Rememory

 Khailya Jones Ms. Harris ENGL 2016-44378 December 3, 2021

 Rememory

 Southern gothic is a genre in literature that encompasses horror elements such as supernatural, disturbing characters, grotesque history, etc. with the purpose to explore social issues. Black gothic is what a person defines as the southern horror genre in art and literature with the element of race included and confined what is horror to the Black community. The plethora of authors from the past and present who use such a broad genre and trope bring stories to life. I will be discussing how re-memory ties into Black Gothic and include detail of its influences on the characters in the texts we have read.

 Rememory is one concept present as reliving an important or traumatic vivid event that one does or does not have to directly experience. In Beloved, it is the result of enslavement and portrayed through personal and collective memory. The reader encounters this through Sethe and Paul D. who are in the process finding their humanity and autonomy. The conversations that come about are proof of the residue because the details of the memories are withheld due to trauma and they feel this neverending gloom. How that was the reason for their following actions and result of their conversations, “Grown don't mean nothing to a mother….I’ll protect her when I'm alive and I’ll protect her when I aint.”(23) and their trauma bond, “Sethe, if i’m here with you, with Denver, you can go anywhere you want. Jump if you want to ‘cause I'll catch you.”(23). In Sing, Unburied, Sing, Pop’s years in Parchman and what happened. Jojo and Mam mention multiple times how Pop’s never tells the whole story and it's evident that there's something pops does not want to talk about. Eventually, the reader learns that Pops killed Richie to protect him and how the smell of Richie's blood followed him ever since, “I washed my hands every day, Jojo. But that damn blood ain’t never come out. Hold my hands up to my face, I can smell it under my skin.” (174). It is very important that Richie and Pops tell the story together and now that the truth is revealed Pops is able to heal and “This moment done ate it all up: the past, the future." (182). Richie was what was necessary to begin the temporal collapse. 

Beloved and Sing Unburied, Sing are two of the many Black Gothic novels that has been used to portray our realities and uses rememory which serves as haunting memory. Sethe, Paul D., Richie, and Pops oppressive memory have been and always will be passed down and never forgotten. 


Works Cited 

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf, New York : Distributed by Random House, Inc., 

     1987, https://moodle.ulm.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=2668888. 


Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, Unburied, Sing. Simon & Schuster, 2017,         https://moodle.ulm.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=2669066

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