Identifying herself as the other in a world whereby whiteness, thinness, and maleness are the passport to ecstasy and social acceptance, the Haitian immigrant Roxane Gay impregnates her memoir Hunger with a plethora of traumatic experiences she withstands in American society. The text is a complex blend of memories of violence, fat-shaming, and cultural alienation. The paper explores the multifarious mechanisms of traumas and how Gay’s retrieval of such remembrances leads to her metamorphosis and development, from an outcast and fat-phobic persona to a self-assured and assertive woman. It offers a fertile ground for the grasp of the workings of memory and how people are controlled by its dictates. The first part highlights the variegated oppression Gay experiences referred to as intersectionalism; i.e. the overlap of compounded forms of discriminations, ranging from race injustices to gender inequity and stereotypical labeling. The ultimate part charts the dynamism of memories through its intricate symbiosis with identity formation.
ouni, K. (2024). “Trauma and Memory Dynamism in Roxane Gay’s A Memoir of (My) Body”. Journal of English Literature and Cultural Studies, 5(1), 37-45.
MLA
khawla ouni. "“Trauma and Memory Dynamism in Roxane Gay’s A Memoir of (My) Body”". Journal of English Literature and Cultural Studies, 5, 1, 2024, 37-45.
HARVARD
ouni, K. (2024). '“Trauma and Memory Dynamism in Roxane Gay’s A Memoir of (My) Body”', Journal of English Literature and Cultural Studies, 5(1), pp. 37-45.
VANCOUVER
ouni, K. “Trauma and Memory Dynamism in Roxane Gay’s A Memoir of (My) Body”. Journal of English Literature and Cultural Studies, 2024; 5(1): 37-45.
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