Recovering Narratives

Latin America has historically sustained political, economic, and social upheaval, creating a vacuum of patriarchal power dynamics indicative of gender violence. These dynamics are reflected in personal and political trauma narratives. The connection between trauma, language, and narrative is complex; however, psychological research demonstrates that narrative memory helps heal and process grief and trauma. The non-verbal expression of affect often manifests in physiological expressions, reflecting one's psychological and emotional status. In conjunction with affect theory and trauma theory, narratives provide additional insight to human experiences and processes when placed within their cultural context and history. In this dissertation, analysis of Pedro Páramo and "I'm your horse in the night" focuses on the role of memory and imagination in surviving circumstances of oppressive gender violence. Additionally, issues represented in The Boy Kings of Texas further the discussion of gender violence directed not only towards women and girls, but also men and boys. The themes of Camila, The Official Story and In the Time of the Butterflies offer additional perspective to trauma as they address the consequences of analyzed and expressed trauma and the necessary element of truth-telling to not only individual but collective trauma narratives. The discussion of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents address repercussions of suppressed traumatic memories within the context of buildingsroman taking into consideration both the physiological and psychological effects of gender violence. Finally, Backyard and The Secret in Their Eyes are texts that further explore the detrimental consequences of extreme gender violence, such as femicide, and the necessary element of truth-telling in trauma narratives not only for purposes of justice and grieving but as the starting point of surviving, coping, and healing from trauma both in the individual and collective sense. Analyzing the characters and themes within these texts of various genres through psychological, sociological, and historical lenses allows for a more complete understanding of how trauma narratives function as agents of change concerning trauma and shame and its relationship with gender violence in the context of Latin American cultures.