The (Ir)Representability of the Belated Traumatic Wound in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

Introduction

nothing matters but the quality

of affection —

in the end— that has carved the trace in the mind

dove sta memoria

(Pound, 1975, p. 457)

Representation is a luxury a traumatic self cannot afford, as expressing the experience with linearity and coherence is an impossible task for the traumatized whose psyche is fragmented. Caruth (1995) argues that “the transformation of trauma into a narrative memory that allows the story to be verbalized and communicated . . . may lose both the precision and the force that characterizes traumatic recall” (p. 153). Accordingly, psychological pain is almost ineffable because language is short of exact representations. Yet, the traumatized subject is in need for articulating trauma, even if that narrative is partial, imprecise, and fragmented. This necessity for telling one’s story is instinctively therapeutic for the traumatized, who demands listeners to witness the experience. The traumatic narratives, thus, are replete with signs beyond denotative language, such as silences, fragmented conversations, and incomprehensible utterings. However, this absence of language is meaningful, since it mimics the traumatic psyche that defies language. That is to say that the silence of the traumatized is not a void, but rather a trace that is present albeit its absence; hence, the representation of trauma becomes a possible impossibility, or as Luckhurst (2008) puts it: “this crisis in representation, . . . generates narrative possibility just as much as impossibility . . .” (p. 83).

Whereas the Caruthian approach in trauma studies perceives that trauma is unspeakable, the pluralistic trauma theory argues that such irrepresentability can be challenged if the subtle connection between psychological trauma and the social aspects—including language—is considered. This can be achieved through studying the personal trauma in the larger framework of its milieu. Contrariwise, the personal experience can open a spate of questions about the collective one. This, perhaps, explains why people enjoy reading the stories of others and feel that such narratives are remarkably engaging. Pluralistic trauma, hence, offers loopholes for expression through creating a web of associations amongst the traumatized subjects and/or nations.

One case study of an experience where the personal and the collective are blurred is Lorraine Hansberry’s (1959) A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry (1930–1965) is an African American writer whose celebrated play A Raisin in the Sun expresses the collective trauma of African Americans, as well as her personal traumatic experience of the violent attack on her family house by whites when she was a child. African American collective trauma was caused by slavey and its aftermath, as millions of people were shipped from Africa to America in what is called the Middle Passage, where they suffered from different kinds of psychological and physical torture. A lot of those forcibly transported people died in the sea, and they were reduced to numbers with an untold story behind every nameless dead body. Those who survived, however, had no better luck, as they were enslaved as soon as they arrived. This experience of the Middle Passage is a trauma that African Americans have passed through generations, as they felt a necessity to tell the stories of their torture and the suffering of those who died without proper funerals or burial. Writing, thus, has become an attempt to perform the burial rites that the dead did not receive and a site to reshape African American identity after this painful history of slavery. Ron Eyerman perceives that “Slavery is not here forgotten, but regarded as a usable past, an experience which can be appropriated” (p. 90). Therefore, it is inevitable to articulate this collective trauma to perceive the experience from different perspectives, especially that racism was not completely over even after the emancipation of slavery. This means that African Americans have also suffered from other personal traumas due to cultural discrimination besides the inherited collective trauma. The traumatic moment, therefore, is not necessarily the experience per se, but also its legacy, as trauma is the impact of an oppression that has been passed through generations. Eyerman confirms that “slavery was traumatic in retrospect, and formed a ‘primal’ scene’ which could, potentially, unite all ‘African Americans’ in the United States, whether or not they had themselves been slaves or had any knowledge of or feeling for Africa” (Eyerman, 2003, p. 1).

A Raisin in the Sun is a site where this painful experience of African American people is intertwined with Hansberry’s own traumatic experience of physical and psychological violence in her childhood. In 1938, when Hansberry was eight, her family moved to a white neighborhood in Chicago, where they suffered from racial discrimination by whites who rejected a black family among them. Hansberry’s family, however, challenged “Chicago’s Jim Crow housing laws,” and her father “won an antisegregation case before the Illinois Supreme Court” (Samuels, 2007, p. 226). Michelle Gordon states that “[a]s a young playwright, Hansberry shaped her aesthetic practices to respond directly to the urban segregation her family had fought for so long, and, in the midst of the cold war, the capitalist systems from which segregation grew” (Gordon, 2010, p. 114).

The play is a literary work that attempts at representing the dilemma of a poor black family that lives in a miserable house before it receives the life insurance of the recently deceased father. Each member of the family suggests an idea about what to do with the money before the mother, Lena, decides to buy a new house in a white neighborhood. Lena dedicates the rest of the money to her son Walter, who wants to invest it in a liquor store, and her daughter Beneatha, who wants to study medicine. Walter, however, wastes the money carelessly, while Beneatha starts to build up her own anti-assimilationist identity with the help of her Nigerian boyfriend Asagai. Meanwhile, a white man from the new neighborhood visits the family and offers to buy the house before the family moves there, to reduce the tension which might happen between the two races. His visit suggests an implied threat for possible violence against the family. Eventually, the family decides to move anyway, and the curtain falls before the act of moving takes place, and without clarifying the destiny of the family in the new neighborhood. This paper argues that Hansberry realizes the purpose of representing her trauma as well as that of her people through four major techniques: the choice of drama as a genre, the mode of genuine realism, intertextuality, and symbolism.

Drama as a Site for Justice

The telling of a story is always bound up with power,

with questions of authority, property and domination.

(Bennet and Royle, 2004, p. 52)

The openness and flexibility of literature makes it a therapeutic site that helps the traumatized people to represent their wound. Therefore, Hansberry’s A Raisin can be read as a representation of the terrors of the African American experience of slavery and its aftermath. In her book The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century, Felman (2002) argues that literature does more “justice to trauma” than legal language (p. 8). Unlike legal language, which is rigid and fixed, literature is in a state of becoming, a feature that corresponds to the nature of trauma itself, which, as Caruth explains, defies fixity. The traumatic moment is “timeless,” and thus, is represented differently by the traumatized subjects every time they articulate it; a case that cannot happen in the court where the witness must be precise while speaking under oath. Also, literature has the elasticity to represent the lacunae and the absences of language, which is appreciated in the traumatic experience where the lack of language is no less significant than its presence. Hansberry finds in drama in particular a suitable realm for representing her traumatic experience due to several reasons.

First, drama is a polyphonic and dialogic genre that allows multiple voices to amalgamate. The main characters in A Raisin in the Sun are harmonized to become the mouthpiece of Hansberry herself. The Mother, Lena, for instance, represents the black heritage. She is the character who has suffered the most because of her long-lived experience in the old house. The Mother has a dream to move to a new comfortable house; a wish that Hansberry’s family had before their dream was turned into a tormenting nightmare. The other major character in the play is Beneatha who is the voice that rejects assimilation as she believes that it leads to the loss of the African identity. Her rejection of the existence of God also reflects Hansberry’s beliefs as a non-conformist and atheist. Furthermore, Asagai is a reminder of the African roots that are inseparable from African American identity. He is an insightful character whose national acumen reveals his profound knowledge about history, contrary to the superficial character of George, whom the family wants as Beneatha’s groom. This polyvocality allows Hansberry to revisit her trauma and express it from different dimensions, rather than through an authoritative voice that imposes only one version of the story.

Another vital significance of drama as a genre is its immediate interaction with the audience, which allows the audience to be involved in the events as witnesses. Caruth (2010) argues that “one’s own trauma is tied up with the trauma of another, the way in which trauma may lead, therefore to the encounter with another, through the very possibility and surprise of listening to another’s wound” (p. 8). Hansberry’s role, thus, is to make her audience listen to her testimony as a witness and a survivor of a traumatic experience. Thus, Felman’s (2002) question of: “[h]ow . . . literature [does] justice to the trauma in a way the law does not, or cannot” is realized throughout the play (p. 8). Hansberry finds drama a suitable site for presenting the experience from different perspectives, without leading the audience/to one specific answer. The characters in the play decide not to languish in their traumatic past, nor to completely forsake their wound; thus, they plan to move, which foreshadows the double meaning of moving to the new house and moving forward by transcending the traumatic past without obliterating it. Felman (2002) argues that “[l]iterature . . . encapsulates not closure but precisely what in a given legal case refuses to be closed and cannot be closed” (p. 8) because testimony has a “personal, emotional, and overdetermined or multivocal nature” as Geoffrey Hartman expresses it (Hartman, 1995, p. 541). This contingency is omnipresent in the play because of the dialogic and polyphonic voices that keep several questions about the African American dilemma unanswered. For instance, the characters dispute about integration and assimilation, without stating definite elucidations. Also, the finale of the play is an in-process open ending, as the characters make the decision of moving without taking the action. This lack of closure allows the traumatized to represent the experience without the pressure of remembering only one version of the story, which is impossible as the absence of the traumatic event leads to producing different attempts of remembrance. Felman (2002) affirms that “[i]t is to this refusal of the trauma to be closed that literature does justice” (p. 8).

Genuine Realism as a Therapeutic Mode of Representation

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

. . . . . . . . . .

Or does it explode?

(Hughes, 1994, p. 426)

The timelessness of trauma and the difficulty to indicate the traumatic moment precisely make its representation labyrinthian. Caruth (1995) believes that “the impact of the traumatic event lies precisely in its belatedness, in its refusal to be simply located, in its insistent appearance outside the boundaries of any single place or time” (p. 9). Therefore, the temporal-spatial limitations that naturalism emphasizes on theatre can restrict the traumatic experience. In his article “Naturalism on Stage” (1881), Zola (2001) defines naturalism as the “formula which makes the stage a study and picture of real life” (p. 34). Zola (2001) demands a theater that is “taken from reality, scientifically analyzed, and described without one lie” (p. 27). Naturalism, in this case, becomes insufficient for expression, as Hansberry emphasizes that African Americans must transcend the harsh reality imposed on them to find better possibilities. Hansberry employs this openness remarkably by using what she calls, genuine realism.

Unlike naturalism which emphasizes that the characters on stage are products of their environment, Hansberry’s characters attempt to go beyond the capitalist racist circumstances by unsettling the whole economic system of capitalism. In the play, Asagai hints to the difference between the two concepts of naturalism and genuine reality when he says that the future “isn’t a circle—It is simply a long line—as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end—we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd but those who see the changes—who dream, who will not give up—are called idealists . . . and those who see only the circle—we call them the ‘realists’!” (p. 565). This argument challenges the naturalists’ dictum that “since the theatre is a material reproduction of life, external surroundings have always been a necessity there” (Zola, 2001, p. 11). Asagai sees naturalism as a closed circle that keeps the vision of the individual myopic and limited to its reality in the present time. Genuine realism, on the other hand, is like an infinite line—but not a “clean, clear-cut, and mechanical” one (Williams, 1960, p. 209)—that is open for possibilities in the future. This enforces a “rhizomatic” ¹ reading that tethers the text to the entangled web of the African American cause at large, instead of a narrative reading that focuses only on Hansberry’s personal experience. Yomna Saber argues that “Walter [the son] is not hemmed in naturalistic webs . . . but rather embodies Hughes’s poem ‘Harlem’ which poses the question: ‘What happens to a dream differed?’” followed by other questions, the last of which is “Or does it explode?” (Saber, 2010, p. 455). Saber (2010) emphasizes that “the question remains ambiguously answered in Hansberry’s realism, despite the allusion in the title of the play, because it is not clear by the play’s end what happens to the family’s dream of integration.”

Hansberry’s characters break through the claustrophobic environment that capitalism imposes, as they seek a better system that accommodates their dreams. They reject to be mere victims of the circumstances, or to be controlled by a man-made system that can be replaced by genuine, malleable ideas. In the play, there is a strong rejection of living under capitalism and being restricted by its tools. Williams (1960) believes that “[a] culture can never be reduced to its artifacts while it is being lived. Yet the temptation to attend only to external evidence is always strong” (p. 343). Hansberry perceives that succumbing to the external conditions means accepting the hegemony of abusive power. She, therefore, prefers genuine realism, as it grants her people hope to change their reality; ergo, to overcome their traumatic past.

The play ends with the family deciding to move to the new house in the white neighborhood. It does not, however, state what happens after that. This ending is open to belated possibilities, such as being attacked by the white people, being rejected without physical violence, living peacefully, or revolting against the status quo. The dilemma is left unsettled, and readers can perceive such possibilities based on their interpretation of the events. For example, the possibility that the family will be attacked again might be the most imaginable for those who read the play with bearing Hansberry’s personal traumatic experience in mind, especially that this possibility is foreshadowed in the play when Mrs. Johnson asks: “[y]ou mean you ain’t read ‘bout them colored people that was bombed out their place out there?’” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 541). A question that reminds readers of Hansberry’s personal trauma and hints for the possibility of the reoccurrence of the experience in the future. On the other hand, the possibility that there will be an upcoming revolution is valid for those who read the play in light of the intertextuality with Hughes’ “Harlem” (1951) which starts with the question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” and then suggests some possibilities; the first of which is “Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?” While the last possibility has the threatening tone in the question: “Or does it explode?” Such lack of closure makes Hansberry’s genuine realism an appropriate form to express trauma.

Intertextuality and the Revival of Memory

Intertextuality, like memory, works by signifying or recalling

something that is no longer present. (Rickard, 1999, p. 169)

The idea of possibilities is omnipresent not only in the mode of genuine realism, but also from the very title of the play, A Raisin in the Sun, which is an intertextuality from Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” which offers possibilities of what could happen to the African American dream if deferred. Michelle Gordon argues that:

Hansberry’s “explosive revelational” images provide not only instructive social Representing Segregation critique but also prophetic inquiry. This prophetic inquiry operates as an integral part of her genuine realism, urging her audience, as Raisin’s title suggests, to consider seriously both what happens to millions of dreams deferred, and the trials faced by those who fight for independence. (Gordon, 2010, pp. 115–116)

Alluding to the poem is significant because of two reasons: first, it allows Hansberry to contextualize her traumatic experience within the African American one; and thus, to shift her trauma from the personal to the collective realm. The second reason is the emphasis on the idea of deferral; a common feature among the dream, the text, and trauma. Caruth emphasizes that trauma “is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available. This truth, in its delayed appearance and its belated address, cannot be linked only to what is known, but also to what remains unknown in our very actions and language” [Emphasis Added] (Caruth, 2010, p. 4). Henceforth, this belatedness keeps the experience timeless and suspended, which is the core of the traumatic experience.

The text, then, keeps taking readers to the beginning of the events, like trauma which takes the traumatized to the traumatic moment, yet without healing the wound. Hansberry realizes what Freud callas “compulsion to repeat” through language, which also has the nature of Différance, as Jacques Derrida puts it. In the play, Hansberry repeats her past traumatic experience by opening possibilities for this wound to be revisited. Freud argues in his article “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” that “[t]he antithesis of ego drives (death drives) and sexual drives (life drives) would then lose all validity, and at the same time the compulsion to repeat would lose the significance that we have attached to it” (Freud, 2003, p. 120). Therefore, instead of repeating her trauma literally, Hansberry reiterates it through literature. It is noticeable, however, that Hansberry does not start with the traumatic moment, but she rather presents the previous events and stops before the climax. Hansberry, it seems, is processing her own trauma through the process of writing. Accordingly, by creating events before the shock, she repeats her trauma esthetically, but this time after being psychologically prepared to absorb it; she thus, leaves the climatic point of trauma open for different possibilities. As a result, A Raisin in the Sun can be viewed as a repetition/testimony of Hansberry’s traumatic experience through literary language.

Hansberry culls Hughes’ line as a title for her play because dreams is a leitmotif in African American Literature. This motif is portrayed in different African American works in general, the most celebrated of which is Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “I Have a Dream.” The recurrence of the word “dream” empowers the black people and inspires them that the quest for liberty starts with a dream. This motif is highlighted in African American literature, especially as an antithesis of the American dream. Unlike the capitalist concept of the American dream, the African American one centralizes the freedom of the mind even if the oppressor confines the body. Gates (1988) argues in his book The Signifying Monkey that “[t]o dream the fantastic is to dream the dream of the Other” (p. 59). The signifying monkey realizes its dream through language, which vexes the hegemonic western linguistic system, as the tropes are only accessible to the black people who have a common cultural heritage and collective memory. Reality, thus, starts with a psychological idea or a dream.

The other significant dimension of a dream is its connection to post-traumatic symptoms. Freud believes that the “compulsion to repeat” a traumatic experience is represented in different ways, one of which is the re-manifestation of trauma in the patient’s dreams. Visser (2011) argues that “‘trauma’ refers not so much to the traumatic event as to the traumatic aftermath, the post-traumatic stage. [It] . . . denotes the recurrence or repetition of the stressor event through memory, dreams, narrative and/or various symptoms known under the definition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)” [emphasis added] (p. 272).

In the play, Mama says: “Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams—but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 503). Also, Asagai criticizes people who are obsessed with their traumatic dreams and build their future accordingly. Asagai asks: “isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 565). Asagai (1994) emphasizes that those who dream “those who see the changes—. . . who will not give up” are “idealists.” There are, thus, two kinds of dreams in the play: the negative nostalgic one that repeats the traumatic event, and the positive promising one that motivates people to move forward. Such ambivalent attitudes are also suggested in Hughes’ poem, which starts with some negative possibilities about the fate of the African American dream, yet ends with a glimpse of hope and a call for rebellion in the last line: “Or does it explode.” The fact the Hansberry quotes “Raisin in the sun” suggests the twofold meaning of losing the dream, if the traumatized people decide to reside in their nostalgic past, as well as a cry for looking forward to the future, as the expression intimidates the black people that their memory will be obsolete in case their dream is forsaken.

Symbolism and the Contingency of Meaning

[T]he symbol is not a mimetic representation, it is not an image of the experience itself.

It belongs to the order of apperception rather than perception. (Wolfreys, 2002, p. 134)

One of the reasons why literature is a suitable site for expressing trauma is the hydra-headed meanings that literary texts can produce. Literature goes beyond the direct language, for it is replete with symbolic language that keeps meaning contingent. Christa Schönfelder argues that:

The literary imagination, with its ability to fictionalize and symbolize, can create a space in which experiences that appear to defy understanding and verbalization, that concern existential dimensions of the human condition – especially threatening experiencing of vulnerability or mortality – can be explored from multiple perspectives. (Schönfelder, 2013, p. 29)

This multiplicity of meaning makes it possible to read the personal story in light of a wider experience. Hansberry’s play, for instance, sheds light not only on the dilemma of a poor family moving to a middle-class region, but also to broader issues, such as racism, injustice, and trauma. Moreover, through the symbolic dimension of the characters and the events, the play highlights the post-traumatic impact that violence against blacks causes. The root of this violence is the colonial-capitalist mindset that affirms the supremacy of white race. The play can be read as an allegorical text wherein there is a set of symbols that stands for significant issues regarding Hansberry’s personal trauma and the collective trauma of her race. Money, God, and the house are symbols that can be read as dimensions to the African American traumatic and post-traumatic experience.

The father’s inheritance symbolizes the fragmented traumatic memory of African Americans. The money that the family gets is not gained but rather received after the death of the father. Similarly, the traumatic memory of African Americans is inherited and transmitted through generations. Beneatha’s remark that money belongs to all the family implies that the collective memory of the race is a shared wound. The inheritance of the dead father symbolizes the post-traumatic pain that keeps revisiting the house like the ghost of the daughter, Beloved, in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, a ghost that is interpreted as “a hallucinatory post-traumatic symptom” (p. 263), as Malpas and Wake (2006) describe it. Malpas and Wake (2006) add that “the ghost is ambivalent—both a haunting negative force and something ‘beloved’ that is a bond between the living and the dead.” Likewise, money in A Raisin in the Sun has this equivocal implication, as it keeps the past alive.

The absence of the father from the play despite the presence of his inheritance significantly bridges the breach between the dead and the living. Like the traumatic moment of slavery, the father is absent, but his impact casts a shadow on the events. This absent presence goes along with the nature of trauma, where the traumatic moment itself is absent from the memory of the traumatized. The characters in the play, thus, are obliged to deal with the consequences of a past event, which becomes part of the story of every member of the family. Therefore, although slavery itself is over, it is now a post-traumatic symptom for African Americans. Post-traumatic symptoms keep affecting the traumatized whenever there are triggers that revive the wound even after the traumatic event is over. Gillian Beer argues that “[a]bsence gives predominance to memory and to imagination. Absence may blur the distinction between those who are dead and those who are away. In one sense, everything is absent in fiction since nothing can be physically there. Fiction blurs the distinction between recall and reading. It creates a form of immediate memory for the reader” (Beer, 1989, p. 183). Thus, the presence of the money keeps reminding the family of the absent father, whose inheritance stands for the collective trauma of the race.

Money in the play is also viewed as negative because of its connection to capitalism which opposes Hansberry’s communist views. Lieberman (2011) believes that “Hansberry’s interest in and activities on behalf of peace reflect her ties to the Communist left during the early years of the Cold War” (p. 207). In the play, Beneatha says that George is “shallow,” and when Ruth asks her “what do you mean he’s shallow?” Beneatha answers that “[h]e’s Rich!” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 505). Money; hence, becomes the antithesis of profoundness, as capitalism turns people into mindless machines. Also, Hansberry (1994) laments the capitalist system through the voice of the Mother who says, “[o]nce upon a time freedom used to be life—now it’s money .I guess the world really do change” (p. 522). Through the symbol of money, the play demonstrates that there is a need for a radical change to overcome the excruciating experience of slavery. Associating money to both the African American memory and capitalism foreshadows the threat that African Americans could become part of the capitalist oppressive system if they do not rebel; and thus, they will lose their identity. The desired change that the play calls for demands rewriting the African American memory in a way that can allow blacks to shift their attention from the nostalgic past to the productive future.

Besides imposing capitalism, whites monopolize God through believing in the superiority of Christianity over any other religion. God, therefore, is another symbol in the play, for he represents absolute authority God symbolizes the oppressive power represented by white race, capitalism, tyranny, and the one Truth that Beneatha, as a progressive black character, rejects. Beneatha says that she is “sick of hearing about God” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 507) whereas the Mother clings to the idea of God as part of the traditions of the race. The Mother, who seems to be influenced by mainstream knowledge, is authoritarian in the way she manages the house, as she slaps Beneatha for rejecting God, and she asks her to repeat after her that: “in my mother’s house there is still God” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 507). Beneatha, however, does not accept one source of knowledge in her life; instead, she tries to find her own identity in different ways. She emphasizes the significance of expression, as she says that “[p]eople have to express themselves one way or another” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 505)

Beneatha believes that for an African American individual all means of expression are needed. The need to express is not excluded to verbal expression, and that is why Beneatha gives up her dream to study medicine to signify that the somatic pain originates from the psychological wound, which must be healed first. According to Beneatha, it is unreasonable to deal with the physical pain without scrutinizing its original cause, which is the trauma of slavery that uprooted African Americans and caused their physical and psychological pain.

The displacement of African Americans leads to another significant symbol in the play, which is the house. The house stands for the need to belong as well as the necessity for moving on. The family’s decision to move to a new house is an endeavor to transcend the painful history of slavery and move forward. It is vital, however, to pay attention to the linguistic connotation for both the house and the home in the play. Nigeria in the play is referred to as home, and it is connected to Assagi who comes from there. It is annoying for Beneatha, for example, that her mother confuses Nigeria with Liberia when she says, “Oh, that’s the little country that was founded by slaves way back” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 511). Beneatha rejects being ignorant about history and melting in the new society. She stresses in the play that she is “not an assimilationist” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 514) and she defines an assimilationist as “someone who is willing to give up his own culture and submerge himself completely in the dominant, and in this case oppressive culture!” (Hansberry, 1994, p. 527). The experience of moving to the new house is mysterious, for its consequences are unpredictable. Yet, it means realizing self-actualization in the American society. Moving to the new house, thus, symbolizes the future of the African American dilemma. The play stresses, however, that such a gallop does not mean a rupture from history, an idea that is shared with several African American writers, such as Toni Morrison who coined the term “rememory” to refer to that state where the traumatic can overcome the pain without losing the post-traumatic identity shaped by that experience.

Conclusion

Life writings often emerge from a traumatic core,

occupying a space between two parallel universes: daily life and trauma.

In real life, it is dangerous for these universes to touch.

In writing, they must converge. (Schwab, 2006, p. 95).

In conclusion, A Raisin in the Sun is Hansberry’s endeavor to speak the unspeakable, and to articulate the traumatic experience of African Americans who have suffered for so long due to slavery and its aftermath. The dissociation of the traumatic moment of slavery from the memory of the post-slavery generations and the belatedness of the impact of trauma make the play a testimonial voice that offers a belated chance for telling and listening. The fact that Hansberry wrote her play 21 years after a personal traumatic experience of racism reflects her desire to represent a catastrophe which did not have a closure at that time and was left as an open wound for belated possibilities. Literature, henceforth, becomes an apt site for expression, as it is a cryptic contingent realm that defies rigidity and closure. Although there is a subtle voice in the play that calls for overcoming the wounded past and looking forward to living peacefully in the United States, Hansberry’s revolutionary rejection of the assimilation of Africans in that society and her preference for integration instead represents trauma that resists assimilation in memory. Hence, the play is a reminder that though the traumatic pain will not be erased, it could be represented to keep reshaping the African American memory.