Specters of a Silenced Past: Literary Ghosts in Sing, Unburied, Sing and The Night Watchman and the Deconstruction of America’s Historical Narrative
This article examines how the hauntings in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Louise Edrich’s The Night Watchman (2020) work to counteract the silencing of cultural trauma and minority histories within the hegemonic historical narrative of the United States. Both of these novels—works fro...
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| Gepubliceerd in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejas, |
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| Formaat: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Taal: | Anglais |
| Gepubliceerd in: |
European journal of American studies
2026
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| Online toegang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Samenvatting: | This article examines how the hauntings in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Louise Edrich’s The Night Watchman (2020) work to counteract the silencing of cultural trauma and minority histories within the hegemonic historical narrative of the United States. Both of these novels—works from the African American and Indigenous (Ojibwe) literary traditions, respectively—use spectrality to uncover and reclaim histories that have been largely excluded from the cultural memory of the US. Drawing on two novels from distinct literary traditions illustrates how literary ghosts and their engagement with historical silencing transcends culture-specific contexts, and situates the systemic practice of silencing in a national framework. This article argues that stories of cultural haunting resist the silencing of minority histories within the cultural memory of the US and complicate the hegemonic historical narrative that is central to the construction of an American national identity. |
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