Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma
Dublin Core
Title
Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma
Subject
Psychic trauma in literature
Electronic Resource Item Type Metadata
Book Title
Daughters of the Stone
Publication Date
2019
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Document Type
Book chapter
Language
English
ISBN
9783030057312
Region
Puerto Rico, United States
Access
Restricted Access
View Source
Abstract
This chapter explores Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s novel Daughters of the Stone via psychoanalytics of historical trauma and studies regarding the effects of coloniality on genetic predispositions within epigenetics. This chapter examines how Llanos-Figueroa recreates narratives of Puerto Rico’s history of slavery. Importantly, this chapter contends that her renarration shows how women have been specifically inculcated into this system, both in its previous instantiations and the gaps in narratives in which slavery became a silenced trauma. This novel also critiques social shaming of Afro-Latinidades at both the individual family and larger socio-structural levels. This novel reclaims ancestral lineage as part of an empowered world-traveler consciousness. Analysis of this text in conjunction with recent studies in biological responses to trauma indicates the more insidious reach of colonialism and the importance of new narratives regarding historical trauma and narratives of pathologized bodies.
Cataloger
Haley Lesemann
Citation
“Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma,” ICMGLT Digital Library, accessed November 3, 2026, https://library.icmglt.org/items/show/1011.