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Repressed Memory, Testimony, and Agency in Toni Morrison’s Home

Abstract:In Toni Morrison’s novel Home, Frank Money and his sister Cee address familial, personal, and societal trauma through testimony. This enables them to move from fragmented identities to integrated subjects with agency. This essay incorporates three ideas of testimony to analyze trauma in Morrison’s text: Dori Laub’s concept of an outside listener and an “internal witness;” Jacques Lacan’s theory of movement from object to subject; and communal testimony rooted in African American cultural practices like church rituals, music, quilt making, and storytelling. Testimony illuminates Morrison’s astute study of traumatized Black bodies and the movement to worthy selves in Home.