The Slave-Trade Trauma in Léonera Miano’s "La Saison de l’ombre" (Season of the Shadow)

Abstract

Recent developments in trauma studies call for increased research on postcolonial literatures to expand the scope of trauma theory to the experiences of non-Western societies. Despite numerous memorial initiatives, the slave trade remains relatively unaddressed in the Francophone literary sphere. Contemporary novelists have started to break the silence on this outrageous episode of African history and contribute to completing the puzzle of slave history which, now more than ever, needs the Francophone African perspective. This article will focus on Léonora Miano’s La Saison de l’ombre (2013). It will examine the notable aesthetic features of the slave trade and the ethical accounts through which the author, as a Franco-Cameroonian novelist, revisits the traumatic experience of the slave trade. This analysis will draw from trauma theories and postcolonial models of trauma to understand the tragedy of the slave trade and its effects on the African memory-building and explore the new avenue that African literature in French may open.