Representations of trauma in Ben Jelloun's <i>Leaving Tangier</i> and NoViolet Bulawayo's <i>We Need New Names</i>

Abstract

African migrant fiction, which recreates characters' experiences at home and abroad, is increasingly preoccupied with the representations of dystopian realities. Critical appraisals of Ben Jelloun's Leaving Tangier and NoViolet Bulawayo's We need new names, two popular narratives by African migrant writers, have largely focused on the representation of varied mobilities- migration, exile and return migration, without adequate attention paid to the depiction of migrant characters' experiences of traumatic stress which finds ample representation in both narratives. Aspects of trauma theory and postcolonial theory are employed to examine the two narratives' depiction of loss, suffering and pain, within and outside the postcolony. This study, through a critical analysis of Jelloun's Leaving Tangier and Bulawayo's We need new names, examined the representation of trauma in the narratives and characters' responses to traumatic stress. Both narratives present trauma as doubled-edged, aligning with the dominant estimation of trauma as a double wound. Traumatogenic contexts and events dominate the homeland as well as the diaspora. A comparative analysis of the two narratives affords a wider understanding of the narratives' complex visions of a mobility marked by precarity, liminality and trauma, in a manner that essentially establishes that traumatic experiences are not limited to the characters' natal homes. thus, this study establishes that both novels, in a postcolonial fashion, bear witness to trauma's mobility across space and time, thereby destabilising the hegemonic conception of the West as the Promised Land for African migrant characters.