Race, Interdependence and Healing in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child

Abstract

Abstract In Toni Morrison’s works, traumatized characters are victimized by the damaging, racist dominant ideology that still codifies black bodies as the non-human “Other” due to the long-lasting effects of slavery and diasporic dispersal. These individual and collective traumas seemingly hinder their articulation of healthy forms of subject formation and community-building efforts. My contention is that in God Help the Child (2015) Morrison explores the ramifications of early trauma in her characters’ lives but also, more importantly, an array of resistance strategies, which facilitate healing, within an ethics of interdependence. Hence, Morrison critiques fundamental inequities in American society and around the world, by paying attention to the intersections of race, gender, and age discourses.