Authors:
G. Jerusha Angelene Christabel, C. L. Shilaja
Addresses:
Department of English, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Department of English, Stella Maris College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Abstract:
Toni Morrison's Beloved and Louise Erdrich's Tracks, two renowned works that confront the enduring effects of slavery and American Indian dispossession, are explored in this study with a focus on what is central to storytelling and on how memory functions as a transformative tool. These narratives serve to navigate the emotional pain of remembrance and move forward in reclaiming one's cultural and personal identity, an emotionally challenging yet necessary process. As a way of creating a shared ritual of healing and expression that aids in the healing of racialised trauma, storytelling serves a dual purpose for African American and Native American communities. Through storytelling, suppressed histories are revived, fostering reconciliation and healing. Stories are used to heal in some regions of the world as characters revisit their suppressed pasts and blur the lines between the past and present. Morrison and Erdrich preserve a period when human history was destroyed by restoring histories that historians typically forget. Their stories reveal buried memories and offer psychological healing by illustrating how trauma affects Afro-Americans and Native Americans differently. Stories separate survivors from trauma, helping them recover. Both authors retain historical realities, strengthen beliefs and worldviews, and repair their communities' cultural memory, healing individual traumas, using narrative. In "Voices That Remember," Morrison and Erdrich employ fiction to promote resistance and remembering.
Keywords: Storytelling Process; Cultural Memory; Trauma and Healing; Narrative Therapy; Historical Recovery; Memory Functions; Silenced Histories; Literary Voice; Transformative Tool.
Received on: 15/01/2025, Revised on: 09/04/2025, Accepted on: 28/07/2025, Published on: 03/01/2026
DOI: 10.64091/ATISL.2026.000271
AVE Trends in Intelligent Social Letters, 2026 Vol. 3 No. 1 , Pages: 1–10