Intersectional Trauma in American Women Writers' Incest Novels from the 1990s

This book explores the intersections of sexualized, gendered, and racialized traumas in five US novels about father-daughter incest from the 1990s. It examines how incest can be connected to wider past and present structural oppression and institutional abuse, and what fiction looks like that testifies against and references a historical background of slavery, poverty, settler colonialism, annexation, and immigration. Investigating the means of resistance used against attempts at silencing and denial in these texts, the book also shows how contemporary women’s novels can propose social change. Overall, this study uniquely argues that the individual trauma of incest in these texts must be understood in relation to histories of and present collective wounding against marginalized communities. By sitting at the intersections between trauma theory and US third world feminism, it allows for theory to meet literary activism. Acknowledgments Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: Contextualizing the Wound and the Political Literary Voice in the Theory of Trauma From Individual to Collective Trauma Incest Trauma at the Intersections in Contemporary American Culture The Literary Voice in the Theory of Trauma as the Third, Middle Voice Incest and/as Trauma in Literature Bibliography Chapter 2: Trauma, Temporality, and Testimony: The Enslaved Daughter’s Body in Carolivia Herron’s Thereafter Johnnie Witnessing as Weapon Embodied Traumatic Time: Inscribed by an “X” Bearing Witness Bibliography Chapter 3: Trauma, “Trash,” and Memory in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina Bastard Out of Carolina as an Incest Trauma Narrative Departure from the Past: Re-Imagining Incest Bibliography Chapter 4: Betty Louise Bell’s Faces in the Moon: Trauma, Settler Colonialism, and Storytelling “Traveling Back”: Storying6 the Soul Wound, Naming the Enemy A New Story That Matters Bibliography Chapter 5: Transnational Trauma and Testimonio in Denise Chávez’s Face of an Angel Testimonial Storytelling: Correcting “the history of lies” Las hijas de la Malinche: Incest as Intersectional and Transnational Trauma Spiritual and Literary Activism: Creating Counter-historias Bibliography Chapter 6: Trauma, Survival, and Intertextuality in Patricia Chao’s Monkey King Incest Trauma and the Immigrant Experience Incest and Intertextuality: The Monkey King Tale “What I See Is Too Dreadful to Take in: Survival Skills Post-Traumatic, Cultural, and Literary Survival Bibliography Chapter 7: Conclusion: Trauma and Resistance in a Literary Third Voice at the Intersections Bibliography Index