TRAUMA AND HEALING IN NO-NO BOY, OBASAN, AND REQUIEM

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine the representations of trauma and the limits of post-traumatic healing in John Okada's No-No Boy (1957), Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981), and Frances Itani's Requiem (2011), three novels set against the backdrop of the Japanese internment experience in the United States and Canada. Other than the trauma of the internment experience, trauma in this thesis also includes being a target of racism, childhood trauma that stems from parental separation or abandonment, and the trauma of child sexual abuse. Through an application of Cathy Caruth's and Judith Herman's theories on trauma and recovery, I analyze the narrative strategies Okada, Kogawa, and Itani employ to represent trauma and its manifestations in their novels. I argue that while the multiple forms of trauma and their representations point towards diverse pathways of healing that culminate in reconnection and closure, the potential for healing is stymied by the varying degrees of reconciliation and closure within the three novels. Finally, I examine how healing emerges from and in spite of trauma. Nonetheless, the protagonists of these texts encounter limits while searching for healing in the face of traumatic events. These limits come in the form of incomplete closures, faltering connections and partial reconciliations. Although complete healing is desired, the degree of its attainability differs across the three texts.