Black Bodies and Blue Histories - Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots

Oct 12, 2026

This paper titled “Black Bodies and Blue Histories: Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots” examines intertwined trauma, gendered violence, contested identities, resistance, and spiritual reorientation. Rooted in different cultural moments, 1982 and 2024, it compares how pain, trauma, healing, and resistance are narrated in both texts. Using blue chromatic symbolism and theories of collective trauma and gender, the study foregrounds black women’s lived suppression and reclamation of voice, supported by key scholarship and the idea of spiritual metanoia.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction and Context

Black Women’s Literature and Suppressed Voices

Textual Comparison

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982)

Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots (2024)

Theoretical Framework

Collective Unconscious and Archetypes

Trauma and Gender Intersections

Discussion and Key Themes

Literariness Journal A Peer-Reviewed Quarterly Journal of Literature and Cultural Studies P-ISSN: 3108-1614 E-ISSN: 3108-172X [LiterarinessJournal.org](LiterarinessJournal.org) Vol. 1, Issue. 2 March 2026 © 2026 by the author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( CC-BY 4 . 0 ) , which permit sunrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium , provided the original author and source are credited. See [http://](http://)[ ](http://)[creativecommons. org/licenses/by/](creativecommons. org/licenses/by/)[ ](creativecommons. org/licenses/by/)[4.0/.](4.0/.) Citation: Rajan, An agha, and Lekshmi R. Nair. “Black Bodies and Blue Histories: Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots.” Literariness Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, Mar. 2026, pp. 567–578. [A Literariness.org](A Literariness.org) Project Black Bodies and Blue Histories: Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and PemiAguda’s Ghostroots Anagha Rajan Research Scholar, Maharaja’s College (Autonomous) Ernakulam, Kerala Dr Lekshmi R Nair Professor of English Government College Kottayam, Kerala Abstract This paper titled “Black Bodies and Blue Histories: Exploring Embodied Trauma, Gender Anxieties and Spiritual Metanoia in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots” explores the entangled domains of trauma, gendered violence, conflicting identities, resistance, and theological reorientation. The selected texts are rooted in divergent cultural contexts and are published nearly four decades apart, 1982 and 2024 respectively. Hence, this paper delves into a comparative analysis of how both authors narrate the notions of pain, trauma, resistance and healing. Drawing on the chromatic symbolism of blue as melancholy, bruising, and memory of how pain is lived through generations, this paper navigates through Black trauma as affective, and embodied histories. As trauma extends beyond emotional and sensory dimensions, encompassing the social, cultural and historical elements, the paper evaluates the thematic intersections and the narrative forms of both texts. It foregrounds gender discrimination and trauma as a reality rather than an abstract idea, reinforced by years of social conditioning that has to be consciously unlearned. It examines the lives of Black women on how they navigate through suppression, trauma and how they reclaim their voices. The theoretical contributions of Alfred Adler, Cathy Caruth, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir and Kimberle Crenshaw have informed the understanding of trauma and its transmission, and the intersectioality of race, gender and class as depicted in the select texts. By engaging in selected vital cultural texts with the aid of theories of collective trauma and gender, and the concept of spiritual metanoia the paper seeks a deeper understanding of the resilience and potency of Black womanhood. Keywords: Collective Trauma, Black Feminism, Spiritual Metanoia, Gender Anxieties. Literariness Journal n the topography of Black women’s literature, narratives often emerge from voices that were once suppressed by patriarchy and colonialism. These voices speak of the weight of unspoken memory, broken psyche and intergenerational trauma. These are also voices that address the struggle for survival against the dominant ideologies of oppression. It voices the spiritual ecology of liberation. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and Pemi Aguda’s collection Ghostroots (2024) are two such works that address oppression, trauma, transformation and healing. These narratives delve deeper into the themes of ancestry, spirituality, and the female body in Black women’s literature. Written indifferent contexts, the two works, Walker’s The Color Purple set in the conditions of rur

FAQs

What central themes does the paper investigate in The Color Purple and Ghostroots?

The paper focuses on embodied trauma, gender anxieties, resistance, conflicting identities, and spiritual metanoia, showing how pain and healing are narrated across generations.

How are the two selected works contextualized for comparison?

The Color Purple is set in early 1900s rural Georgia (1982), while Ghostroots is set in contemporary urban Lagos, Nigeria (2024), allowing the paper to compare gendered violence, spirituality, and ancestral longing.

Which theoretical contributions guide the analysis of trauma and its transmission?

The study draws on Alfred Adler, Cathy Caruth, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir, and Kimberle Crenshaw to interpret trauma, its transmission, and the intersectionality of race, gender, and class.

Oct 12, 2026

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