"Their baggage a long line of separation and dispersement": Haunting and Trans-generational Trauma in Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Abstract

In August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone traumatic events in the lives of past generations return to haunt the characters of the play. This article argues that the horrors of the Middle Passage and of slavery have caused an ontological rupture that produces haunting. The unknown and untold stories of a violent past-a silence that marks the rupture-are loaded with traumatic material, which is unwittingly transmitted from one generation to another. In Joe Turner this trans-generational trauma, which is inextricably linked with questions of mourning and melancholia, is manifest in the traumatized character of Herald Loomis, whose personal experiences of violence mirror those of his ancestors, as well as in the on-going struggle between Western influences and African heritage in the play.