Published Online:September 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES030924
Author Name:Mamta Mehrania and Dinesh Babu P
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:29-42
The Removed (2021), a novel by Brandon Hobson, a well-known American author from the Cherokee—Native American tribe of the Iroquoian lineage—depicts how the indigenous people are consumed by their family’s past, its influence on the present, and the way the present (re)constructs the past with regard to their experiences. The paper investigates the experiences of trauma, memory, and recovery among Native Americans through a critical analysis of the novel, which thematizes the Trail of Tears, a series of forced displacements of five tribes between 1830 and 1850. The paper explores the effect of the past events and the development of hyperarousal, flashback, sense of loss, intrusive conflict, trauma, and healing in the four main characters of the novel, with a focus on the author’s use of myth, supernatural, and indigenous knowledge to depict the past. It also shows, by applying Judith Herman, Cathy Caruth, Kai T Erikson, and Ann E Kaplan’s theory of trauma and recovery, how the novel depicts the four stages one generally goes through during the process of healing from trauma, viz., remembering what happened, feeling sad about what was lost, reconnecting with people, and understanding what went wrong and how to fix it.
Brandon Hobson was born in Oklahoma State and was an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee nation tribe. He is the author of Deep Ellum (2014), Desolation of Avenues Untold (2015), The Removed (2021), and Where the Dead Sit Talking (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award