Childhood Trauma, Rehabilitation and Resilience And Survival In Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out Of Carolina
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/ajpr.v28i1.172Keywords:
trauma, pain, sufferings, struggle, victim, patriarchy, survival, abuseAbstract
Trauma fiction is a genre that tends to focus on the different ways in which the novelists of the contemporary literary world, explore the concept of trauma through storytelling. It usually involves the author’s memories of any traumatic event in their life. This paper will examine the impact of trauma on one’s psyche and the struggles to overcome the negativity to survive and thrive. This paper will examine the concept of trauma in the life of the protagonist of the novel chosen for study, Bastard out of Carolina. The protagonist is Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright, a little girl born to a fifteen-year-old unmarried mother, Anney. The hospital staff discover that the baby girl is illegitimate and declare that she is a “bastard”, as she is born out of wedlock. The struggles and sufferings of both mother and child are portrayed vividly, as well as the resilience of the human spirit.
References
1. Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. Plume, 1992.
2. Boylorn, Robin. “Five Lessons from My Mentor.” Storytelling, Self, Society. Vol. 10, No. 1, 2014 (45-58).
3. Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resistance. Peter Lang 37 Publishing, New York, NY: 2013
4. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
5. Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Cornell University Press, 2001.
6. Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, 1992.
7. Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014.
8. Juhasz, Suzanne. “Writing the Body: Reading Bastard Out of Carolina.” Southern Literary Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, 2000, pp. 35–50.
9. Marsh, Janet Z. (2009). Twenty-First-Century American Novelists : Second Series. Detroit, Michigan: Gale, Cengage Learning.
10. Ladd, Barbara. Resisting History. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA: 2007.
11. Yaeger, Patricia. Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women’s Writing, 1930-1990. University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 2000.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License permitting all use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
