Revisiting the Past in the Age of Posts: Rememory in Toni Morrison's God Help the Child and Gisèle Pineau's Femmes des Antilles. (8th August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gras, Delphine
• Is Part Of: Contemporary women's writing. Volume 13:Number 3(2019:Nov.)
• Page Start: 270
• Page End: 286
• Publication Date: 2020-08-08
• Subjects: Literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 809.89287
• DOI: 10.1093/cww/vpaa010
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-1476

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, I examine how Toni Morrison and Gisèle Pineau provide timely pieces against the historical amnesia characteristic of post-racial discourse in the USA and in France. Studying Morrison's God Help the Child (2015) and Pineau's Femmes des Antilles: Traces et Voix (1998) side by side reveals how Morrison's rememory is a global concept as pertinent today as when first coined in Beloved (1987). The term's original use in the context of slavery also suggests a lens through which to read Morrison's non-slavery era works like God Help the Child . What ultimately comes to the fore in both authors' potent expositions of the specter of slavery haunting black women in the USA, France, and the West Indies is a rejection of historical silencing.