Postcolonial Traumas ― Memory, Narrative, Resistance

This accessible and dynamic collection of essays explores some new possibilities for understanding postcolonial traumas. It examines representations of both personal and collective traumas around the globe from Palestinian, Caribbean, African American, South African, Maltese, Algerian, Indian, Australian and British writers, directors and artists. Contributors investigate a range of genres and types of representation, including the novel, short story, television and stage drama, graphic novel, film and fictionalised memoir. As a collection, these essays necessarily share some important concerns regarding past, current and even future traumas facing the postcolonial world, but they also recognise the diversity of traumatic experiences, and authors are attentive to the specifics of location, historical and cultural contexts.

Abigail Ward is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Nottingham, UK. She is the author of a number of related works on postcolonial traumas, including the monograph Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen and Fred D'Aguiar: Representations of Slavery (2011). Her current AHRC-funded research project explores literary depictions of Indian indenture in the Caribbean. Her work has been published in various essay collections and the journals Contemporary Literature, Moving Worlds, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Atlantic Studies and Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.