting identity crises experienced by the marginalized sections in an attempt to gain placement in the mainstream landscape. Keywords : Fractured Identities, Fictionalized Autoethnography, Hybridity.