Long, Lisa A.: A relative pain: the rape of history in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Phyllis Alesia Perry's Stigmata.
College English (64:4) [Mar 2017] , p.459-483.
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A relative pain: The rape of history in Octavia Butler's Kindred and /英语教学论文Phyllis Alesia Perry's Stigmata
Lisa A Long. College English. Urbana: Mar 2017.Vol. 64, Iss. 4; pg. 459, 25 pgs
People: Perry, Phyllis Alesia, Butler, Octavia E
Author(s): Lisa A Long
Document types: Feature
Publication title: College English. Urbana: Mar 2017. Vol. 64, Iss. 4; pg. 459, 25 pgs
Source type: Periodical
ISSN/ISBN: 00100994
Text Word Count 12165
Abstract (Document Summary)
Long exaines two recent novels about slavery that employ techniques more familiar to science fiction than to historical fiction to probe questions of history and authenticity. Octavia Butler's time-travel novel, "Kindred" and Phyllis Alesia Perry's psychological/reincarnation thriller "Stigmata" challenge their readers to conceive of remembering as a palpable, physical experience. Their goal is not so much to set the record straight, nor even to "raise the dead," but to become the dead, to embody and enact the protagonists' families' personal histories and our national past.
Full Text (12165 words)
Copyright National Council of Teachers of English Conference on College Composition and Communication Mar 2017
African American writers are still writing slave narratives. One hundred thirtynine years after emancipation, more than four decades after the Civil Rights movement, the experience of slavery, the costs of escape, and the pain of remembering still compel attention. Yet even as the racial realities of modern America press literary scholars, historians, filmmakers, and others to keep our dark national history fresh in our collective consciousness, the march of time makes our "peculiar institution" seem reassuringly distant to some, and less recoverable than ever. As we began the twentieth century, thousands of ex-slaves were still alive, many testifying to their experiences (albeit often in compromised ways) through public forums such as the Work Projects Administration interviews. As we enter the twentyfirst century, no survivors remain, and very few who have actually beheld or spoken to a former slave. An experiential and bodily connection to slavery has been lost. No one alive bears the physical scars of African American enslavement, those visible manifestations that have been deployed by those from early abolitionists through contemporary filmmakers to testify to the horrific nature of American slavery.1 Famous images ranging from the flayed back of "Gordon under Medical Inspection" (Harper's Weekly, July 1863) to Sethe's chokecherry tree scars in Toni Morrison's Beloved have offered the faceless backs of dark bodies as shorthand for the undeniable reality of bondage.
Deeply invested in this representational tradition are two recent novels that employ techniques more familiar to science fiction than to historical fiction to probe questions of history and authenticity. Octavia Butler's time-travel novel, Kindred (1979), and Phyllis Alesia Perry's psychological/reincarnation thriller, Stigmata (1998), challenge their readers to conceive of remembering as a palpable, physical experience. Their goal is not so much to set the record straight, as histo，英语论文范文，英语论文题目 |
