“This Ain’t the Way It’s S’posed to Be”: Negotiating Trauma Through Postmemory and Implication in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the negotiation of the traumas of slavery and its legacies in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) deviates from traditional trauma literature in terms of its form and content. Gyasi’s novel is shown to be structured as a postmemorial family saga, allowing it to highlight the transgenerational and transtemporal effects of trauma in a way that differs markedly from the modernist aesthetics prescribed by traditional trauma theory. Homegoing features a confrontational approach, as it represents trauma directly and explicitly, whilst positioning the reader and several characters as implicated subjects. The novel moreover shows itself attuned to the complexities of trauma by featuring cases of insidious trauma and emphasising how traumas may be rooted in structural issues.