Spectres from the Past

Portia Owusu is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include history and memory, cultural philosophy and literature and West African and African-American contemporary narratives. She received her PhD in 2017 in Africana Literature at the SOAS, University of London.

• Introduction: Evoking Spectres in History. Chapter 1: Literary Archaeology: The Uncovering and Recovering of Historical Memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.Chapter 2: Articulating ‘Silence’: The Language of Death as Memory in Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost. Chapter 3: Bloodlines and Blurred lines: Contested Memories and Freedom in Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings.Chapter 4: The Limitations of ‘History’: Chika Ezeanya’s Re-visioning of the Early Years of Olaudah Equiano and Slavery in Before We Set Sail.Chapter 5: Wreckages of History: The Past as Ongoing in Amiri Baraka’s Slave Ship: A Historical Pageant.Chapter 6: The Magic of ‘History’ and Contradictions of ‘Return’ to the M(other) land in Syl Cheney-Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar.Conclusion: Defining Silences.