| Popis: |
This essay on Shani Mootoo’s text Cereus Blooms at Night seeks to bring forth the characteristics and causes of cultural trauma in a displaced family, the Ramchandin family, which migrated from India in order to escape their karmic destiny as indentured servants. Their departure from the homeland and arrival on the imaginary Caribbean island of Lantanacamara turns out to be the original traumatic event that will haunt two generations of Ramchandin children who will have to bear the weight of acculturation and mental corruption after confrontations with the colonial system in place on the island. This essay is about the difficult struggle against a web of colonial regulations which deny any possibility for individual and collective improvement (be it personal, cultural, or social) in a place satiated with colonial fanaticism; but in the end, it opens a window towards potential opportunities for healing and rising again beyond the forces of oppression, and despite the violence of the fall. |
