Article (Scientific journals)
Zombies Go to Toronto: Zombifying Shame in Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring
Romdhani, Rebecca
2015In Research in African Literatures, 16 (4), p. 72-89
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Keywords :
Nalo Hopkinson; Brown Girl in the Ring; Zombies; Emotion; Shame
Abstract :
[en] Caribbean-Canadian Nalo Hopkinson's speculative fiction novel Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) is set in a near future dystopian Toronto and contains many African and Caribbean supernatural and folkloric characters. This article focuses on the zombie, which traditionally functions as a symbol of powerlessness, and argues that Hopkinson's book expands the relations of power that this figure is commonly employed to probe. More specifically, the essay suggests that, in Brown Girl in the Ring, the zombie symbolizes black people's history of oppression, exploitation, and demonization. Furthermore, through reading the novel alongside emotion discourse and Vodou psychology, the article contends that the zombie in Hopkinson's book can be understood as being symbolic of the consequential shame that members of the African-Caribbean diaspora may experience from a legacy of oppression, which, significantly, includes internalizing a white Western perception of their African and Caribbean cultural inheritance.
Research center :
CEREP - Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherche en Études Postcoloniales - ULiège
Disciplines :
Literature
Author, co-author :
Romdhani, Rebecca ;  Université de Liège > Département de langues et littératures modernes > Langue et linguistique anglaises modernes
Language :
English
Title :
Zombies Go to Toronto: Zombifying Shame in Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring
Publication date :
2015
Journal title :
Research in African Literatures
ISSN :
0034-5210
eISSN :
1527-2044
Publisher :
Indiana University Press
Special issue title :
What is Africa to Me Now?
Volume :
16
Issue :
4
Pages :
72-89
Peer reviewed :
Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi
Available on ORBi :
since 25 March 2016

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