Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

While scholars who investigate the works of African diasporic authors Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Claudia Rankine acknowledge the importance between form and audience in their works, critics have either yet to fully recognize how and/or for what purpose each author implements specific techniques. Paying close attention to what I propose are formal affective strategies in Danticat's Everything Inside, Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck, and Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, allows us to see how each author infuses experimental forms that are strategically bound to how their future readers will react to their texts with the hope that these reactions will prove more socially and politically moving than just moving—as in readers simply turning the page. Black diasporic women authors, including Danticat, Adichie, and Rankine, destabilize traditional literary paradigms and invent new formal affective strategies in their works. Upon closer consideration, these strategies not only help expose the continuous exclusivity of the American Dream and contemporary problems associated with the enduring patriarchal hegemony, but by engaging the audience with commonly felt affects, reconfigure future possibilities for intersectional solidarity through the very conflicts and difficulties their writings explore and formally embody.

Committee: Julie Burrell Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Frederick Karem Ph.D. (Committee Member); Melanie Gagich Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Literature; American Literature; Black Studies; Caribbean Literature; Gender; Literature; Modern Literature; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts, Miami University, 2011, College of Arts and Sciences - English

The traumatic history of the 20th century in Haiti is a topic often addressed by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat. In four of her works–Krik? Krak!, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, and Breath, Eyes, Memory¬¬–the traumas of The Parsley Massacre and the Duvalier Regime are interrogated. The characters in these fictions experience trauma either directly or through generational links. The shared nature of the trauma lends itself to both commemoration and healing. The lack of official recognition for the pain experienced by the Haitian people creates commemoration that is personal rather than “official.” My work approaches Danticat's fiction, and its treatment of historical trauma, through close readings of these four texts. These readings reveal what Danticat is saying about the immigration experience and about the ways individuals experience and recognize traumatic memories.

Committee: Julie Minich PhD (Advisor); Jose Amador (Committee Member); Elena Albarran (Committee Member) Subjects: Caribbean Literature