Diáspora, trauma e depressão nos romances O Caminho de Casa e Reino transcendente, de Yaa Gyasi

Abstract

In literature, the diaspora, trauma and depression have space throughout the literary tradition. Thus, this research has as its corpus two novels Homegoing (2017) and Transcendent Kingdom (2021), by the writer Yaa Gyasi, which present the problem of the African diasporic movement to the West. The first tells an epic story of the migration of African people to America, from the beginning of the slave trade to the present day. The second is contextualized in the experience of those who sought the ‘American dream’, but found a reality troubled by prejudice and violence. Thus, our general objective is to analyze the relationship between diaspora and depression through the prism of decoloniality in the works Homegoing (2017) and Transcendent Kingdom (2021) by YaaGyasi, taking into account the diasporic sociocultural situation in a postmodern world, through colonization and enslavement present in the narrative. Our specific objectives are: a) to investigate the relationship between depression behavior and the diaspora movement, as well as traumatic experiences lived and expressed by the characters in the work under study; b) investigate in the two novels the processes of dehumanization within the contexts of oppression characteristic of coloniality, such as racism, sexism and violence; c) analyze how gender relations reveal themselves in the face of colonial thinking and the subalternity of women; d) examine the importance of recovering memory for black African-American characters as a feeling of belonging and also as a way to know their own history. To support our discussions, we approach the studies of Peres (2010) and Freud (2006) on psychoanalysis and psychology to substantiate and understand the aspects that shape the history and conception of melancholy and depression; Cathy Caruth (2016), Ron Eyerman (2004) and Jeffrey Alexander (2004) to clarify the notion of trauma and cultural trauma. Furthermore, Santos (2008) brings relevant contributions about historical diasporas, substantiating this theme and enabling the configuration of a relationship between the diaspora, trauma that generates depression and the return to memory as a path to reconstructing the ‘self’. According to the objectives, it is classified as descriptive, as it discusses and describes the problem of the diasporic context as a possible source for the development of the depressive condition and bibliographical nature, as it describes and analyzes the critical and theoretical literary collection on the themes analyzed. The analyzes carried out demonstrate that the novels present in their plots this relationship between diaspora and trauma, in which the traumatic experience caused by racism can lead immigrants to develop mental illnesses, including depression.